During the Spanish Revolution the anarchists had worker councils, community councils and revolutionary citizens militias. They *had* a state in places like Barcelona, they just didn't realize it. Engels said that the state was "armed bodies of men", so why didn't the social anarchists--- who were the really exemplary ones in organizing and who had a lot of the power in early stages of the Spanish Civil War take "power". Well they said they didn't believe in the state--- instead of recognizing that they had created a new state only a "worker's state".
I don't think there are that many pure anarchists that think that you can skip completely over the socialist period with a state, and in general American anarchists are poor standard bearers of anarchist theories compared to their European counterparts.
On Sat, Apr 25, 2009 at 5:48 PM, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
>
> Yes. That's part of what I meant by "taking power," though I should have
> said that. Every six or twelve months, I ask an anarchist purist how he or
> she (and almost all of them are he's, aren't they?) how they would deal with
> counterrevolutionary violence, which usually observes no niceties. E.g., how
> would they run Cuba (does an anarchist "run" anything? well, leave that
> aside) in the face of the implacable hostility of the United States? I've
> never gotten anything resembling an answer.
>
> Doug
>