To separate this from the atheism thread, where I referred to arnachism as inevitably leading to a failed state, got some come-back.secret squirrel wrote: ↑Sat Jun 12, 2021 7:56 amWhere have Anarchist ideas such as those of Kropotkin led to failed states? I can only think of a handful of places where they have been tried, and in all those places external forces make it difficult to attribute failure to inherent problems with the ideology (e.g., can we really attribute the failure of the Makhnoists in the Ukraine to Anarchism? How about the present situation in Rojava?).
It is a tenet of development economics that without a centralised state with credible security, you will not get any economic development, because instead people will fight for control. And you can't develop in a state of continuous war where someone may be along any minute to separate you from your newly built irrigation system. That's a brief summary, and doubtless a caricature, but if you want the longer version I would strongly recommend the classic modern development economics text, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Why_Nations_Fail. It is not a dry academic text and is accessible to the layman. Nor is it a big fat book.
Essentially it is a human nature argument. Power abhors a vacuum. It is human nature that there are always people who will take advantage of the possibility to take over. It is not dissimilar to the similar observation that communism is doomed to fail because it depends on behaviours from individuals that are contrary to human nature. So if you have anarchism, then either that degenerates to perpetual insecurity and fighting (Somalia, DRC, Yemen, etc), or else someone wins and succeeds in imposing a non-anarchist stable state, be it nasty or nice, eventually.
I've never studied specific theories of anarchism. I had a quick flick through the wiki articles on Kropotkin and Makhno. But as far as I can see if it's anarchism, than means not having a central state capable of providing security. And so you will get people trying to assert control, whether external or internal. In the particular cases Secret Squirrel mentions, it was external parties who took advantage of the lack of credible security to impose their control. My argument would be that something like that was inevitable.