When you take the product of someone else's labour and deprive them of it, that is theft.

Tax is taken by coercion and violence. You have no choice over wether to pay. You have no control over what it is used for. All tax ultimately comes at the expense of the working class. If you have a choice over wether to pay or not, then it is not called "tax", it is called something else, because it is voluntary. If you withhold tax, for any reason what so ever, you go to prison. If you withhold a voluntary payment, you don't.

Inflation is also tax. It takes away the value of your labour. And it is caused by the government creating more money. Money that you are coerced into using. Land rent is privet tax. Tax can be stolen by privet landlords, churches, corporation as well as people calling themselves governments. What makes it tax is the element of coercion.

Please don't confuse reclaiming a common resource with theft. It is not, because it is and always has been rightfully yours. But depriving someone of the product of their labour is theft. Depriving someone of fair access to a common resource is a breach of their natural right. And please do not confuse "IP, copy right" violation as theft. It is not because you can't deprive anybody of their own good idea.

Regardless of how deserving they are, these public sector workers are paid for by coercion, by violence, by theft.

The "rights" of these public sector workers come at the expense of the natural rights of everybody.

I'm not against public services at all, but I am against coercion, violence and theft.

There were guns involved in this demo, that everybody refuse to see!
The guns are in the hands of the police who enforce tax laws.

Reply to anarchist
You say you are for public services, but even in a non Capitalist society, that can only be done by workers giving a share of the product of their labour, but without some form of compulsion some people will try to avoid Tax, you will find tax evasion and avoidance is across all groups of society. Criminals clearly want to evade tax, many trades still have groups that want cash-in-hand to avoid tax, it's not just the rich. It is likely because of selfless behaviour conditioned by more competitve strands in society(me me me). As a anarchist you should have risen above that selfless behaviour of not paying your fair share towards your community. I do agree that a lot of money is wasted on War, or by corporate thief. instigated by the present corrupt politicians, of which need to be got rid of. Also no guns where seen on this demo. The police were happy to let us demonstrate. I'm disappointed that you come across as a right-wing ideologue!

All humans are a product of our up bringing. Our memory of childhood forms the basis of our empathy with others. Our empathy with others is the basis or our morality as individuals and collectively. Children brought up in an environment of systematic bullying will learn to survive in that kind of environment. They wont see anything wrong with hitting people to get what they want.

If children are hit and told to shut up when they ask grown ups a question, if they are told that only grownups know what's good for them, if they are taught to blindly respect authority, what sort of adults are they going to grow up into? If you have any experience of the police, maybe at protests or prowling the streets in their sports cars, you will have seen what kind of adults these children grow up into. So I disagree that some people are just selfish. They are a product of their environment.

The state is based fundamentally on a monopoly on violence. Just by it's very existence, it creates a fundamentally unequal society. So nobodies wages should be paid by force against others, only ever by free choice. (so I'm sorry if you have to look for alternative employment) There is nothing criminal about refusing tax. Quite the contrary, taxation is a crime. And taxation funds the vast majority of crime in the world.

At the risk of being called right wing, I do think people should have the right to be selfish and unsociable if they want to, without threat of violence, so long as they don't bestow violence on others. As children we should learn that helping others is good for us in the long run. When people are forced to help others, against their free will, it builds resentment. And that is the basis of the right wing.

When we here people say things like: "scrounging asylum seekers, they only come here for the benefits", you are hearing a retaliation to the violence that the tax man has bestowed on people. Replace coercion by voluntarism, and no one will have any cause to resent others, but will still have cause to help others.

what goes around, comes around!

Reply to anarchist
You say our childhood forms the basis of our empathy with others, of which I agree it is!, but the majority of us have had a empathic upbringing, including myself and people |I know. Only a minority of people have had an unempathic upbringing coming from abusive homes! So what you are saying is that all the police come from abusive homes? I am aware that their are a few bad apples in the police, and when you give such people powers it also makes them much worst. I'm much more in favour of replacing the police with a part-time Poeples Militia.
As for your idea of the State, The British state is a level of administration that has more power then other levels of administrations like county councils. Also in the past the British state was like the Roman Empire, so you have a system thats been in place for over 2000 years! To replace it more or less over night will result in chaos, then people will want to restore order with a strong man, that has happen before in history! Do you want a Fascist dictator in charge? Are you one of them?

The State is not synonymous with Capitalism because the 'Roman State' existed before Capitalism came into being!
At the present time the state is the only organization that has the power to challenge the corporate power,
but it is at the same time riddled with corporate operatives who dish out high priced contracts to the corporate sector like ATOS! It needs to be cleaned up of those operatives to be replaced by true poeples reps, who will devolve power to other levels of local administration to provide alternative public space.
Also the state needs to stop subidizing the corporate sector by ending 'Unlimited liability' and taxing more corporate Capital. The state can release land from estates by a Land Tax. Also short term capital gains will be tax very heavy.

We've all been abused and psychologically damaged to some level or other, at some time or other. Counselling therapy of some sort benefits nearly everyone, wether it's formal or just talking to a friend. If you've been to a state school, you'd almost certainly have received at least a low level of abuse.

