Franz Oppenheimer

Franz Oppenheimer, a German sociologist, practiced as a physician in Berlin for many years, after which he took up the study of economics while supporting himself by writing articles ... Oppenheimer was influential in shaping modern libertarian thought through his book Der Staat (The State, 1914) ... This treatise offers a detailed description of the origins of the state, which Oppenheimer claimed began in conquest. According to Oppenheimer, "the State grew from the subjection of one group of men by another. Its basic justification, its raison d’être, was and is the economic exploitation of those subjugated."

Nock absorbed the ideas of German sociologist Franz Oppenheimer, whose radical book Der Staat was published in 1908. An English translation, The State, appeared in 1915. Oppenheimer had noted that there were only two fundamental ways of acquiring wealth—work and robbery. He declared that government was based on robbery ... [B]etween 1931 and 1933 [Nock] delivered a series of lectures ... He subsequently massaged the lecture texts into his great radical polemic Our Enemy, the State. He drew from ideas of Franz Oppenheimer, who had written about the violent origins of the state.

The great German sociologist Franz Oppenheimer pointed out that there are two mutually exclusive ways of acquiring wealth; one, the ... way of production and exchange, he called the "economic means." The other way is ... the ... seizure of another's goods or services by the use of force and violence. This is the method of one-sided confiscation ... which Oppenheimer termed "the political means" to wealth ... The State, in the words of Oppenheimer, is the "organization of the political means"; it is the systematization of the predatory process over a given territory.

Never has Franz Oppenheimer's view of the state been more clearly on display: it is there to dominate, exploit, and protect itself against any challenges to its power. It clings to power like Gollum holding the ring. And that power is deployed, not for the ostensible purpose of protecting people but for protecting the state and its interests. When Oppenheimer theorized in 1908 that this was the true nature of the state, he was shouted down and pilloried for denying the doctrine of government as a social compact. Today his claims read like a description of the day's political news.

One of the few writers who had any thing good to say of Bastiat was Franz Oppenheimer, the German sociologist and state theorist. He wrote that "Bastiat clearly distinguishes between 'production' and 'spoliation' (as John Rae [did] between production and acquisition) and names as the chief forms of spoliation: war, slavery, theocracy, and monopoly." Further, Bastiat "even defines monopoly entirely correctly as my only predecessor known to me: it carries force into competition and thereby falsifies the correct relation between services received and services earned."

[C]lassical-liberal sociologist Franz Oppenheimer, whose ... book, The State, distinguished the only two ways to obtain wealth ... As Oppenheimer wrote,

There are two fundamentally opposed means whereby man, requiring sustenance, is impelled to obtain the necessary means for satisfying his desires. These are work and robbery, one's own labor and the forcible appropriation of the labor of others ... I propose ... to call [the former] the "economic means" for the satisfaction of needs, while the unrequited appropriation of the labor of others will be called the "political means." ...

Libertarian ideas about human politics go back even to prehistory, to the creation of the state itself. Although theories of the origins of the state are merely implicit in most libertarian writers, the German anthropologist Franz Oppenheimer described its origin in The State as being in blood and conquest, the result of conquerors trying to live off others' efforts through taxation and the provision of "protection." Oppenheimer distinguished between the "political" means of acquiring wealth—taking it—and the "economic" means—production and exchange.

Never has sociologist Franz Oppenheimer's view of the state been more clearly on display: it is there to dominate, exploit, and protect itself against any challenges to its power. It clings to power like Gollum holding the ring. And that power is deployed not for the purpose of protecting people but for protecting the state and its interests. When Oppenheimer theorized in 1908 that this was the true nature of the state, he was shouted down and pilloried for denying the doctrine of government as a social compact. Now his claims read like a description of the day's political news.