Kerry,
Thanks for your post. One thing you said helps me clarify my position.
When you use the term "state-like," I would use the term "government." I
do not view stateless societies as governmentless societies. As you noted,
and here we agree, I do believe there needs to be a governmental structure
(obviously from my arguments, this structure would be decentralized,
loosely federated, based on an amalgamation of socialist democracy and
anarchosyndicalism). I just feel the state model (in all its variable
forms) is a coercive social institution that we can do with out. The
dilemma posited earlier--how does one square a centralized world state
coercing a multitude of cultures under one authority with social
democracy?--gets to the crux of the matter. I don't see how that is
possible (not unless the concept of "democracy" is mangled).
Andy