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The State of the Union: Essays in Social Criticism
This collection is the first chosen from Albert Jay Nock’s entire work and the first new collection in nearly thirty-five years. It includes his best-known essays, some outstanding but neglected articles, and previously unpublished material.
279 pages, Paperback
First published March 1, 1991
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About the author
Albert Jay Nock
58 books74 followersAmerican libertarian author, Georgist, social critic of the early and middle 20th century, outspoken opponent of the New Deal.
He served as a inspiration for the modern libertarian and Conservative movements.
He was one of the first Americans to self-identify as "libertarian"
http://alumnus.caltech.edu/~ckank/Ful...
He served as a inspiration for the modern libertarian and Conservative movements.
He was one of the first Americans to self-identify as "libertarian"
http://alumnus.caltech.edu/~ckank/Ful...
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
October 15, 2019
I'm quite happy to report it took me only a month to read tbis book!
I heard Nock is considered one of the fathers of Libertarianism, so it's only good I read this book as that's a growing political movement. This book was a collection of some of his best essays.
I found many of the essays dull, and maybe even out of place in our current day affairs, but I really enjoyed many of the center essays, and the last few as well. So definitely a book with some gems scattered about. Also, some quote worthy words.
I'll be doing an in depth review over at:
thegirlwhodoesntexist.com
I heard Nock is considered one of the fathers of Libertarianism, so it's only good I read this book as that's a growing political movement. This book was a collection of some of his best essays.
I found many of the essays dull, and maybe even out of place in our current day affairs, but I really enjoyed many of the center essays, and the last few as well. So definitely a book with some gems scattered about. Also, some quote worthy words.
I'll be doing an in depth review over at:
thegirlwhodoesntexist.com
October 16, 2023
A COLLECTION OF WRITINGS BY THE AUTHOR OF ‘OUR ENEMY, THE STATE’
The Foreword by Charles H. Hamilton states, “What [Nock] had to say often fell on deaf ears, but he contributed some powerful and lasting criticism of the state of the humane life in America… Nock was the quintessential individualist as ‘connected critic’… His writing fits easily and uniquely into the ‘intellectual structure’ … defined as good social criticism… Throughout his essays and books, Nock struggled to temper his revulsion at society’s shabby and misdirected development with a tentative hope and affirmation… Nock understood the critic’s task to be one of observation and description.” (Pg. xi-xii)
The ’Acknowledgements’ explains, “I felt there was a need for a single volume of his essays chosen from his oeuvre. In that way, a certain development and consistency of themes could become evident. The articles in this volume include some of his best-known essays as well as unknown and difficult-to-find gems. They are complete (though only two of the five parts of ‘The State’ are included here).”
In the essay ‘Anarchist’s Progress,’ he observes, “The State originated in conquest and confiscation, as a device for maintaining the stratification permanently into two classes---an owning and exploiting class, relatively small and a propertyless dependent class. Such measures of order and justice as it established were incidental and ancillary to this purpose; it was not interested in any that did not serve this purpose; and it resisted the establishment of any that were contrary to it. No State known to history originated in any other manner, or for any other purpose than to enable the continuous economic exploitation of one class by another.” (Pg. 46)
In another essay, he states, “I have an extremely strong conviction that human personality outlives death; so strong and apparently so reasonable that I have long ceased to question it. This is not the same thing as saying I believe that my own personality will survive death, for I can not say that: in fact, I doubt it. I have an instinctive feeling that it will, but when I examine the basis available for rationalizing that feeling, I find it too slight to command confidence. These statements are not inconsistent…” (Pg. 57)
He comments, “People are largely addicted to a number of curious delusions about statutory law, one of which is that it works by some kind of natural inherent force residing in itself. Really, it does nothing of the kind. Samuel M. Jones… said that law means anything the people will back up… Also, anything the people will not back up is not law, however clearly it is laid down on the statute books, and cannot be enforced.” (Pg. 143-144)
He argues, ‘The State… had its origin in conquest and confiscation, and it has existed ever since as an agency whereby this system of economic exploitation is maintained. It is characterized in every manifestation of which we have record, by the phenomenon of a small exploiting minority and a large exploited majority. Every State, from the earliest to the most modern, is a robber-State. Of its instruments for effecting robbery, the most primitive, and now most costly, are armies and navies. They are used chiefly in safeguarding the economic exploitation of weak alien peoples by the State’s beneficiaries…” (Pg. 226-227)
He recalls, “For more than a quarter of a century I have been known, in so far as I was known at all, as a radical. It came about in this way: I was always… liking to get down below the surface of things and examine their roots… Therefore when the time came for me to describe myself by some convenient label, I took one which marked the quality that I thought chiefly differentiated me from most of the people I saw around me. They habitually gave themselves a superficial account of things… but I preferred always to give myself a root-account of things, if I could get it. Therefore… it seemed appropriate to label myself as a radical. Likewise, also, when occasion required that I label myself with reference to particular social theories or doctrines, the same decent respect for accuracy led me to describe myself as an anarchist, an individualist, and a single-taxer.” (Pg. 257-258)
He asserts, ‘those who call themselves Liberals proceed on no fixed principles whatever, and their action in any given premises is notoriously unpredictable. Their title is usually self-chosen, in virtue of an interest in someone special enfranchising or humanitarian cause like freeing slaves, universal suffrage, ‘social security,’ improving the conditions of labor… This interest is often exclusive; the absence of fixed principle is apparent in the Liberal’s active opposition to other causes which stand on a logical footing with the cause he favors…” (Pg. 281-282)
He notes that Freedom “unquestionably means freedom to go on without any code or morals at all; but it also means freedom to rationalize, construct and adhere to a code of one’s own. The anarchist presses the point invariably overlooked, that freedom to do the one without the correlative freedom to do the other is impossible; land that just here comes in the moral education which legalism and authoritarianism, with their denial of freedom, can never furnish. The anarchist is never interested in any narrowed or more personal view of human conduct. Believing, for example, that man should be wholly free to be sober or to be a sot, his eye is not caught and exclusively engaged by the spectacle of sots, but instead he points to those who are responsibly sober, sober by a self-imposed standard of conduct, and asserts his conviction that the future belongs to them rather than to the sots.” (Pg. 323)
This book may appeal to Libertarians, some Anarchists, and other critics of governmental activity.
