"It is unfortunately none too well understood that, just as the State has no money of its own, so it has no power of its own"
About this Quote
Nock’s line is a neat piece of ideological jujitsu: it strips the State of its mystique by treating it less like a sovereign entity and more like a switching station for other people’s resources. “No money of its own” is the easier claim, a blunt reminder that public funds are mostly private wealth rerouted through taxation, borrowing, and inflation. The sharper edge is the sequel: “no power of its own.” Here Nock isn’t arguing that government is weak; he’s arguing that whatever strength it displays is borrowed, delegated, or coerced out of the citizenry. The State doesn’t generate force ex nihilo. It concentrates force that already exists in society and then narrates that concentration as legitimacy.
The intent is corrective and accusatory. “Unfortunately none too well understood” implies a public that’s been trained to think of government as a benefactor with independent capacity. Nock wants to puncture that habit. The subtext is a warning about moral laundering: when the State acts, responsibility blurs. People tolerate actions under a public seal that they’d resist as private conduct, because the agent seems abstract and therefore unaccountable.
Context matters: Nock wrote in the age of expanding administrative government, wartime mobilization, and the New Deal’s confidence in managerial solutions. His suspicion is that growth in “state capacity” is really growth in the machinery for extracting compliance and resources, decorated with civic language. The quote works because it refuses romance. It translates politics into bookkeeping and enforcement, forcing the reader to ask an uncomfortable question: whose money, whose power, and at what cost.
The intent is corrective and accusatory. “Unfortunately none too well understood” implies a public that’s been trained to think of government as a benefactor with independent capacity. Nock wants to puncture that habit. The subtext is a warning about moral laundering: when the State acts, responsibility blurs. People tolerate actions under a public seal that they’d resist as private conduct, because the agent seems abstract and therefore unaccountable.
Context matters: Nock wrote in the age of expanding administrative government, wartime mobilization, and the New Deal’s confidence in managerial solutions. His suspicion is that growth in “state capacity” is really growth in the machinery for extracting compliance and resources, decorated with civic language. The quote works because it refuses romance. It translates politics into bookkeeping and enforcement, forcing the reader to ask an uncomfortable question: whose money, whose power, and at what cost.
Quote Details
| Topic | Freedom |
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