Acknowledgment
This essay is the result of conversations with Albert Jay Nock, author of Our Enemy the State, some fifteen years ago. His book was then out of print and the publishers were considering a reissue; for commercial reasons they held that it should be expanded. I had been suggesting to him the need of revision and expansion for quite another reason. The book was based on a series of lectures delivered to a graduate class in history, and on that account it dealt with the State historically; my argument was that it could be handled as an economic phenomenon and that the inclusion of this phase would broaden the scope of the book. Something of a joint venture along this line was under consideration at the time of Nock's death.
I mention this fact to ward off the charge of plagiarism. For, as any reader of Our Enemy the State will readily recognize, I have borrowed ideas from it quite liberally in the writing of this essay. I plead the circumstance related above as my justification. Knowing Nock, I am sure that he would be the last to take me to task for appropriating some of his argument, and would be quick to point out that originality is a fiction and a posture.
