Source: Libertarian Institute
by Alan Mosley
“Nock’s political ideas developed out of the reform movements he encountered in New York. Early on he embraced Henry George’s single‑tax proposal, denouncing the privileges that accompany land monopoly. He co-founded The Freeman with Francis Neilson to promote free trade and individual liberty, and although the journal never achieved a large circulation, it earned a reputation for its fearless criticism. Nock’s scepticism toward politics deepened when he read the sociologist Franz Oppenheimer, who distinguished between the ‘economic means’ of satisfying wants through production and exchange and the ‘political means’ of acquiring wealth produced by others. For Nock this contrast illuminated the difference between government, understood as a voluntary association that secures natural rights and leaves citizens free, and state, which institutionalizes the political means and lives off confiscation. The distinction became the organizing principle of his later work.” (10/13/25)
https://libertarianinstitute.org/articles/albert-jay-nock-radical-individualism-and-the-remnant