The state school system, takes up your most informative years and teaches you almost nothing of any consequence. It provides a national curriculum, which is more about putting you through tests, comparing you to your piers and making judgements over you than it is about teaching you anything, that actually matters. I spoke to a "citizenship" teacher last week. I mentioned "social contract theory". She said: "we don't do anything like that". "So what's it about then?", "just being a good citizen really!". If young active minds can't start learning to be critical about fundamental social control mechanisms, who can? Truth is that it is a skill the state would rather you didn't have. So do they teach the kids what fiat currency is?, what fractional reserve banking is? anything about what will be used to control almost every hour of every day of the rest of you life? of cause not. They just want to get you through the system, until you are old enough to become state/corporate tax slaves.

Police will almost certainly have been to government brain laundry, and will not have learnt to be critical of authority.
Maybe you don't have much experience of the state police. As the old saying goes: "there are no bad apples, just a rotten barrel." They are nice as pie, until they're in a gang, under orders. But the truth is the police have virtually no power, except in the minds of most of the public, who have virtually nothing to do with them. Which is the sinister bit; the people who give them the power are not the people who give them their orders, or even know much about what they do. If you are a fan of a peoples militia, that's what we already have, and we would have more of it if it wasn't for the state. How it works is we all look out for our neighbours. Simple and effective.

The county councils are part of the state, although the fluffy more customer friendly part. They exist on a state mandate. They follow government policy to the letter. It is the councils who conduit funding to the policy force, who enforce state policy, maintain the state monopoly on the initiation of force, the force it uses to feed all it's bloated fat-cat bureaucrats, and feed the military industrial complex.

Why we should want to replace the state, I don't know. The only arguments that I've heard for the state, are for what it is supposed to do, rather than what it actually dose:

It's supposed to foster equality, yet it creates privilege.
It's supposed to protect our freedom, yet it enslaves us with bureaucracy, and police.
It's supposed to protect our property, yet it steals about 80% of our earned wealth.
It's supposed to protect our environment, yet it is the biggest trasher of our environment.
It's supposed to protect our lives, yet it kills people.
It's supposed to protect us from monopolies, yet is the mother of all monopolies.

In fact everything that the state is supposed to do for us it doesn't. I think we could do better for ourselves if the state wasn't there at all. It may be a little Chaotic but a bit Chaos doesn't scare me at all! Probably because I don't have much privilege to lose.

Why would you think that because I don't see a valid reason for a state that I want to control a nation? Not logical! If anyone wants to control others, they should be the last people too be in charge anyway! It's general state propaganda that anyone opposed to statism is some how a control freak, when it is the statists that are hell bent of power.

What is capitalism? Controlling other people for profit of yourself, isn't it? You could narrow it down to; the control of the population through fiat currency derived by centralised fractional reserve banking. But either way, who dose more of it than the state?

The state is the only organisation that could challenge corporate power, - which only exists because of state privilege, and which controls the state. Ye rite!

But is't the state that holds the monopoly on violence, the force which subjugates some to privilege others. What ever you think, what ever you do, it doesn't really affect me, unless you use violence. So why should the people be afraid of the corporations, when they could squash them flat, it it wasn't for the state? Go to an anti-arms protest and watch the police line up to protect the arms factory. The people just wouldn't allow this sort of industry to exist if it wasn't for state protection. And the industry wouldn't exist if it wasn't sponsored by taxation.

So our land, which has been denied to us under the auspice of the state could be taxed of corporations by the state. To what ends? Are Whitehall bureaucrats going to grow food for us? The state could use very heavy and violent taxation, if it wants. But it want's to extract the maximum wealth over a period of time, not all at once and nothing to harvest next year. The state doesn't want to labour, it wants to milk the labour.

While ever we support statism for what is could possibly, theoretically do for us, if only....It will have the power, that we give it, to subjugate us, to the benefits of it's self and it's mates. Do we want to get the ruling class of our backs, or do we want to be the new ruling class. If we use state violence to do our bidding, that's what we will be.

I am disappointed that in your last comment you have used a lot more illogical inaccurates like 'people just wouldn't allow this sort of industry to exist if it wasn't for state protection', 99% of the general public either don't just care about this sort of issue, or some might say "arms factorys brings us jobs!! It is disappointly only a issue for activists. If the police did not protect the arms industry, they can easy afford corporate security thugs, who are much worst then the Police!
'It's supposed to protect our property, yet it steals about 80% of our earned wealth' The British state takes nowhere near that amount in tax! In the UK taxation is 39% of GDP. In Sweden it is 47.9% og GDP.
'I think we could do better for ourselves if the state wasn't there at all. It may be a little Chaotic but a bit Chaos doesn't scare me at all' Ancient Britons came to accept after a few decades Roman administration due to the benefits of that civilization that had laws and education. I'm sure people of that time would have been grateful of a civilization that brought a better life then what came before it. What came after it was the chaos of the 'Dark Ages, most people of that time had a short and nasty life, you would be very luckly if you had your 30th birthday!! We should be working together to build a world of even better administration then what we have had in the past and what we had got in the present!