Albert Jay Nock and Alternative History

Albert Jay Nock and Alternative History BY JOSEPH R. STROMBERG lbert Jay Nock (1870–1945) was a leading ide- Thomas Jefferson is skillfully etched, foibles and all, and ologist of the Old Right, a loose collection of Nock notes favorably that he never speculated in land. A individualist intellectuals, journalists, and a few Of his many inventions, Jefferson “never patented one” politicians who opposed the growth of government in (being what we would now call a “freeware” inventor). the first half of the twentieth century. Nock’s writing As ambassador to France, Jefferson supposed that appeared in the Nation, the original Freeman country held 19 million paupers. He commented, (1920–1924), which he founded with Francis Neilson, “[W]herever there is in any country uncultivated the American Mercury, Harper’s, and elsewhere. lands and unemployed poor, it is clear that the laws His books include On Doing the Right Thing and of property have been so far extended as to violate nat- Other Essays (1928), Jefferson (1926), The Theory of Edu- ural rights. The earth is given as a common stock cation in the United States (1931), Our for man to labour and live on.” Adding Enemy, the State (1935), Memoirs of a in royal monopolies, Jefferson ascribed Superfluous Man (1943), and Cogitations to France’s productive classes “all the (Nockian Society, 1985). oppressions which result from the nature Nock believed that education, prop- of the general government . their erly understood, was not the same as particular tenures, and . the seigneur- vocational training, and he famously ial [feudal] government to which they took a dim view of politics. Conservative are subject.” political scientist George W. Carey has In England, Nock writes, Jefferson lately (2004) named him as one of “saw a population expropriated from the “the great conservative thinkers of the land, and existing at the mercy of indus- twentieth century.” trial employers, with the enormous Perhaps so; but Nock was also pro- exactions of monopoly standing as a foundly radical. Jefferson and Our Enemy, Albert Jay Nock fixed charge upon the producer.” The the State are the keys to understanding English state was essentially the agent of Nock’s system,and inquiry into them sheds light on the privileged orders. Jefferson commented that while Eng- relationship between Nock and the Old Right to Pro- lishmen were honest, their constitution (see Paine, gressives and Progressivism and other strains of non- Shelley),“from its nature, must render their government Marxist radicalism. forever dishonest”; as politically organized, England comprised “a nation of buccaneers . seizing to itself Nock’s Jefferson the maritime resources and rights of all other nations.” ew would doubt that Nock is a pleasure to read. FJefferson packs interesting detail and observation Joseph Stromberg ([email protected]) is a historian and freelance into an admittedly off-center account of its subject. writer. THE FREEMAN: Ideas on Liberty 32 Albert Jay Nock and Alternative History Republicanism Is Superior, But Not Ideal lish influence but saw only its “external and superficial urope’s monarchies bred such evils naturally. Nock aspects.”The Federalists, Nock writes, devised their fiscal Ewrites that Jefferson saw American republicanism system “by no means because it was British, but because as obviously superior. But ours was “not the ideal sys- there was money in it” as “the most effective engine of tem”—Native American anarchism was (Nock’s sum- exploitation by the ‘rich and well-born’ ” (italics added). mary). Leaning that direction, Jefferson sometimes Jefferson was slow to see the Constitution “as an theorized a radical decentralization of the states them- economic document of the first order....”“The four selves into ward-republics. In decentralized wards the great general powers” it granted were over taxes, war, people could, in Jefferson’s words, “crush regularly and commerce, and control of western lands. Mercer of peaceably the usurpations of their unfaithful agents.” Maryland, John Taylor of Caroline, and Jackson of Here, Nock writes, Virginia might have “set a good Georgia were quicker “to assess the economic implica- example, most of all to New England, which had the tions of Hamilton’s fiscal system.” They were correct, system, but was aborting its fruit.” Jefferson attributed and Hamilton’s funding scheme created new assets Shays’ Rebellion to (in Nock’s words) “an unfair pres- amounting to an eighth of the national “wealth” out of sure of debt and taxation, applied by collusion. .” nothing and gave them to “a single vested interest.” Nock observes that the leading Federalist ideologist, In Nock’s opinion, Jefferson’s “legalistic” opposition Alexander Hamilton, united “certain broad classes of to