This book, deservedly, is a classic. Although relatively short, it is chock-full of insights -- many of which anticipate the important work decades later by F.A. Hayek. Spencer's passion for freedom, and his understanding of the nature of politicized and depoliticized societies, was deep. This is an inspiring work.

I thoroughly enjoyed this comprehensive analysis of the state and the historical context in which Nock reviews its impact on society.

This is a must-read for anyone who loves freedom!

Nock's tight little volume provides an enormous clue into the true origins of libertarianism and socialism, as well as the true basic meta-political issue at the root of any coherent political economic discussion.

Nock exposes that the universal "meta-political" issue is the equal-freedom of a civil society versus the "enstated" political power and privilege that corrupts civil society into a tyrannical caricature of civil society. Combine Nock's insight with Benjamin Tucker's Proudhon and you will rediscover the early 19th Century reality that the first libertarians were for social power of a free society versus the State backed prerogatives of unjust political power, privilege, monopoly and "enstated" class. The earliest Socialists were the first Libertarians, one and the same anti-statist anarchists and pro-society, anti-privilege communitarians.

Nock holds forth not only as the bridge between 19th century libertarians, socialists, anarchists, Georgist classical liberals and modern libertarians/progressives, but also as the "Geo-libertarian" modern middle ground between right-wing propertarian libertarians (Rothbard/Nozick/Randists/Rockwell/Hoppe) and left-wing libertarians such as Chomsky.

Without Nock's insight no modern reader can appreciate the modern ironic oxymoron of pro-statist "socialisms" such as Marxism. Nock stands for replacing unjust political power and privilege with equal-freedom. Nock's "minarchism" has a definite practical limitation that would bind any institutionalized, "enstated" formalized cooperatively delegated state action to the protection of "equal freedom." Nock's prescription for minarchistic libertarianism is probably one of the clearer, more practical, more concise and most justifiable versions you're likely to ever come across.

Nock's allegiance to Georgist Land Rent reforms, eg., the Single Tax (a "tax" in name only, not in substance) , is also one of the only genuine practical clues the modern reader will find with respect to a libertarian replacing taxation of productive labor/industry with user fees levied upon "enstated" monopolistic privileges. The concept is to unburden rights-protected behaviour by shifting responsibility for financing public goods to the recipients of state licenced privileges which come at the expense of other's equal freedoms. This principle would institutionalize a check on the growth of monopolistic state backed power and privilege with a feed-back loop for protection of equal freedom rights.

Nock's land position integrates the Liberal/anarchist/socialist tradition of Labor earned rights to property, based on equally free access to natural resource means of production. This stands opposed to latter day monopolist privilege property "enstated" forms of propertarian libertarianism viz., the Rothbard/Rand/Rockwell/Hoppe wing.

Nock's position upholds Lockean/Jeffersonian/Painist *usufruct* land holding combined with labor earned property as a matter of rightful equal-liberty as opposed to "enstated" land entitlements for the purpose of extorting economic "rendings" of others' fruits of labor. Land holding for productive use is righteous providing it is not extended so far as to become an institution that infringes the equal freedom of others to independently support themselves. When land holding extends beyond equal freedom to the point of becoming a state backed extortion privilege, then some sort of compensatory licence fee cum rebate policy system is due. Without a public fee-claim on land rent, there is no feed back check for rationalizing land holding in proportion to productive use. When no penalty licence fees correspond with privatization of the commonwealth, no productive responsibility attaches to licence and no limit checks licence's infringement of equal-liberty.

While land rent monopoly licence fees are only one source of justifiable minarchist funding revenue, it is a major one. Land rent monopoly generally works "hand in glove" with economic rent flows of monetary credit monopoly privilege. For more on the money monopoly, see Robert DeFremery's "Rights & Privileges" and Steven Zarlenga's "The Lost Science Of Money." Reforming the money monopoly is yet another huge hidden source of practical financing revenue for minarchist institutions.

