User Tag List

+ Reply to Thread
Results 1 to 1 of 1

Thread: Nock and Nisbet on Society and State

  1. #1
    Points: 665,270, Level: 100
    Level completed: 0%, Points required for next Level: 0
    Overall activity: 88.0%
    Achievements:
    SocialRecommendation Second ClassYour first GroupOverdrive50000 Experience PointsTagger First ClassVeteran
    Awards:
    Discussion Ender
    Chris's Avatar Senior Member
    Karma
    433316
    Join Date
    Feb 2012
    Posts
    197,552
    Points
    665,270
    Level
    100
    Thanks Given
    31,984
    Thanked 80,905x in 54,720 Posts
    Mentioned
    2011 Post(s)
    Tagged
    2 Thread(s)

    Nock and Nisbet on Society and State

    With the election drawing near and riots in the streets, why am I posting about timeless things? They help give meaning to what's happening politically, socially, around us.

    Nock and Nisbet on Society and State

    As Albert Jay Nock argued in the 1930s, and Robert Nisbet in the 1960s, the state plays a zero-sum game: It desires to assume all power over society, even to the point of taking the place of the Church as the glue that holds all together, and thus it renders society obsolete in the long run.

    ...Society, for Nisbet, consisted of a myriad of various spontaneous, natural, and chosen associations, groups, friendships. These were, for Nisbet, what Edmund Burke had labeled our “little platoons.” They arose from specific moments and specific manifestations, unique in placement, but universal in substance. Typically, religion has served as the glue for all of these institutions.

    ...These social institutions created the true social bonds that hold us together, person by person, family by family, and generation by generation. Such a society of competing associations, institutions, and authorities allows for the true freedom of society and the creativity of individuals.

    ...States, though, in contrast to societies, separate themselves from their contexts, their times, and their situations to become something autonomous and, then, superior.

    A part of society but also apart from society, the state exists uniquely as the one agency that claims to have a monopoly on force and sovereignty....

    ...Unlike society, in which all can gain and progress, the state plays a zero-sum game, according to Nock (and, subsequently, according to Nisbet). “Just as the State has no money of its own, so it has no power of its own,” Nock explained on page one of his 1935 book. “All the power it has is what society gives it, plus what it confiscates from time to time on one pretext or another; there is no other source from which State power can be drawn.”

    As the State grows, the social atrophies to the point—Nock claimed, echoing the arguments of Alexis de Tocqueville—in which members of society no longer even think of trying to solve their own problems, but, rather, automatically and reflexively turn to the State for solutions.

    ...As Nock understood it in the 1930s, and Nisbet in the 1960s, the State desired—whether it openly admitted this or not—to assume all power over society and thus render society—and its myriads of conflicting authorities (in and through which the human person found freedom)—obsolete in the long run....
    Tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire. ― Gustav Mahler

  2. The Following User Says Thank You to Chris For This Useful Post:

    MMC (09-07-2020)

+ Reply to Thread

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts