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Albert Jay Nock

Memoirs Of A Superfluous Man Hardcover – January 1, 1964

by Nock (Author)

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Albert Jay Nock, perhaps the most brilliant American essayist of the 20th century, and certainly among its most important libertarian thinkers, set out to write his autobiography but he ended up doing much more. He presents here a full theory of society, state, economy, and culture, and does so almost inadvertently. His stories, lessons, observations, and conclusions pack a very powerful punch, so much so that anyone who takes time to read carefully cannot but end up changed in intellectual outlook. One feels that one has been let in a private club of people who see more deeply than others. This is truly an American classic.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B001KIM3LK
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Henry Regnery Company; No Statement of Edition, (January 1, 1964)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 11.2 ounces

Best Sellers Rank: #4,457,228 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #121,296 in Memoirs (Books)

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4.7 out of 5

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Clay Garner

''Cicero told the truth in saying that those who have no knowledge of what has gone before them must forever remain children''

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on November 22, 2016

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Nock entitles this work -

''Memoirs of a Superflous Man'', and he means it. His life and personality, derived from his intense reading (Greek and Latin) and grasp of history, did not find any connection to the present. The two great religions of his adulthood, worship of the national state and devotion to money, repulsed him. Sadly, he never found anything to replace the lost certainties of the past. Nevertheless, his clear vision of the past enables his deep understanding of the present.

''Bentham's doctrine of expediency, on which Michel Chevalier a century ago observed that American society was founded, seemed to me thoroughly false, corrupting and despicable; and in my opinion the present state of the society based on it affords the strongest evidence that it is so.'' (535)

Understanding Bentham's idea and its damage, is a rare insight.

Another gem - ''Cicero told the unvarnished truth in saying that those who have no knowledge of what has gone before them must forever remain children; and if one wished to characterise the collective mind of this present period, or indeed of any period,—the use it makes of its powers of observation, reflection, logical inference,—one would best do it by the one word immaturity.'' (1273)

Who in our present holds any connection to our past?

''The theory of the revolution was based on a flagrant popular perversion of the doctrines of equality and democracy. Above all things the mass-mind is most bitterly resentful of superiority. It will not tolerate the thought of an élite; and under a political system of universal suffrage, the mass-mind is enabled to make its antipathies prevail by sheer force of numbers. Under this system, as John Stuart Mill said, the test of a great mind is its power of agreement with the opinions of small minds; hence the intellectual tone of a society thus hamstrung is inevitably set by such opinions.'' (1327)

Nock, without guilt, believes he is a 'great mind'. This book is evidence that he is probably right.

One theme is the changing status of the 'State'. -

''In brief, what it came to was that the State is everything; the individual, nothing. The individual has no rights that the State is bound to respect; no rights at all, in fact, except those which the State may choose to give him, subject to revocation at its own pleasure, with or without notice.''

''There is no such thing as natural rights; the fundamental doctrine of the American Declaration of Independence, the doctrine underlying the Bill of Rights, is all moonshine. Moreover, since the State creates all rights, since the only valid and authoritative ethics are State ethics, then by obvious inference the State can do no wrong. Such was the view with which the peoples of the Western world had become indoctrinated. To save my life I could not see a shilling’s worth of practical difference between this and the old theory of - jure divino - rulership which republicanism plumed itself on having ousted.'' (1784)

Keen observation. If the state is worshiped, wheather it receives worship in the name of the ''King'' or ''Republic'' creates the same result. Nock repeatedly condemns and ridicules this (horrible) belief.

Nock read and meditated deeply on Scripture. -

''The only apologetic for Jesus’s teaching that I find in any way reasonable is the one which Jesus Himself propounded—experience. His way of life is not to be followed because He recommended it, or because He was virgin-born, or was a part of the Godhead, or could work miracles, or for any other reason than that experience will prove that it is a good way, none better, if one have but the understanding and tenacity of purpose to cleave to it; neither of which I have, and I believe very few have.''

Deep insight. Courage to risk brings courage to believe. Pascal agrees.

Nock is stunned by the change in European society from WW1; in fact he comments on 1914 twenty five times. -

''Since 1914 I have been watching social symptoms, especially in the United States where economism has had everything its own way and has done its best. Here again the neolithic masses of the present day have no historical measure of their own society; virtually no one knows anything of what has gone before him, still less could understand its interpretation.''

Nock, a scholar, sees his world disappear. He continues, even more sadly -

''Since 1914 the only virtues that I have seen glorified with any kind of sincerity or spontaneous acclaim are barbaric virtues, the virtues of the jazz-artist and the cinema-hero, tempered on occasion by the virtues of Jenghiz Khan, Attila, Brennus. The ideals I have seen most seriously and purposefully inculcated are those of the psychopath on the one hand; and on the other, those of the homicidal maniac, the plug-ugly and the thug.'' (2299)

''In a book published three or four years ago, an able and experienced observer of social symptoms, Dr. Alexis Carrel, says: Moral sense is almost completely ignored by modern society; we have, in fact, suppressed its manifestations. All are imbued with irresponsibility.... Robbers enjoy prosperity in peace; gangsters are protected by politicians and respected by judges; they are the heroes whom children admire in the cinema and imitate in their games.... Sexual morals have been cast aside; psychoanalysts supervise men and women in their conjugal relations. There is no difference between wrong and right, just and unjust.... Ministers have rationalised religion; they have destroyed its mystical basis. They are content with the part of policemen, helping in the interest of the wealthy to preserve the framework of present society; or, like politicians, they flatter the appetites of the crowd.'' (2299)

Curious that Nock, a lapsed Anglican minister, laments the failure of ministers.

Nock fights against modern society with this work. This was sixty years ago. His criticism is even more appropriate now. However, without a sense of the unique nature of the post war culture, Nock's condemnation will seem arrogant. Nevertheless, I think he has found the correct understanding of our time.

Nock reminds me of Pascal (mathematical genius - devout Christian) and George Steiner (secular Jew). Both see the focus on material, physical life as a real loss. Nock wants to raise the reader to his level of knowledge, and talks as to equals. Is this humility or pride?

(See also - ''The Revolt of the Masses'', by Jose Ortega y Gasset. Similar outlook. Excellent!)

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Orrin C. Judd

extraordinary

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on October 23, 2001

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[...]
Nock understood a truth that is nearly unspeakable now, in the wake of the disastrous era of Big Government, that although the West in general pays great obeisance to the idea of Freedom, and America in particular is, at least theoretically, founded upon the primacy of the idea, most people (the mass-men) do not give a fig about it. And since in a democracy the masses will wield power, the prospects for the West appeared pretty bleak :
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+

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Memoirs Of A Superfluous Man Hardcover – January 1, 1964

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