This difficulty can be vividly illustrated by imagining an extreme case, such as existence in a totalitarian society, where all means of production are controlled by the state. To refuse to cooperate with the state, as a pure retreatist approach demands, would mean starvation—and hence the loss of all remaining objective values, including the possibility of eventually escaping to freedom. As this example demonstrates, non-association with the state cannot properly be invoked as a universal principle of action, although to avoid unnecessary entanglements with statist programs may be a preferable strategy in most situations.

Another drawback is that retreatism fails to address the problem of communicating the idea of freedom to society at large. Hence the withdrawal of sanction by a few retreatists will not precipitate the collapse of statism, since others are left behind to "take up the slack" by supporting the statist régime. Retreatism and direct political action suffer a common drawback: neither achieves a widespread popular understanding of freedom. Unless this problem is overcome, as we have already seen, our mixed-economy system will tend to devolve toward totalitarianism (pp. 5.4:50-99).

The main value of retreatist philosophy is that it reminds us that we must be vigilant of our relationships with the interventionist state. Even though we are sometimes obliged to associate with that state in order to protect our rational self-interest, we must constantly weigh the consequences, seeking to determine in each new situation whether we may be sacrificing the value of freedom in favor of a lesser objective value.

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