See B.J. Tucker's "Instead Of A Book" for more about how the first libertarians were the first French Socialists, (anti-State Socialists) both in name and philosophically. This will clue you into why Proudhon's "Property Is Theft" is traceable to state privileged acquistion of property and monopolization of opportunity. See also Harold Kyriazi's "Libertarian Party Out To Sea Over Land" for an updated modern Geo-libertarian critique of propertarian libertarians who support state backed land rent taking privilege instead of equal freedom to access the earth for independent self support and labor earned property acquisition.

Nock holds the middle of the road Georgist libertarian, minarchist position that *property rights* must be held in a reciprocal, interdependent co-equal balance with *opportunity rights.* This position also forms the foundation for justifying the practical, definite minarchist libertarian position as opposed to anarcho-capitalist libertarianisms and Nozick's vaguer minarchisms. Several kinds of monopolies are bound to occur in the course of developing settled civilization which drives the formalization of institutionalized ways to manage such monopolies for mutual benefit to respect equal freedom. The only other alternatives are state backed/regulation of privatizing feudalization of inevitable monopolies or Marxian ueber-statist monopolization of everything, even non-inevitable monopoly conditions/systems/resources.

Another interesting aspect of Nock is that he can hardly be criticized as a statist egalitarian because he is well aware of differences between people. (See his "Remnant" monograph.) He is yet another call for the propertarian libertarian wing to drop their broad brush of all things egalitarian "equated" as evil. Equality of wealth, outcomes should not be "package-dealed" with equality of civil freedoms and equal opportunity access to natural resources (unmade by human labor).

This classic little book has changed my entire way of thinking about politics. Nock defines the state as an anti-social mechanism for executing the "political means" i.e. taking from one pocket and putting it into another. He traces this back to the founding of our republic and before. Published in 1935, the book was written at an interesting time when fascism and communism were rising, while FDR was domestically pushing economic fascism and using the political means to the fullest.

"Our Enemy, the State" is witty, often eloquently written, and accessible to the lay reader. Take your time and let it sink in. Read the footnotes too! Despite its sad commentary on humanity and the future of our society, one finds the thesis hard to dispute (in Nock's time, the state stole 1/3 of our money; now it steals over half). It's fitting that the introduction is written by a minister. To paraphrase Chesterton, original sin is the easiest Christian doctrine to prove.

One thing you'll see in the book often, without explanation, are complaints against land-tenure. As I understand it, this is based on the teaching of some classical liberals and libertarians (aka. the "land use" school) that monopoly land grants by the state are another form of the political means, as they are invariably given to favored constituencies and individuals (many of America's founding fathers received them). These grants are then exploited by charging some form of rent to the unconnected non-recipients. "Land use" proponents argue that the earth is owned in common by all mankind. The "owner" simply owns improvements to the land such as factories, homes, and income, and there should be community user fees levied on the owner that deny the use of that land to others (These fees are not the same as property taxes that tax improvements and collect revenues for public education. In fact, all taxes on improvements aka. productivity - income, capital gains, estate, etc - are considered a form of robbery).

In my previous review, I came down hard on Nock's use of Progessive, "Beardian" history. Although I stand by my comments, I failed to mention what was really significant about this work, viz. Nock's distinction between the "state" and "government." In Nock's view, "government" can only be arrived at through the form of Thomas Jefferson's decentralized system of "ward" republicanism. What makes this especially significant is that Nock is virtually alone among modern radical, consistent natural rights libertarians in his advocacy of government. Basically, Nock is one of the few consistent minarchists in history. This makes this work indepensible for any radical libertarian who sees grave inconsistencies in anarcho-capitalist theory. If one is truly interested in minarchistic theory, I would also recommend a careful study of "Cato's Letters," the writings of Thomas Jefferson, the "Political Writings" of Richard Price(published by Cambridge U. Press), as well as any of the works of John Taylor of Caroline.

As I sat at a traffic light and observed another motorist talking on a cell phone, I recalled Albert Jay Nock's observations in "Snoring as a Fine Art." Like the English novelists Kingsley Amis and Evelyn Waugh, Nock thought that most of the world's problems were caused by people who were too busy, and that the world be a better place if there were less meddling, less anxious do-gooding, and more sleeping, preferably a European siesta after lunch.

