Memoirs of a Superfluous Man (Hardcover)

Considering mankind's indifference to freedom, their easy gullibility and their facile response to
conditioning, one might very plausibly argue that collectivism is the political mode best suited to
their disposition and their capacities. Under its regime the citizen, like the soldier, is relieved of the
burden of initiative and is divested of all responsibility, save for doing as he is told. He takes what
is allotted to him, obeys orders, and beyond that he has no care. Perhaps, then, this is as much as
the vast psychically-anthropoid majority are up to, and a status of permanent irresponsibility under
collectivism would be most congenial and satisfactory to them.

Given a just and generous administration of collectivism this might very well be so; but even on
that extremely large and dubious presumption the matter is academic, because of all political modes
a just and generous collectivism is in its nature the most impermanent. each new activity or
function that the State assumes means an enlargement of officialdom, an augmentation of
bureaucracy. In other words, it opens one more path of least resistance to incompetent,
unscrupulous and inferior persons whom Epstean's law has always at hand, intent only on satisfying
their needs and desires with the least possible exertion. Obviously the collectivist State, with its
assumption of universal control and regulation, opens more of these paths than any other political
mode; there is virtually no end of them. Hence, however just and generous an administration of
collectivism may be at the outset, and however fair its prospects may then be, it is immediately set
upon and honeycombed by hordes of the most venal and untrustworthy persons that Epstean's law
can rake together; and in virtually no time every one of the regime's innumerable bureaux and
departments is rotted to the core. In 1821, with truly remarkable foresight, Mr. Jefferson wrote in a
letter to Macon that 'our Government is now taking so steady a course as to show by what road it
will pass to destruction, to wit: by consolidation first [i.e., centralisation] and then corruption, its
necessary consequence.'

It will of course be argued, with the perfection of twenty-twenty hindsight, that Nock (and Jefferson and Jefferson's other conservative heirs) overstated the case and fell pray to hysterics. We are after all in the midst (hopefully not at the end) of what has been a twenty year pause in the process of collectivization. The Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc crumbled under the weight of just the kind of corruption that Nock feared, and they proved much less capable of producing material goods than even Nock might have expected. Likewise, many of the Socialist countries of the West have had to turn to at least some level of reprivatization in order to prop up their Social Welfare systems and to revive their moribund economies. Here in the States, we managed to avoid the worst excesses, keeping Health Care at least partially out of the hands of government, and have taken some baby steps towards reprivatizing such programs as Welfare and Social Security. But the process has been uneven and victories have been only partial and have come only after fierce battle. One need only look at the debates over the Clinton Health Care Plan, Welfare Reform and Social Security Privatization to see how little regard the Left really has for Freedom, always preferring the "Security" of having Government do for us all.

But even if this pause in the march of Collectivization should prove to be of long-lasting duration, it should not be seen as a refutation of Nock's ideas, but as a tribute to them. For if Nock's arguments seem self-evident to us now, it is all too easy to forget how truly superfluous they seemed in 1943. Nock, who was writing before even Hayek's Road to Serfdom had been published, is one of the incredibly small group of men who kept alive the idea of freedom and who resisted the, at the time seemingly inevitable, force of collectivization. If his most dire predictions did not come true it is not solely because he overestimated the opposition, but because a powerful counterrevolution eventually rose up, structured around ideas like his, and it is in this regard that modern conservatism owes him a tremendous, almost completely unacknowledged, debt.

There is much more in this wonderful book and Nock explains himself much better than I have. He writes beautifully and with great humor. On nearly every page you'll find an idea or a turn of phrase that you'll want to pause and turn over in your mind. I can not recommend this book highly enough. I can't wait to read it again and everything else I can find by this least superfluous of men.

GRADE : A+