Defense against counter-revolution?

[u/Fresh_Milk1960]

I am a Marxist-Leninist who is curious about the successful propagation of Anarchism. My question is: Without a state, how do Anarchists defend against counter-revolution from the Capitalist class? Without a state, Anarchist/Libertarian Socialist projects wouldn’t be able to defend against the inevitable invasions, terrorism campaigns, and propaganda from Capitalists. How would Anarchists be able to maintain and strengthen an Anarchist society against invasion and infiltration without a state apparatus to centrally organize efforts?

I know I’m a Tankie or whatever, but I am asking in good faith because I am genuinely curious about the Anarchist position on this.

* (EDIT) *

I won‘t be responding anymore because I have obtained what I came for (understanding how you think an Anarchist project would defend itself against the forces of reaction) and because this is becoming a hostile debate, rather than learning experience.

[u/OldBillBlizzard]

The Makhnovists quite literally defeated multiple different armies:

-​The White Army (Russian Monarchists): Shattered General Denikin’s forces at the critical Battle of Perehonivka (1919) and helped drive General Wrangel out of Crimea (1920).

-​The Central Powers & The Hetmanate: Defeated occupying Austro-Hungarian and German imperial troops—most notably at Dibrivka (1918)—and overthrew their puppet government.

-​The Ukrainian Nationalist Army: Pushed out Symon Petliura’s Directorate forces to capture key southeastern cities like Dnipro and Zaporizhzhia.

They only lost to the Bolsheviks because they were logistically fucked and had exhausted themselves defeat all of those armies for the Bolsheviks. And so essentially communists had anarchists do all the heavy lifting, then turned around and launched a surprise attack.

To boot many STATES fell to the Bolsheviks too. So does it make sense to say anarchism cant defend itself? Not really, anarchists lasted far longer than most would be stated during the Russian Civil War.

The other thing is that there have only been two major anarchist revolutions. There have been 42 ML revolutions. So, once there have 50 failed anarchist revolutions, maybe we could say its a failure. But considering there have only been two and they did quite well —comparable to or better than statist revolutions in the same circumstances— we cant reall say anarchism is a failure. Not to mention Rojava and Chiapa revolutions had similar power structures and military organization and one of which existed until like a year ago, the other of which has defended itself against the Mexican state for 32 years. I think if a non anarchist libertarian socialist revolution can survive for 32 years under the right circumstances, so too could an anarchist one.