John Henry Newman foresaw the modern mentality which knows the price of everything but the value of nothing. Our untraditional "busy-ness" robs us of the introspection and philosophic habit of mind which Newman thought was the purpose of education. Now the cell phones keep us from even one minute of reflection. For once I agreed with Emerson: "Things are in the saddle, and ride mankind."

Nock lived in the progressive era of the early 20th century, the era of Wilson and FDR, whose Leftist militarism, interventionism, and Puritanism were enough to make any man bitter. In these essays he provided what his collectivist age needed -- a healthy dose of skepticism and individualism. Although I agree with Henry Regnery that Nock advanced the conservatism of his time, many of his ideas now look less like conservatism and more like prescriptions for loneliness and isolation. Nowhere did I see a defense of the social group, which has always been the root of conservatism.

His welcome comments in favor of civilization and the humane life contradict his comments in favor of liberty and equality without limitation. What Nock calls radicalism and anarchism do not lead to the humane life or to civilization. Although he quotes Burke, he overlooks Burke's emphasis on ordered liberty. Nock's view that the state is the enemy is a libertarian, rather than a conservative, opinion. Where Nock spends a great deal of time upset at the world, conservatives tend to accept things as they are, with an eye to the smaller satisfactions of limited freedom in a fallible world, a world which often thwarts human desire and ambition. Nock seems to have overlooked the self-evident truth that mankind does not naturally lean toward the angelic, a failing which, according to Alexander Hamilton, makes government necessary in the first place.

There is more than a little Marxism in Nock's attempt to separate Americans into clear categories of upper, middle, and low, and to define them in reference to the idea of exploitation. His desire for equality, moreover, contradicts his desire for a Remnant. On the one hand, he ascribes to the critic the holy vocation of encouraging the Remnant; on the other, he describes himself as superfluous.

Thus there is a mercurial quality to Nock's essays, a curious combination of exaggeration, despair, and an optimism which seems forced and ideal rather than grounded in everyday life. It may be that Nock attained some peace late in life, that he was able to accept men as they are. But that acceptance is the exception rather than the norm in his writing, and usually gives way to an unsatisfying ambivalence.

Albert Jay Nock was perhaps one of the only three truly enduring bellettrists 20th century American letters yielded up. He deployed a truly lyric and insinuating prose style of uncommon grace and oddly puckish wit, and it served to unfurl one of the rarest of American minds - a shamelessly recalcitrant individualist whose intellectual evolution never obstructed or abrogated the core of the man: that the individual deserved his long-stolen propers; that the lowest common denominator should be tolerated but not consecrated or canonised; and, above all, that the State was an organism worthy of that which its crimes ever deserves: the fear and loathing of any and every man and woman who cares a whack about his or her fellows. To read him is a singular joy. And you will find no more sensible or beautifully-balanced introduction to the man and his singularity of writing than in this volume which Mr. Hamilton has composed with uncommon brilliance.

This is a wonderful collection of some of Nock's finest essays. It offers a great insight into one of the most brilliant (and overlooked) minds of the 20th century. He is a very gifted writer and a truly dedicated lover of liberty. If you enjoyed "Our Enemy The State" you will surely cherish this book.

Those hoping for an attack on mob rule and Andrew Jackson will be sorely disappointed; this 'treatise on Jacksonian democracy' is hardly a commentary on the current events of Cooper's age, and does not even mention Jackson. Rather, Cooper, spends more time discussing the merits of proper pronounciation than slavery! Further, for a polemic that greatly hurt its writer's reputation, the book is pretty weak and tame.

First published in 1838, The American Democrat is a wide-ranging series of essays, many of them couched in theoretical terms, about the historical and cultural bases of American democracy, and an informed critique of many aspects of American politics, society, and culture in the 1830s.. Cooper wrote the book shortly after returning to Jacksonian America after a seven-year sojourn in Europe, and it reflects much of his discontent with what he found. As a cogent and informed commentary on 19th Century America it belongs with a book with which it has often been compared -- Toqueville's Democracy in America.