Hamilton made him seem “a doctrinaire advocate of the ‘rich and well-born’ with the interests State rights and of strict construction; of the government,” starting with public whereas he was really neither.” Nor was creditors. As for “the natural-resource he opposed to commerce in general; he monopolist,” his position, Nock says, understood the difference between “was as impregnable under the Constitu- everyday banking and public credit. For tion as his opportunities were limitless. reasons of trade, Jefferson had supported . Hence the association of capital and the new Constitution, provided that “the monopoly would come about automati- United States should be a nation abroad, cally....”The Revolution’s ideals had and a confederacy at home.” masked concrete economic interests; Taylor had a superior grasp of free- what really divided the country was the trade principles and of how taxes are Federalists’ political means to wealth. shifted back to productive factors. When As for the Alien and Sedition Acts, Jefferson complains to Taylor about polit- Thomas Jefferson Nock writes, “Americans were never ical patronage, Nock writes laconically, sticklers for theory; they have been always more con- “[T]he Constitution was meant to work that way,and it cerned with the inconveniences of despotism than with did.” Jefferson’s plan of paying off the public debt by its iniquities.” selling western lands served to create “unlimited private Jefferson thought Hamilton’s national debt could be land-monopoly.” As for his Louisiana Purchase, “if it paid in 15 years, but commented: “[W]e can never get was a boon to the agrarian producer, it was a godsend rid of his financial system.” He complained to Samuel to the speculator.” Jefferson’s unconcern about land Adams of “an artificial paper phalanx overruling the monopoly aided the interests created by the Federalists. agricultural mass. .” Nock wryly notes “unaccount- Worse, Jefferson had an unfortunate faith in eco- able fires among the Treasury records” just before Jeffer- nomic warfare—retaliatory tariffs and embargoes. son’s appointees came in. “He never anticipated,” Nock writes, “the appalling Nock is no unreserved admirer of Jefferson. He finds economic consequences brought indirectly upon the Jefferson’s assessment of the Federalists inexact:“[W]hat country in 1807.” Discussing the background of the really animated and held these people together was a War of 1812 (and with 1914–1917 fresh in mind), predatory economic interest.” Jefferson suspected Eng- Nock writes that instead of informing American 33 NOVEMBER 2008 Joseph R. Stromberg shippers that they took their own risks in sailing In Nock’s terminology, government serves society. into the Anglo–French naval war zone, Jefferson But the state intervenes positively to divide society backed an embargo “wholly subversive of the principle “into an owning and exploiting class, and a propertyless of liberty”—“the most arbitrary, inquisitorial and dependent class.”Only “incompetent observation” from confiscatory measure formulated in American legisla- Aristotle to Paine, had obscured this distinction. Franz tion up to the period of the Civil War....”It made Oppenheimer found the state’s origin in conquest, three states solidly Federalist and raised threats of New making every historical instance “a class-state”; but the England secession. state game only paid where economic exploitation Jefferson also failed to foresee the Federalists’ perma- could arise. For Nock, access to land was the key to nent lock on the Federal courts. In 1800 he predicted preventing exploitation. Nock cites Turgot, Benjamin that “a single consolidated government would become Franklin, John Taylor, Theodr Hertzka, and Henry the most corrupt government on earth,” exclaiming: George on the point. “What an augmentation of the field for jobbing, specu- The burden of Nock’s “theorem” is simply that few lating, plundering, office-building and office-hunting people with alternative economic means would beat would be produced by the assumption of all the State down factory doors for mere “employment”—and at powers into the hands of the General abysmally low wages, under miserable, Government.”Yet Jefferson was not “a dangerous conditions and quasi-mili- doctrinaire enemy of centralization.” Nock deployed and tary “discipline,” and with long, arbi- He did not see his own constitution- trarily set working hours. The best ally doubtful actions, as president, as criticized Jefferson in alternative means was a plot of land comparable to things his enemies did aid of reinterpreting and, short of that, access to traditional (in Nock’s words) “for the final pur- commons, “wastes,” and so on. These pose of putting the legality of eco- American history. He access

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