Frases de Albert Jay Nock

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“El estado, tanto en su génesis como en su intención primaria, es puramente antisocial. No se basa en la idea de los derechos naturales, sino en la idea que el individuo no tiene derechos, excepto aquellos que el estado le pueda otorgar provisionalmente. Siempre ha hecho costosa y difícil de acceder a la justicia e invariablemente se ha mantenido por encima de la justicia y de la moral común cada vez que ha podido sacar ventaja al hacerlo.”

“Ni siquiera puede decirse que el estado haya mostrado jamás alguna inclinación a suprimir el crimen, sino sólo a resguardar su propio monopolio criminal.”

“Desafortunadamente no es muy bien comprendido que de la misma manera que el estado no tiene dinero propio, tampoco posee poder propio. Todo el poder que tiene es el que le ha dado la sociedad, más lo que de vez en cuando confisca bajo uno u otro pretexto. No existe otra fuente de la que el estado pueda extraer poder. Por lo tanto, cada apropiación de poder estatal, ya sea voluntaria o confiscatoria, deja a la sociedad con tanto menos poder. Nunca hay ni podrá haber ningún fortalecimiento del poder del estado, sin una correspondiente y prácticamente equivalente disminución del poder social.”

“Si se estableciera un régimen de completa libertad económica, la libertad social y política se producirían automáticamente. Y hasta que aquél sea establecido, ni la libertad social, ni la política pueden existir. Acá uno avista la razón por la cual el estado nunca tolerará el estableciento de la libertad económica (…) Si lo hiciera estaría firmando su sentencia de muerte.”

“The State always moves slowly and grudgingly towards any purpose that accrues to society's advantage, but moves rapidly and with alacrity towards one that accrues to its own advantage; nor does it ever move towards social purposes on its own initiative, but only under heavy pressure, while its motion towards anti-social purposes is self-sprung.”

“The mentality of an army on the march is merely so much delayed adolescence; it remains persistently, incorrigibly and notoriously infantile.”

“If the modern spirit, whatever that may be, is disinclined towards taking the Lord’s word at its face value (as I hear is the case), we may observe that Isaiah’s testimony to the character of the masses has strong collateral support from respectable Gentile authority. Plato lived into the administration of Eubulus, when Athens was at the peak of its jazz-and-paper era, and he speaks of the Athenian masses with all Isaiah’s fervency, even comparing them to a herd of ravenous wild beasts.”

“"Democratic" State practice is nothing more or less than State practice. It does not differ from Marxist State practice, Fascist State practice, or any other. Here is the Golden Rule of sound citizenship, the first and greatest lesson in the study of politics: you get the same order of criminality from any State to which you give power to exercise it; and whatever power you give the State to do things for you carries with it the equivalent power to do things to you.”

“The practical reason for freedom is that freedom seems to be the only condition under which any kind of substantial moral fiber can be developed — we have tried law, compulsion and authoritarianism of various kinds, and the result is nothing to be proud of.”

“The picture which Isaiah presents of the Judean masses is most unfavorable. In his view, the mass-man — be he high or be he lowly, rich or poor, prince or pauper — gets off very badly. He appears as not only weak-minded and weak-willed, but as by consequence knavish, arrogant, grasping, dissipated, unprincipled, unscrupulous. The mass-woman also gets off badly, as sharing all the mass-man’s untoward qualities, and contributing a few of her own in the way of vanity and laziness, extravagance and foible.”

“The mass-man is one who has neither the force of intellect to apprehend the principles issuing in what we know as the humane life, nor the force of character to adhere to those principles steadily and strictly as laws of conduct; and because such people make up the great and overwhelming majority of mankind, they are called collectively the masses.”