James A. Donald wrote:
If, however, you decline to pay taxes, men with guns will attack you.
That is the difference between private power and government power.
But in most places at most times the state is run at least partly by and for the rich and the owners of property and supports and privileges their continuing private power.
And there are circumstances where private individuals send men with guns to attack you if you cross them. Quite a lot of them, from the feudal barons, to drug-dealers in modern cities, to just about anywhere out of easy reach of the state's police.
And there are places where corporations do that as well. Even well-run respectable British or American corporations that have annual reports and shareholder's meetings.
State power and private power are different but not distinct, and everywhere more or less mixed up with each other and involved with each other, and in most places the same sorts of people have both. Economic power is a kind of political power.
