Haven't you been paying attention? We're living in a police state.

Isn't that anarchy of a sort?

Maybe of a very weak sort, if you define anarchy as "lawlessness." Maybe they're two sides of the same coin.

But to me, you can't have a police state without a state, or laws to enforce, or a way for the state to coerce involuntary obedience to those laws (which is what police are theoretically for.) All of these things seem fundamentally non-anarchist in principle.

I think of police states as authoritarian. Maybe there could be a democratic police state. But that would be odd.

Anyway, with anarchism there are voluntary associations. In free-market anarchism, there are private services for defense and contract enforcement. But if wealth is concentrated, such services that serve the wealthy will be far more powerful than those who serve the poor.

In effect, they will be "the police". And so we would have an authoritarian police state.

The police very definitely work for a power structure. Not very anarchic in my book.