“Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men.”

We Anarchists are our own worst enemy. Many texts show the tendency we Anarchists have to turn on each other at a whim, rather than overcoming our economic vernacular in order to combat our enemies. What is less understood is that being an Anarchist comes with great responsibility. Anarchists would make great statists.

In both past and present, great leaders, great statists, have been those politicians who knew how to play the game. They manipulated their way to power and upon achieving it, they would use it for their own purposes. They were and are still always bad men. However, whenever that statists greed satisfied the needs of a nation, they were revered as great men. These were your Abraham Lincolns, Julius Caesars and to some extent, the Napoleons.

On the other hand, the monstrous men, the evil men, the failures are remarkably the ones that inspire movements such as Anarchism. These evil men, these failures, were the statists that miscalculated their own system. The Hitlers, Nixons and the Louis XVIs of this world did not understand the rules and consequently failed the game.

Anarchists are always in danger of becoming one of the the Lincoln’s, Caesars and the Napoleans, because we understand politics. We know our enemy. We understand the intricacies of governments and hierarchies in whatever form. We know how the systems work. We have to, or we wouldn’t be Anarchists. Ultimately, in order to become an Anarchist, we learn the rules of the game, how to play the game and thus avoid the game entirely. It is our disdain for the game that makes us who we are.

Imagine the consequences of an individual, formerly an Anarchist, who decides, “To hell with Anarchy, I’d rather be at the top.” There is no doubt they would succeed in such an endeavour. There is no politician, with the exception of the rare Ron Paul, that could politically outplay a former Anarchist. The result would equal a political chess game between a small child and a grand master.

State-participation is a strategy that will not reform a statist government into anything more fair and just. Any participation in matters of the state risks exposing Anarchists to the corrupting influence of power, turning them into very competent statists. The promise of change is merely a trap. Once you are involved with the state, you are compromised, tangible and statist.