Our Enemy, The State (Part 2: The Origins of State and Class) by Albert Jay Nock

Audio presentation of Albert Jay Nock's classic book 'Our Enemy, the State.' Read and produced by Jock Coats and made available online by the Ludwig von Mises Institute.

What does one need to know about politics? In some ways, Nock has summed it all up in this astonishing book. Here was a prominent essayist at the height of the New Deal. In 1935, hardly any public intellectuals were making much sense at all. They pushed socialism. They pushed fascism. Everyone had a plan. Hardly anyone considered the possibility that the state was not fixing society but destroying it bit by bit.

And so Albert Jay Nock came forward to write what need to be written. And he ended up penning a classic of American political commentary, one that absolutely must be read by every student of economics and government.

Consider his opening two paragraphs: 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. This is the fact that interests the student of civilization. He has only a secondary or derived interest in matters like price-fixing, wage-fixing, inflation, political banking, "agricultural adjustment," and similar items of State policy that fill the pages of newspapers and the mouths of publicists and politicians. All these can be run up under one head. They have an immediate and temporary importance, and for this reason they monopolize public attention, but they all come to the same thing; which is, an increase of State power and a corresponding decrease of social power.

Read Albert Jay Nock's 'Our Enemy, The State' online: http://mises.org/resources/4685

Audio book playlist: http://www.youtube.com/playlist?p=PLC4D86401E4317089

Links to more online books and essays by Albert Jay Nock:

The Criminality of the State
http://mises.org/story/2352

Life, Liberty, and ...
http://mises.org/daily/2412

The New Slavery: Nock on Spencer
http://mises.org/daily/1944

The State Can Do No Wrong
http://mises.org/daily/5030

The New Deal and Prohibition
http://mises.org/daily/4894

The Progressive Conversion of Social Power into State Power
http://mises.org/daily/4748

Isaiah's Job
http://mises.org/daily/2892

The Difference between a Liberal and a Radical
http://mises.org/daily/2911

The Socialism of Mr. Shaw
http://mises.org/daily/2432

Anarchist's Progress
http://mises.org/daily/2714

What the American Votes For
http://mises.org/daily/3255

Jefferson Contra Hamilton: Too Tame, Too Late
http://mises.org/daily/4274

Liberty vs. the Constitution: The Early Struggle
http://mises.org/daily/4254

Alas, Poor Yorick! An Apology for the Human Race
http://mises.org/daily/4129

The Book of Journeyman: Essays from the New Freeman
http://mises.org/resources/3045

The Freeman Book
http://mises.org/resources/3372

Memoirs of a Superfluous Man
http://mises.org/resources/2998

Jefferson
http://mises.org/resources/2976

On Doing the Right Thing
http://mises.org/resources/3000

Cogitations from Albert Jay Nock
http://mises.org/resources/4224

The Theory of Education in the United States
http://mises.org/resources/3354

Snoring as a Fine Art, and Twelve Other Essays
http://mises.org/resources/3352

Links to biographical essays on Albert Jay Nock:

Albert Jay Nock: Forgotten Man of the Old Right by Jeffrey A. Tucker
http://mises.org/story/2717

Albert Jay Nock and the Libertarian Tradition by Jeff Riggenbach
http://mises.org/daily/4689

Rereading 'Our Enemy, the State' by Cecil Palmer
http://mises.org/daily/3614

Albert Jay Nock: A Gifted Pen for Radical Individualism by Jim Powell
http://www.thefreemanonline.org/featured/albert-jay-nock-a-gifted-pen-for-rad...

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