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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Albert Jay Nock: Our Enemy, The State
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