This is mostly a serious question. Also, not for the tankies/MLs. I already know what your answer to that question is. I may not always agree with you on everything, but you do have an answer that if the conditions became right, could actually work.
No, this is for the type of anarchist completely against the wall, gulags, seemingly any amount of getting hands dirty. What is the solution to those types of people? There are so many of them in the US, a lot of which are heavily armed, that they could easily topple a socialist system, and even if they didn't do that, their existence would be incompatible with any marginalized group living their lives, since they love to harass them at best, outright murder them at worse. So what's the solution? Anarchists often seem to avoid this, seemingly believing that if there was a socialist or communist society, they would just say "aw shucks, guess I was wrong about that. Guess I'll no longer be racist or xenophobic!"
So am I missing something, what's the answer?
The collapse of capitalism is inevitable, it's a wholly unsustainable mode of production. I guess the options become a reversion to some sort of less centralized feudal system or organized resistance to the preservation of that status quo on a smaller scale and the eventual development of socialism. The military will play a big role in the initial footing we have during that struggle, but you're right about it not having sticking power once conflict disrupts its tendrilous supply chains.
I just thought of a better, more concise way to express it.
MLs are constantly asking "how are you going to supply tank divisions when the White Army invades".
This is my counter: how does the neo-White Army re-establish control? How do they keep from getting bogged down in a costly and marginally beneficial guerrilla war? I don't need to defeat them, I just have make it prohibitively expensive to subjugate my area.
The reactionaries sustain their power by exploiting others. Liberate yourself (whether from debt, from housing and food insecurity, or from literal confinement), and then help others liberate themselves. That's the entire strategy, in brief. Self-sufficient populations won't take up arms in aggression against you, or your collective or your union or your co-op or your party or your commune.
KIS and Uncle Ho would like to have a word
Those were the cases of nation-states in the process of escaping colonialism.
You do have a point, but I'd argue that there was a cost-benefit analysis to slaughtering millions of people in Korea and Vietnam.
In a core imperialist nation, the computation would be different, because instead of killing people in some far-off land (potential trading partner), a government or faction would be killing their own countrymen, harming their own economy and society.