that still sounds an awful lot like governing.

I mean it kinda depends on what definition of “government” you’re using, i.e. how much structure you give the word. I’ve been using “government” here as synonymous with “state”, which is a little imprecise.

The part of government to which I am opposed is the authoritarian, hierarchical, nonconsensual, and violent power structure it imposes on the world, i.e. the state. For this reason, both pragmatically and from a position of moral outrage, states are unfit for liberatory purposes.

But that does not necessarily mean I oppose other forms of organization, e.g., anarchist collectives, community defense organizations, unions, and technical societies. Of course, these must continue to be freely associated, anti-authoritarian systems which do not reinforce power structures. For the latter two in particular, although it is possible for any organization, these are absolutely not inherently guaranteed characteristics. Hence why we must continuously reevaluate all existing organizations and deconstruct power hierarchies wherever they pop up. One could reasonably argue that anarchist collectives, community defense organizations, unions, and technical societies are “governments” in a weak sense, i.e. a sense that allows governments to be freely associated and without dominance. I obviously don’t oppose these “governments” on principle.

But when ordinary people talk about “government”…they really mean the official organs of the state. They’re thinking about men in uniforms with guns bearing down on them to force them to follow the law. (So my prior imprecision was justified.) I oppose this. Revolutionary violence, by contrast, is temporary, targeted, defensive, and bounded, and should in only be introduced as a last resort. (That being said…we are literally hundreds of years past the point where defensive violence against the capitalist class became a necessity. I.e. violence is the last resort, and it’s necessary because these capitalist fucks won’t leave us alone.)

Anarchists like me do not seek to establish a “revolutionary” state or even a permanent, hierarchical revolutionary vanguard (i.e., unlike other communists, anarchists are not vanguardists). We want the oppressed classes to free themselves from their power hierarchies, with bounded violence if needed (which it is). This is in stark opposition to the formation of a state.