Whereas, Alexis de Tocqueville offers his perspective on America as an outside observer, the literary genius James Fenimore Cooper offers his assessment of culture, politics and society in 19th century America. He doesn't hold democracy to be sacrosanct like we do today, but rather like any other system of government with its advantages and disadvantages. His look at the nature of liberty and its relation with equality is particularly intriguing.

He is cognizant of the dangers posed to American self-government, which values legal equality. Equality, is a virtue, only insofar as it pertains to equal rights and equality before the law. Any effort at establishing equality of outcome is tantamount to tyranny and opposed to liberty. Cooper illustrates the precarious relationship between liberty and equality. Unless, tradition, custom, the rule of law and the Constitution are revered and upheld- the American Polity could easily collapse into majoritarian tyranny under a demagogue.

One gains an appreciation of the system of government established by the American founding fathers after reading this book... They established a constitutionally-limited federal republic, with limits not only on the power of government, but with limits placed on the power of majority rule, so as to limit the fundamental role of government to protecting the rights of its citizens. This constitutional republic sought to balance out monarchial, democratic, and aristocratic elements...

On the surface, MEMOIRS OF SUPERFLUOUS MAN, is an often charming, occasionally misanthropic remembrance of a vanished America by a self-admitted nearly vanished American type. Deploying a literary strategy similar to Henry Adams' THE EDUCATION OF HENRY ADAMS, Nock identifies himself, his beliefs, his elite classical education as superfluous in modern day America (circa 1900 to 1943). But the crucial difference between Nock and Adams is how they qualify themselves as superfluous. Adams is a man of subtle and ironic self-awarness who recognizes that he and the elite class he belongs to has apparently outlived its time, certainly its usefulness. That his family's his long chain of service has come to an end with him, suddenly snapped against a new America where the new men of power (such as his once good friend Teddy Roosevelt who turned his back on his class and remade himself as a man of the people), is deftly, self-effacingly and ironically told, and often contains real pathos. The same cannot be said of Nock's version of superfluity.

Though he attempts to use the sophisicated distancing techniques of Adams, Nock only manages to appear inveterately opposed to everything that might upset his elitist equlibrium. Through the lens of his classical education, Nock sees mankind as unchanging, steeped in sin, a species whose small attempts at building effective governments are destined to end in futility and folly. Where Adams sees that those in power in his time have lost their ardor for and dedication to the ideals of the revolutionary era implicitly criticizing the new technocratic class in government and business for its bloodless utilitarian and pecuniary values, Nock criticizes all modern liberal governments, and anything remotely else remotely Lockean. He absents himself from the social and political movements of his time, such as the women's movement, scorning its outcome as all too predetermined -- since the disruptive liberal ethos demands equality no matter how violently it rents the social fabric, there was nothing to be done for Nock but watch it happen with a certain measure of glee. Nock is as elliptical and implict as Adams, but where Adams employs the technique to chide society (and himself), what Nock leaves unstated is his hatred for liberalism. He leaves unstated his belief, for instance, that the social fabric that had held women so securely in their place for so long -- that conservative and sensible fabric mystically woven over the course of time -- should remain intact because it always had, and thus always should. Interestingly, like other intellectuals of his time and Adams and James before him, Nock fled the new pecuniary America. But unlike other intellectuals of his time who fled to Europe because it seemed to offer them a more humane and more traditional culture as a potential corrective to the grasping, greedy money culture of the second industrial revolution, Nock apparently fled America because he wanted to hobnob with the European artistocracy, no matter how faded and tattered it had become.

