On Doing the Right Thing

Albert Jay Nock

This wonderful collection of essays by Albert Jay Nock, first published in 1928, includes his "Anarchist's Progress," "Thoughts on Revolution," "The Decline of Conversation," and other classics by this great American essayist and influential libertarian thinker.

On Doing the Right Thing by Albert Jay Nock
Meet the Author
Albert Jay Nock
Albert Jay Nock

Albert Jay Nock (October 13, 1870–August 19, 1945) was an influential American libertarian author, educational theorist, and social critic of the early and middle twentieth century. Murray Rothbard was deeply influenced by him, and so was the whole generation of free market thinkers of the 1950s.

Mises Daily Albert Jay Nock
Albert Jay Nock, in this seminal essay, discusses his gradual realization that the state is not what it claims to be: "The State claims and exercises the monopoly of crime that I spoke of a moment ago, and it makes this monopoly as strict as it can. It forbids private murder, but itself organizes murder on a colossal scale. It punishes private theft, but itself lays unscrupulous hands on anything it wants, whether the property of citizen or of alien. There is, for example, no human right, natural or constitutional, that we have not seen nullified by the United States government. Of all the crimes that are committed for gain or revenge, there is not one that we have not seen it commit—murder, mayhem, arson, robbery, fraud, criminal collusion, and connivance. On the other hand, we have all remarked the enormous relative difficulty of getting the State to effect any measure for the general welfare. "
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References

NY: Harper Brothers, 1928