by Charles A. Burris - LewRockwell.com

“Taking the State wherever found, striking into its history at any point, one sees no way to differentiate the activities of its founders, administrators, and beneficiaries from those of a professional-criminal class.”

~ Albert Jay Nock, Our Enemy, The State

The concept of the State is the greatest criminal conspiracy ever perpetuated upon humanity. As Nock details in his book above, all States originate in conquest and exploitation, and as elite oligarchies, continue to exercise this monopoly of crime over their subject peoples through war, taxation, conscription, and indoctrination.

The great German sociologist Franz Oppenheimer, a decisive influence upon Nock and other cogent scholars of the origin and practice of this criminal institution, observed:

“The State, completely in its genesis, essentially and almost completely during the first stages of its existence, is a social institution, forced by a victorious group of men on a defeated group, with the sole purpose of regulating the dominion of the victorious group over the vanquished, and securing itself against the revolt from within and attacks from abroad. Teleologically, this dominion has no other purpose than the economic exploitation of the vanquished by the victors.

~ Franz Oppenheimer, The State

This has been the case in every State throughout recorded history. From the primitive city-states of ancient Sumer located between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers in Southern Mesopotamia, to the most sophisticated and powerful State-apparatus yet organized – that of the United States of America – presently engaged in an act of criminal conquest, occupation, and savage exploitation of those very lands and peoples in what is presently labeled Iraq.

When it comes to the State, there is truly nothing new under the Sun.

To persons studying ancient history these documented facts are obvious and unchallenged. There is an unquestioned acceptance of the brutal and exploitative nature of imperial kingdoms of the past. These were regimes of criminal bands of warriors, slave traders, pirates and plunderers, who over the course of time, grew into dynastic ruling families and elite oligarchies, sanctified by ritual trappings and tradition.

But when we come to regard modern or contemporary affairs, there is a great disconnect or discontinuity among most persons. Why is this so?

Murray N. Rothbard provided the answer in his seminal essay, “The Anatomy of the State,” the single most important article one can read to understand the nature of this predatory beast feeding upon its prey.

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