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Title: Our Enemy, the State by Albert Jay Nock ISBN: 0-87319-051-3 Publisher: Hallberg Pub Corp Pub. Date: May, 2001 Format: Paperback List Price(USD): $14.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.29 (7 reviews)
Rating: 3
Summary: Some good points, but unbalanced.
Comment: The book is pleasant enough reading, but its viewpoint is highly unbalanced. The author seems to assume that people in positions of power are motivated almost entirely by a desire for financial gain. This ignores the possibility that people (even politicians) might honestly care about doing what is best for their fellow citizens, or might seek the prestige of being seen as caring about others whether they really care or not. Thus, while the concerns raised about financial self-interest are certainly legitimate, they are not as all-encompassing as the author portrays them as being.
Also, the writing style tends more toward argument by assertion than I prefer, and much of its argument is inductive rather than deductive. The book makes a compelling case that state power is often perverted toward selfish goals, and that the nature of the state promotes such perversion by rewarding it. But the next step, from the idea that state power has been heavily misused through history to the idea that all exercise of state power outside narrow areas will inevitably do more harm than good, is not one that everyone is willing to accept. The book would be a lot stronger if it did not take that step more or less for granted.
Because the book is almost seventy years old, time has had a chance to pass a degree of judgment on Mr. Nock's projections. He deserves credit for being right that government programs intended to do good would seemingly invariably have harmful unintended consequences. To a degree, he was also right that our nation's general tendency would be toward more state power, but there have also been backlashes against statism that were completely outside Mr. Nock's expectations. If, in fact, we are still on the path to ruin that he feared we were on, we are, at least, progressing down that path far more slowly than he seemed to fear.
Rating: 5
Summary: Link Between Socialists & Libertarians, Equality & Liberty
Comment: 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).
Rating: 5
Summary: If politics interest you, this should be in your library
Comment: 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).
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Title: The Disadvantages of Being Educated & Other Essays by Albert J. Nock ISBN: 0873190416 Publisher: Hallberg Pub Corp Pub. Date: November, 1996 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: The Lysander Spooner Reader by Lysander Spooner, George H. Smith ISBN: 0930073266 Publisher: Fox & Wilkes Pub. Date: 01 May, 1992 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: Economics for Real People: An Introduction to the Austrian School by Gene Callahan ISBN: 0945466358 Publisher: Ludwig Von Mises Inst Pub. Date: June, 2002 List Price(USD): $11.00 |
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Title: To Serve and Protect: Privatization and Community in Criminal Justice (Political Economy of the Austrian School Series) by Bruce L. Benson ISBN: 0814713270 Publisher: New York University Press Pub. Date: August, 1998 List Price(USD): $60.00 |
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Title: The Memoirs of a Superfluous Man by Albert J. Nock ISBN: 0873190386 Publisher: Hallberg Pub Corp Pub. Date: March, 1994 List Price(USD): $16.95 |
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