Our Enemy, The State by Albert J. Nock
This audiobook version is prepared by Jock Coates of Oxford, United Kingdom.
Other work by Jock can be found at jockcoates.me.
The text of Our Enemy, The State is available either to purchase or to download at mises.org
In Memoriam, Edmund Cadwallader Evans, a sound economist, one of the few who understand the nature of the state, 1935.
BE IT OR BE IT NOT TRUE THAT MAN IS SHAPEN IN INIQUITY AND CONCEIVED IN SIN, IT IS UNQUESTIONABLY
TRUE THAT GOVERNMENT IS BEGOTTEN OF AGGRESSION AND BY AGGRESSION, Herbert Spencer, 1850.
This is the gravest danger that today threatens civilization, state intervention, the absorption
of all spontaneous social effort by the state, that is to say, of spontaneous historical action,
which in the long run sustains, nourishes and impels human destinies.
José Ortega y Gasset, 1922. The state has taken on a vast mass of new
duties and responsibilities. It has spread out its powers until they penetrate to every
Every act of the citizen, however, secret. It has begun to throw around its operations
the high dignity and impeccability of a state religion. Its agents become a separate and
superior caste, with authority to bind and loose, and their thumbs in every pot. But
it still remains, as it was in the beginning, the common enemy of all well-disposed, industrious
and Decent Men, Henry L. Mencken, 1926. Preface to the second edition. When Our Enemy
the State appeared in 1935, its literary merit rather than its philosophic content attracted
attention to it. The times were not ripe for an acceptance of its predictions, still less
As for the argument on which these predictions were based, faith in traditional frontier
individualism had not yet been shaken by the course of events. Against this faith, the
argument that the same economic forces which in all times and in all nations drive towards
the ascendancy of political power at the expense of social power were in operation here made
Little Headway. That is, the feeling that it cannot happen here was too difficult a
hurdle for the book to overcome. By the time the first edition had run out, the development
of public affairs gave the argument of the book ample testimony. In less than a decade
it was evident to many Americans that their country is not immune from the philosophy
The Times were proving Mr. Nock's thesis, and by irresistible word-of-mouth advertising a demand for the book began to manifest itself just when it was no longer available, and the plates had been put to war purposes.
In 1943 he had a second edition in mind. I talked with him several times about it, urging
him to elaborate on the economic ideas, since these, it seemed to me, were inadequately
developed for the reader with a limited knowledge of political economy. He agreed that this
ought to be done, but in a separate book or in a second part of this book, and suggested
This volume is an exact duplication of the first edition. He intended to make some slight changes, principally, as he told me, in the substitution of current illustrations for those which might carry less weight with the younger reader.
This volume is an exact duplication of the first edition. He intended to make some slight changes, principally, as he told me, in the substitution of current illustrations for those which might carry less weight with the younger reader. As for the sequel stressing economics, this will have to be done. At any rate, our enemy, the State, needs no support.
Frank Chodoroff, New York City, May 28, 1946