How do you reconcile Anarchists protesting against cuts in State-provided and tax-funded services, with Anarchist opposition to the very principle of the State?

Sensible replies only please

It's not the only reason, but the cuts illustrate the discrepancy between the ostensible communal purpose of the state and its real function, which is to operate in sectional class interests...and guess which class. We expose their lies and undermine their propaganda.

"....the government we have gives freedome and livelihood to the Gentry, to have abundance, and to lock up Treasures of the Earth from the poor, so that rich men may have chests full of Gold and Silver, and houses full of Corn and Goods to look upon; and the poor that works to get it, can hardly live, and if they cannot work like Slaves, then they must starve......and yet you say this is a righteous government, but surely it is no other than self-ishness, which is the great Red Dragon, the Murtherer.

"England is a Prison; the variety of subtilties in the Laws preserved by the Sword, are bolts, bars, and doors of the prison; the Lawyers are Jaylors, and poor men are the prisoners; for let a man fall into the hands of any from the Bailiffe to the Judge, and he is either undone, or wearie of his life."

Gerrard Winstanley A New-yeers Gift for the Parliament and Armie 1650

NOTHING NEW THERE, THEN

"Oh thou Powers of England , though thou hast promised to make this People a Free People, yet thou hast so handled the matter, through thy self-seeking humour, That thou hast wrapped us up more in bondage, and oppression lies heavier upon us;.......confounding all sorts of people by they Government of doing and undoing."

Gerrard Winstanley & 14 others TheTrue Levellers Standard Advanced - April, 1649

Short answer: anarchists aren't just anti-state, we're against all forms of inequality and oppression, including the capitalist system as a whole. So we're not about to cheer on the tories making changes that'll worsen our living standards in order to stabilise capitalism.
Long answer:
How anarchists understand the cuts: Anarchists understand the cuts not as a failure of Capitalism, or as Capitalism having gone too far, but as one logical outcome of a profit-driven economy, because of the nature of the class system it creates. It has created a class of people who ripped us off to get where they are, and they are now rubbing our faces in it, supported by a state which exists essentially to protect their interests.

The cuts are therefore a calculated ideological attack on the working class at the point where the ruling class otherwise faces financial crisis. They are not a necessity for society as a whole. Because of this, it is pointless to appeal to the state to cease the attack and stop bailing out the bankers instead of punishing us.

Why anarchists organise against the cuts: Our immediate aim is exactly the same as everyone’s: to stop this attack on our economic well-being. As we see it, what little we have as a class, we have won through struggle in previous generations. Now the state is strong enough to take it back again. So anarchists are part of the working class as it defends what it has.

But anarchists don’t argue for a benevolent state, for state-ownership of industry and services. This is where we differ from the trades union leadership and most of the Left. We think we need to go further as a class, to achieve political freedom as well as economic equality. So whilst we are defending what we have, we are also attacking the state, threatening its legitimacy and suggesting to people that we would be better off without it.

Under Thatcherism, as under repressive and uncaring regimes elsewhere and before it, the working class had to look after itself. It established voluntarily what it needed when things got really tough, out of mutual solidarity. So, in the 1980s, strike support groups were set up which made major industrial disputes sustainable. In areas of high unemployment, claimants unions emerged. Where racial minorities were marginalised in inner city ghettos, people gave their time freely to save their youth from self-destruction. In places where women experienced violence, rape crisis centres and refuges were set up. We did these things because no one did it for us.

The re-election of Labour initially brought state funding for some of these projects and their workers got qualifications and wages – not a bad thing in itself. But New Labour started eroding the autonomy of radical projects. Grants were cut but Lottery funding – the great sop – was denied to ‘political’ projects. And what remains of the professionalised voluntary sector is now being demolished by the ConDems.

So this is about us, starting again from scratch, yet again, and with nothing. That’s why anarchists don’t trust state provision: what it gives with one hand, it can take back with the other. That is why we don’t see a contradiction between defending state provision and opposing the state. We all have short-term needs and have to fight to get them met however we can. The process of fighting gives us strength and confidence but also reminds us that all we have is one another. Let’s make the most we can of that fact.

Here's an article that was printed in Freedom on that very question!

Against cuts, against the state

The red and black flags flying at the big anti-cuts demo on March 26th have prompted that question again. Why are anarchists – who are against the state – taking to the streets against cuts in public spending and state provision? I’ve been hearing this from potentially sympathetic folk, so it’s a question worth answering again.

Tories, New Labourites and others moot the ‘freedom’ of the ‘open’ market against the bureaucratic state, but class struggle anarchists regard both as sources of exploitation. The market is expanding into every area of life with an authority far more oppressive than any old-fashioned autocracy. The ruling classes want us to work more for less, to tug our forelocks and obey. Wages stagnate or go down, and we face longer working hours, fewer liberties and employment rights, less job security or security of any kind. This insecurity has nothing to do with freedom, and everything to do with labour discipline. As our conditions get worse, their profits soar.

By refusing to submit to austerity we resist the attack of state and capital on our living standards. When the public sector is cut and privatised, we face an enclosure of resources that were formerly held in common. ‘Enclosure’ was originally used to describe the private take-over of common land in the earlier years of capitalism, yet enclosures happen continuously as the ruling classes strive to increase profits and roll back past working class victories.

Of course, nowadays we’re not defending grazing rights for our pigs on ye olde commons but services and resources badly managed by the state. Yet there’s a rich history of people opposing cutbacks and challenging the way these resources are controlled – for example, hospital occupations in the 70s and 80s such as Hounslow and the South London Hospital for Women. Staff and local residents took over hospitals slated for closure. The occupations became centres for general resistance, with debate and action on what healthcare could look like in a human community based on freedom and cooperation. There were also campaigns waged by benefit claimants to counter cuts in welfare, resist state snoopers and disrupt earlier versions of workfare. More recently, student occupations have featured ‘teach-ins’ with a curriculum based on struggle and self-education.

But too often anti-cuts activism has been lumbered with a dour tradition of dullness and worthiness. Many of us have sat far too often in draughty halls listening to droning lefties and trade union officials. Or stood in front of town halls listening to the same, wondering why we’re there. In the end we know it’s because we’re dealing with life-and-death questions: health, education, housing, social welfare. But why did action on these issues have to be so devoid of imagination? Where was the combativeness, spirit, confrontation of the root problem?

Then the student and EMA demonstrations last year moved things in a much more vibrant direction, with initiatives like Arts Against the Cuts or Queer Resistance springing up. And now we’re occupying town halls and taking the streets. During last December’s student demo when the Treasury was attacked, schoolgirls chanted ‘we want our money’ rather than ‘tax the rich’. Perhaps that partly expresses our approach, though ultimately we want much more than money. We aim to reclaim social wealth, and we don’t trust politicians to do it for us.
-- LM

The state as social provider came into being as part of the concessions given for incorporating working class interests into the restructuring of capitalism in the post war period. These gains not only have enabled capitalism to manage, through the state, the capacity to defuse class conflict - welfare, healthcare, education - but also has ensured a standard of living that many depend on as a defence to the extremities of the market.

Defending vital services that we all depend on can ensure we build a class confident movement that also poses the questions of going further than just what we have and looking how things can be better. A smaller state does not ensure more freedom, as control, management and work discipline is inherent in capitalism. Only an understanding of the process of exploitation and its interrelationship between capitalism and the state can we have a clear idea of what is happening and how we define our opposition to it.

Anarchists are against work exploitation, and in times when we do not have the capacity to abolish work, the struggles - like those that gave birth to to mayday, the struggle for an 8 hour day - will always be necessary to improve in the present our quality of life.