What does one need to know about politics? In some ways, Albert Jay Nock has summed it all up in this astonishing book, the influence of which has grown every year since its publication.

Nock was a prominent essayist at the height of the New Deal. In 1935, hardly any public intellectuals were making much sense at all. They pushed socialism. They pushed fascism. Everyone had a plan. Hardly anyone considered the possibility that the state was not fixing society but destroying it bit by bit.

And so Albert Jay Nock came forward to write what needed to be written. And he ended up penning a classic of American political commentary, one that absolutely must be read by every student of economics and government.

He praises the Articles of Confederation as the closest model of American freedom. And he blasts the men who hammered out the Constitution as nothing but usurpers engaged in a coup d’etat. Far from heralding the drafters, he exposes them as public creditors, land speculators, money lenders, and industrialists looking for privilege. They tossed out the Articles and used unscrupulous methods to ram the Constitution down the public’s throat.

It was in this stage of American history, Nock says, that the state was unleashed. Next came the party system, and the dynamics of statism that causes “every intervention by the State” to enable another so that “the State stands ever ready and eager to make” interventions through deceit and lies.

One realizes many important points about Nock when reading this. First, he was brilliant, original, and courageous. Second, he hated politics — indeed he hated politics so much that he wanted a society that was completely free of it. This is why he is often described as anarchist. Third, he surely was one of the great stylists of the English language in the history of 20th century writing.

Those who have read Nock know that there is something about his writing that tugs very deeply on one’s conscience and soul. This book will linger in your mind as you read the daily headlines. He makes his points so well that they become unforgettable.

In so many ways, it is a tragedy that years have gone by when this book has been unavailable. But here it is again, just as hot, just a revealing, as it was in 1935. It is the ultimate handbook of the political dissident. If you aren’t one yet, you may find that Nock is a very persuasive recruiter into his informed army that makes up the remnant who know.