We should take seriously Charles Tilly's observation that gangs and states belong on the same continuum. Whatever their ultimate purpose or aims, this continuity and the resemblances it suggests are, I think, better understood by both gangsters and cops than either would like to admit. It has a special significance, however, for insurgent social movements. Insurgents may be forced to operate outside the law yet must resist the tendency to drift toward venal criminal enterprises. Similarly, they may have to use coercion and violence to achieve their aims yet must avoid reproducing the dynamics of the state. Insurgent groups may not be able to renounce violence without also surrendering their political objectives; but equally, to preserve their liberatory politics, they cannot allow violence to become their central feature. The challenge for the revolutionary left for any liberatory movement is to break with the form of the criminal state, to establish our politics on an entirely new basis.

Too often on the left, debates about violence are simply debates about tactics, considered either from a moral or a pragmatic perspective. Pacifists renounce violence on principle; liberals denounce it hypocritically; and militants justify it on practical terms. The popularity of these various positions has tended to ebb and flow, but the debate itself is in stalemate. None of the arguments produced by any side seem likely to affect the position of the others, in part because they address themselves to different questions. The pacifist is mainly concerned with morality, the liberal with legality, and the militant with efficacy. With this debate always in the foreground, what receives less consideration is the question of how we organize violence: What types of groups engage in it? What norms govern it?

— Gang Politics by Kristian Williams (Page 117)