Our Enemy, the State: Including "on Doing the Right Thing"

Nock, Albert J.

ISBN 10: 0914156012 / ISBN 13: 9780914156017

Published by Free Life Editions, New York, 1973

About this Item

Edges Bumped, No Marks; 8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾".

Seller Inventory # 061617

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Our Enemy, the State: Including "on Doing the Right Thing"
• Publisher: Free Life Editions, New York
• Publication Date: 1973
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0914156012
• ISBN 13: 9780914156017
• Binding: Softcover
• Condition: Good

About this title

Synopsis

This 1935 classic sees the development of the modern state as the struggle between state power and social power, for "If we look beneath the surface of our public affairs, we can discern one fundamental fact, namely: a great redistribution of power between society and the State." Includes the essay "On Doing the Right Thing."

"Nock's Our Enemy, the State is a great and seminal work, in which Nock, in his justly renown style, introduces the vital libertarian concepts of 'State power' and 'Social power,' and applies them to American history. 'Social power' is people freely creating and voluntarily exchanging and interacting, and is responsible for Western prosperity and civilization. 'State power' is the age-old process by which force and theft combine to cripple and confiscate the fruits of Social power. Nowhere can the reader find a clearer or more forceful portrayal of the libertarian position." -- Murray Rothbard

About the Author

Albert Jay Nock was born on October 13, 1870, on a far simpler day than that on which he died: August 14, 1945, at the end of the greatest holocaust ever perpetrated on mankind by man and the State. The young Nock studied the Classics, entered the Episcopalian priesthood, married and had two sons. But at the age of forty he left the active ministry, moved to New York, and began a career as a writer and editor. Steeping himself in the Classical Liberal tradition of Jefferson, Thoreau, Artemus Ward and Hebert Spencer, he soon found work as a magazine editor, and then founded his own publication, The Freeman. Over the next twenty-five years Nock contributed to numerous publications, published over a dozen books, and counted among his friends the likes of H.L. Mencken and Frank Chodorov. A "tory anarchist" out of step with the times, deeply disillusioned with a government that lead the country into war, depression, and again war, all the while aggrandizing ever more power to itself, Nock died deeply pessimistic about the survival of liberty. He hoped that the flame would be kept alive by a "libertarian Remnant," a remnant Our Enemy, the State has helped to foster.