MEMOIRS OF A SUPERFLUOUS MAN has become one of the early canonical works of the neoconservative movement. It has all the earmarks of the Straussians -- the hatred of liberalism, the belief that only a few can be trusted with the disturbing truths of philosophy and that this elect should be entrusted with the political leadership by dint of this hard won wisdom. Nock also displays the parternalistic populism of the neocons as he waxes poetic about the common lumberjacks he lived with as a boy when his father took the family from Brooklyn to Michigan to head up a lumber operation. He portrays these commoners as hardy Americans untouched by the evils of cosmopolitan liberalism, brilliant and unspoiled, rugged individualists all. In a particularly vivid sketch, he describes a musical evening where these common men of toil sang better than any professional chorus he had ever heard. What he leaves unstated here is the neocon belief that the common run of mankind should be made content with entertainments and religions fashioned and promulgated by the elect to keep the commoners happy in their ignorance of the true nature of the world.

Nock asks his readers to accept that he knows the true nature of the world. Like most conservative arguments, it is the argument from authority, a form of argument which refuses to engage in the hurly burly of real debate. And that is why ultimately, Nock comes off as as dry and passionless as the technocrats he and Adams abhor.

[...]
Nock understood a truth that is nearly unspeakable now, in the wake of the disastrous era of Big Government, that although the West in general pays great obeisance to the idea of Freedom, and America in particular is, at least theoretically, founded upon the primacy of the idea, most people (the mass-men) do not give a fig about it. And since in a democracy the masses will wield power, the prospects for the West appeared pretty bleak :

Considering mankind's indifference to freedom, their easy gullibility and their facile response to
conditioning, one might very plausibly argue that collectivism is the political mode best suited to
their disposition and their capacities. Under its regime the citizen, like the soldier, is relieved of the
burden of initiative and is divested of all responsibility, save for doing as he is told. He takes what
is allotted to him, obeys orders, and beyond that he has no care. Perhaps, then, this is as much as
the vast psychically-anthropoid majority are up to, and a status of permanent irresponsibility under
collectivism would be most congenial and satisfactory to them.

Given a just and generous administration of collectivism this might very well be so; but even on
that extremely large and dubious presumption the matter is academic, because of all political modes
a just and generous collectivism is in its nature the most impermanent. each new activity or
function that the State assumes means an enlargement of officialdom, an augmentation of
bureaucracy. In other words, it opens one more path of least resistance to incompetent,
unscrupulous and inferior persons whom Epstean's law has always at hand, intent only on satisfying
their needs and desires with the least possible exertion. Obviously the collectivist State, with its
assumption of universal control and regulation, opens more of these paths than any other political
mode; there is virtually no end of them. Hence, however just and generous an administration of
collectivism may be at the outset, and however fair its prospects may then be, it is immediately set
upon and honeycombed by hordes of the most venal and untrustworthy persons that Epstean's law
can rake together; and in virtually no time every one of the regime's innumerable bureaux and
departments is rotted to the core. In 1821, with truly remarkable foresight, Mr. Jefferson wrote in a
letter to Macon that 'our Government is now taking so steady a course as to show by what road it
will pass to destruction, to wit: by consolidation first [i.e., centralisation] and then corruption, its
necessary consequence.'

It will of course be argued, with the perfection of twenty-twenty hindsight, that Nock (and Jefferson and Jefferson's other conservative heirs) overstated the case and fell pray to hysterics. We are after all in the midst (hopefully not at the end) of what has been a twenty year pause in the process of collectivization. The Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc crumbled under the weight of just the kind of corruption that Nock feared, and they proved much less capable of producing material goods than even Nock might have expected. Likewise, many of the Socialist countries of the West have had to turn to at least some level of reprivatization in order to prop up their Social Welfare systems and to revive their moribund economies. Here in the States, we managed to avoid the worst excesses, keeping Health Care at least partially out of the hands of government, and have taken some baby steps towards reprivatizing such programs as Welfare and Social Security. But the process has been uneven and victories have been only partial and have come only after fierce battle. One need only look at the debates over the Clinton Health Care Plan, Welfare Reform and Social Security Privatization to see how little regard the Left really has for Freedom, always preferring the "Security" of having Government do for us all.

