Albert Jay Nock on the Criminal Origin of the State

“…the State’s criminality is nothing new and nothing to be wondered at."

Albert Jay Nock, from his article “The Criminality of the State,” published in The American Mercury for March 1939:

“…the State’s criminality is nothing new and nothing to be wondered at. It began when the first predatory group of men clustered together and formed the State, and it will continue as long as the State exists in the world, because the State is fundamentally an anti-social institution, fundamentally criminal. The idea that the State originated to serve any kind of social purpose is completely unhistorical. It originated in conquest and confiscation–that is to say, in crime. It originated for the purpose of maintaining the division of society into an owning-and-exploiting class and a propertyless dependent class–that is, for a criminal purpose.

No State known to history originated in any other manner, or for any other purpose. Like all predatory or parasitic institutions, its first instinct is that of self-preservation. All its enterprises are directed first towards preserving its own life, and, second, towards increasing its own power and enlarging the scope of its own activity.”

Also see my earlier Substack “The Iron Law of Kleptocracy,” which I reprinted yesterday on FEE.org.