The control would again be taken over by the most sagacious among the poor mass-men, they would become rich, the same abuses, jealousies and dissatisfactions would recur, the same contest would again take place, with the same result.
I was immensely interested in reading John Adams’s clear forecast of the scrimmage I was witnessing, and his prophecy that “the struggle will end only in a change of impostors.”
One afternoon in 1900 I listened while a young Jewish Socialist was breathing out threatenings and slaughter against the rich. I had asked him just what it was that he proposed to do when he had got them all properly killed off.
“We have been oppressed,” he said, “and now we shall oppress.” I thought he put the matter very well, for I could see no other prospect.
-Albert Jay Nock
[Herbert] Quick clearly saw the State as an anti-social institution; he saw that as primarily the arbiter of economic advantage and a potential instrument of exploitation, both its initial intent and function are anti-social.
He was the only person I knew in that period who drew the line of distinction sharply between the idea of government, as set forth by Mr. Jefferson in the Declaration and amplified by Paine and Spencer, and the idea of the State
