You talked about the breakdown of society in your first sentence, and then the collapse of states in the second. Of course it's in the interests of states to conflate the two. But as states rise and fall, the people suffer and endure, and wherever there is disorder, there are still people, and wherever there is discontinuity of rulership, there is continuity of family, culture, and tradition. Revolutions and conquest can sweep time and time again over the people, but they persist. There are still folk cultural beliefs in places like Iraq, where the people have been conquered and reconquered time and time again, states failing, states rising like waves, that have a murky line of continuity back to Babylon and before.

It is true that a state cannot exist without asserting its exclusive right to violent means, but it is pure propaganda that society fails without a state. It is certainly true that wherever states fail, others come like vultures to pick apart the corpse. States, being supremely violent entities with the assent of billions behind them, make their own reality true. It is not the absence of a state that brings the breakdown of society, but the competition between states to fill power vacuums: would be warlords who would aim to be the next state. It is a ransom: submit to a ruler or we will inflict suffering on you. Choose one oppressor, or be sieged by many.