My understanding of anarchism is the goal of eliminating government
The finer details will always change depending who you ask, but yes, it’s generally either the elimination of government, or of all ‘unjust hierarchies’ (which includes state government).
As someone else mentioned, ideological anarchists tend to be socialists, and in this context ‘anarchism’ is assumed to be that socialist strain, but not everyone calling themselves an anarchist is also a socialist. It’s a broad school of thought.
That won’t eliminate an economic system that originated organically.
Capitalism isn’t organic. I can’t think of a case where it has developed outside of a revolution (like the anti-monarchist revolutions) and/or imperial suppression. It requires the enclosure of the commons and development of private property security forces like a police, neither of those are an organic phenomenon.
If anything, I would assume anarchism is more organic, since it could be found in many hunter-gatherer gift economies. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primitive_communism#Example_societies
Now, I’m personally not convinced that this makes anarchism appropriate for our industrial/post-industrial societies, but it’s not inorganic.







I wouldn’t even call it purity testing, they’re just testing. I’ve seen obsession over purity taken to a counterproductive extent, and I maintain that it can be a problem when dealing with a complex unideal reality, but what BadEmpanada is talking about here is fine. That’s a healthy level of testing, and important in preventing recuperation or sanewashing. Democrats are a bourgeois-controlled party and don’t share our class interests.
To give an example of the kind that is counterproductive, I know of a (small) socialist organisation in my country which has been banned from worker strikes after counterprotesting one, insisting that since industrial unions are bureaucratic, the workers should all just boycott the strike and make their own union. This group claims all other socialist organisations are impure and pseudo-leftist whenever they compromise with material reality and present conditions.
And, obviously, that’s a whole other world of purity testing to what you’re talking about. The problems are when it reaches no-true-Scotsman levels.