But even if this pause in the march of Collectivization should prove to be of long-lasting duration, it should not be seen as a refutation of Nock's ideas, but as a tribute to them. For if Nock's arguments seem self-evident to us now, it is all too easy to forget how truly superfluous they seemed in 1943. Nock, who was writing before even Hayek's Road to Serfdom had been published, is one of the incredibly small group of men who kept alive the idea of freedom and who resisted the, at the time seemingly inevitable, force of collectivization. If his most dire predictions did not come true it is not solely because he overestimated the opposition, but because a powerful counterrevolution eventually rose up, structured around ideas like his, and it is in this regard that modern conservatism owes him a tremendous, almost completely unacknowledged, debt.

There is much more in this wonderful book and Nock explains himself much better than I have. He writes beautifully and with great humor. On nearly every page you'll find an idea or a turn of phrase that you'll want to pause and turn over in your mind. I can not recommend this book highly enough. I can't wait to read it again and everything else I can find by this least superfluous of men.

GRADE : A+

But even if this pause in the march of Collectivization should prove to be of long-lasting duration, it should not be seen as a refutation of Nock's ideas, but as a tribute to them. For if Nock's arguments seem self-evident to us now, it is all too easy to forget how truly superfluous they seemed in 1943. Nock, who was writing before even Hayek's Road to Serfdom had been published, is one of the incredibly small group of men who kept alive the idea of freedom and who resisted the, at the time seemingly inevitable, force of collectivization. If his most dire predictions did not come true it is not solely because he overestimated the opposition, but because a powerful counterrevolution eventually rose up, structured around ideas like his, and it is in this regard that modern conservatism owes him a tremendous, almost completely unacknowledged, debt.

Albert J. Nock has long been known by those familiar with his work as a shrewd commentator who is always eager to "tell it as it is." When his premises are correct, this can be refreshing, to say the least. However, when he misses the mark, the results can be embarassing. This work, much like his infamous "Our Enemy the State," is a great testament to this.

However, to begin with, there is much of great worth and interest in this volume. Nock, as one scholar has observed, was a supremely literate man, and his great learning and intelligence is clearly evident throughout this work. Unlike many other authors, Nock reflects a deep, thorough knowledge of Jefferson's life and writings. Furthermore, few modern authors can equal Nock's beautiful prose style. Thus, when one reads of Jefferson's opinion on architechure, art, philosophy, or agriculture, we have some of the most delightful passages in all of the Jefferson literature.

Unfortunately, a large portion of the work is consumed by Nock's grossly inaccurate analysis of the political environment of the early republic. Economic determinism in the tradition of Charles A. Beard and Henry George is the gist of what you find, and all of their fallacies and flaws are given full exercise. Indeed, as one Jefferson scholar has remarked, this work reveals a "uncritical" use of the Beard thesis. Thus, Jefferson is portrayed, not as an advocate of natural rights or anything of the sort, but as the supporter of the interests of the producing class against those of the exploiting class. As one would expect, the Constitution is portrayed simply as a tool for economic exploitation, and much ink is spilled documenting the evils of Hamilton, the Federalists, as well as "speculators." While all of this is not without a semblance of truth, his simplistic and often misleading exegesis is very dissapointing.

Nevertheless, as I have said, the work still has great value, largely as a brilliant account of Jefferson's interests and character. Nock is fundamentally correct when he focuses on the fact that Jefferson's real views are very far from those of his comtemporaries, and even farther from those who claim his name for support in later days. Ultimately, I would only recommend this work to individuals who have already done a good deal of study in Jefferson's life and ideas, for only these individuals will be able to see the true worth of this study despite its many flaws.

Albert Jay Nock's The Myth of a Guilty Nation is a double-barreled, no-holds-barred attack on the Treaty of Versailles. Nock viewed the war-guilt clause of the treaty (which placed total blame for WWI upon the Germans) as a piece of moralistic buncombe which would get the United States and her allies in trouble down the road. His predictions in this matter were more correct than most people writing during the time. Nock was one of the critics of our war policy who remained true to his cause throughout the war and refused to be silenced. Never one to jump on any band-wagon, Nock rips into Wilsonian idealism as well as French and British diplomatic duplicity. A must read for any understanding of the Versailles Treaty, its presuppositions and its consequences.