This is why the writings of Tolstoy, Reclus and Kropotkin still have contemporary relevance. His attitude to anarchism is one of heads I win, tails you lose. On the other hand he also argues that societies could not exist anyway without some form of centralized government. The state, in any case, is a recent historical phenomena, and in its modern nation-state form has only existed for a few hundred years. Human communities have long existed without central or coercive authority.
Complex systems exist in nature -without there being any controlling mechanism.
Indeed, many global theorists nowadays are beginning to contemplate libertarian social vistas that become possible in an age of computer technology. But at least Miller wants to rescue anarchism from the dustbin of history-to help us to curb abuses of power, and to keep alive the possibilities of free social relationships. Such a social domain is always in a sense present, imminent in contemporary society, co-existing with the state. For Landauer, as for Colin Ward, anarchy, therefore, is not something that only existed long ago before the rise of the state, or exists now only among people like the Nharo or Piaroa living at the margins of capitalism. It is always in existence-albeit often buried and unrecognized beneath the weight of capitalism and the state.