The Foreword by Charles H. Hamilton states, “What [Nock] had to say often fell on deaf ears, but he contributed some powerful and lasting criticism of the state of the humane life in America… Nock was the quintessential individualist as ‘connected critic’… His writing fits easily and uniquely into the ‘intellectual structure’ … defined as good social criticism… Throughout his essays and books, Nock struggled to temper his revulsion at society’s shabby and misdirected development with a tentative hope and affirmation… Nock understood the critic’s task to be one of observation and description.” (Pg. xi-xii)
The ’Acknowledgements’ explains, “I felt there was a need for a single volume of his essays chosen from his oeuvre. In that way, a certain development and consistency of themes could become evident. The articles in this volume include some of his best-known essays as well as unknown and difficult-to-find gems. They are complete (though only two of the five parts of ‘The State’ are included here).”
In the essay ‘Anarchist’s Progress,’ he observes, “The State originated in conquest and confiscation, as a device for maintaining the stratification permanently into two classes---an owning and exploiting class, relatively small and a propertyless dependent class. Such measures of order and justice as it established were incidental and ancillary to this purpose; it was not interested in any that did not serve this purpose; and it resisted the establishment of any that were contrary to it. No State known to history originated in any other manner, or for any other purpose than to enable the continuous economic exploitation of one class by another.” (Pg. 46)
In another essay, he states, “I have an extremely strong conviction that human personality outlives death; so strong and apparently so reasonable that I have long ceased to question it. This is not the same thing as saying I believe that my own personality will survive death, for I can not say that: in fact, I doubt it. I have an instinctive feeling that it will, but when I examine the basis available for rationalizing that feeling, I find it too slight to command confidence. These statements are not inconsistent…” (Pg. 57)
He comments, “People are largely addicted to a number of curious delusions about statutory law, one of which is that it works by some kind of natural inherent force residing in itself. Really, it does nothing of the kind. Samuel M. Jones… said that law means anything the people will back up… Also, anything the people will not back up is not law, however clearly it is laid down on the statute books, and cannot be enforced.” (Pg. 143-144)
He argues, ‘The State… had its origin in conquest and confiscation, and it has existed ever since as an agency whereby this system of economic exploitation is maintained. It is characterized in every manifestation of which we have record, by the phenomenon of a small exploiting minority and a large exploited majority. Every State, from the earliest to the most modern, is a robber-State. Of its instruments for effecting robbery, the most primitive, and now most costly, are armies and navies. They are used chiefly in safeguarding the economic exploitation of weak alien peoples by the State’s beneficiaries…” (Pg. 226-227)
He recalls, “For more than a quarter of a century I have been known, in so far as I was known at all, as a radical. It came about in this way: I was always… liking to get down below the surface of things and examine their roots… Therefore when the time came for me to describe myself by some convenient label, I took one which marked the quality that I thought chiefly differentiated me from most of the people I saw around me. They habitually gave themselves a superficial account of things… but I preferred always to give myself a root-account of things, if I could get it. Therefore… it seemed appropriate to label myself as a radical. Likewise, also, when occasion required that I label myself with reference to particular social theories or doctrines, the same decent respect for accuracy led me to describe myself as an anarchist, an individualist, and a single-taxer.” (Pg. 257-258)
He asserts, ‘those who call themselves Liberals proceed on no fixed principles whatever, and their action in any given premises is notoriously unpredictable. Their title is usually self-chosen, in virtue of an interest in someone special enfranchising or humanitarian cause like freeing slaves, universal suffrage, ‘social security,’ improving the conditions of labor… This interest is often exclusive; the absence of fixed principle is apparent in the Liberal’s active opposition to other causes which stand on a logical footing with the cause he favors…” (Pg. 281-282)
He notes that Freedom “unquestionably means freedom to go on without any code or morals at all; but it also means freedom to rationalize, construct and adhere to a code of one’s own. The anarchist presses the point invariably overlooked, that freedom to do the one without the correlative freedom to do the other is impossible; land that just here comes in the moral education which legalism and authoritarianism, with their denial of freedom, can never furnish. The anarchist is never interested in any narrowed or more personal view of human conduct. Believing, for example, that man should be wholly free to be sober or to be a sot, his eye is not caught and exclusively engaged by the spectacle of sots, but instead he points to those who are responsibly sober, sober by a self-imposed standard of conduct, and asserts his conviction that the future belongs to them rather than to the sots.” (Pg. 323)
This book may appeal to Libertarians, some Anarchists, and other critics of governmental activity.
July 27, 2011
Superb. Fantastic. Nock's essays are just what a hungry and open mind needs. He is an American classic. The literary quality of his social criticism is so good it makes it positively painful to read the op-eds in today's newspapers and magazines. In his essay "On Doing the Right Thing," Nock says "... of all men I ever knew, the Liberals of my acquaintance have the greatest nervous horror of freedom, the most inveterate and pusillanimous dread of contemplating the ideal picture of mankind existing in free and voluntary association." Indeed, nothing has changed in the more than 50 years since his death.
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September 23, 2010The State of the Union: Essays in Social Criticism by Albert Jay Nock (1991)
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews