In memory of Albert Jay Nock (1870-1945):
There is a Remnant there that you know nothing about. They are obscure, unorganized, inarticulate, each one rubbing along as best he can. They need to be encouraged and braced up because when everything has gone completely to the dogs, they are the ones who will come back and build up a new society; and meanwhile, your preaching will reassure them and keep them hanging on. Your job is to take care of the Remnant, so be off now and set about it.
These were the paraphrased words God spoke to the prophet Isaiah, and the mission one of the 20th century’s greatest iconoclasts took as his own. On the morning of Sunday, August 19, 1945, as the bloodiest war in human history was ending at last, he drew his last breath, crossing the ultimate parallel towards eternity. This man was Albert Jay Nock.
Few things can be said of Nock that others have not already said. His life was certainly not without feats, and his understanding of both history and his present was unrivaled. His seminal work, Our Enemy, the State, is one of the foundational texts that helped pave the way for modern libertarian philosophy, giving—in the steps of Franz Oppenheimer—a perfect description of the state’s nature, purpose, and means. From Karl Hess to Murray Rothbard, his influence spread to later generations and the far reaches of the world, carrying a message that only a select few dared to entertain, let alone understand.
While Albert Nock was author of an extensive list of works, perhaps none is more revealing than his 1936 essay for The Atlantic Monthly, “Isaiah’s Job.” This work was inspired by a conversation with a European acquaintance he described as “a very learned man, one of the three or four really first-class minds that Europe produced in his generation”—a figure I believe to have been Ludwig von Mises, based on Nock’s description of him as a Jewish economist active in politics at the time, their conversation being in German (which Mises spoke but not English yet), and their shared intellectual ideals.
Though many have attacked Nock as a self-righteous elitist, “Isaiah’s Job” is simply his diagnosis of a profound disillusionment: the masses, he concluded, would never listen to reason. After decades of tireless intellectual work, Nock came to a stark conclusion: they had no need for a Moses, nor a Jesus, nor their purity; they preferred a Barabbas. His response, therefore, was to focus, not on the feeble majority and their short-sighted whims, but on the few individuals who saw Barabbas for what he was—a criminal—and recognized that any new prophets would not bring them truth, but manipulate it like Pharisees.
Nock thus realized his life’s role was that of Isaiah: he turned his voice and pen not to the service of persuading the intellectually-callow masses of what they would never accept, but to arm the minority in constant search for truth—the Remnant. This mission required a pessimistic, yet deeply-resilient, outlook. Nock was keenly aware that his life’s work was more likely to be forgotten and buried than adopted by society, yet he continued regardless. Such paradoxical pessimism was explicit confronted in Our Enemy, the State, where Nock wrote:
But it may quite properly be asked, if we in common with the rest of the Western world are so far gone in Statism as to make this outcome inevitable, what is the use of a book which merely shows that it is inevitable? By its own hypothesis the book is useless. Upon the very evidence it offers, no one’s political opinions are likely to be changed by it, no one’s practical attitude towards the State will be modified by it; and if they were, according to the book’s own premises, what good could it do?
One can only imagine the extraordinary fortitude required to write knowing your work would likely earn more contempt than converts, yet to write it still. Such courage reveals why Albert Nock was not merely one of the most gifted minds of his generation, but perhaps its most honest, or its most tragic.
And history proved him right. We now live in an epoch of limitless information. We carry entire libraries containing the knowledge of millennia in our pockets, access a century of recorded debate at will, and speak instantly with anyone across the globe. And yet—armed with a power which can only be defined as the greatest fantasy of the minds of old—the masses seem to be more ignorant than ever.
This is made evident in the news, in political speeches, on social media, and in our everyday lives. To listen to people glorify the state endlessly, in disregard of its numerous crimes; to read people justify the same policies that did not work a hundred times before, just because they sound nice to the ear; to witness people put their tongue to the boot that will eventually crush their neck; and to be treated like a madman the moment that—either through reason or hard proof—one questions such behavior. Nock’s pessimism, in retrospect, may have been far too optimistic.
While the masses, in their arrogance, engage in mindless self-indulgence, the Remnant has been given the tools to grow its strength. Yet in the face of such modern disenchantment, it is among the least difficult things one can do to fall down the path of cynicism; to believe oneself to be Elijah, alone in the desert. From there, it is a short walk to the conclusion that speaking is pointless, that one’s breath is wasted on a world that will not listen. My response is that this mindset is intellectual suicide. It is to surrender the possibility of a future even marginally freer.
The Remnant’s flame is waning. As we walk down the path of modernity, its edges crumble into the abyss of corroded conformity. Therefore, those of us who remain must be the ones to guard that flame to the best of our abilities. Each one of us must assume the role of Isaiah—not as a burden, but as a privilege. We, the select few, must keep that small warmth alive, lest the world be consumed by permafrost. For we are the seven thousand Israelites who have not bent the knee, and unlike Elijah in the desert, we must never feel we are alone.
The Remnant…want only the best you have, whatever that may be. Give them that, and they are satisfied; you have nothing more to worry about.
Thus spoke Nock, and as such, our task is presented to us in very simple terms: we must not go silent. He understood what every great thinker in the libertarian tradition has: that liberty is unlikely to arrive in our lifetime. Their work, hence, was not for the present, but for the future—a legacy written in the hope that it would survive long enough to be useful. We have inherited their charge: to keep the ideal of liberty from being erased, even if we never know its reality. This was Isaiah’s true job: not just to tend to the Remnant of his time, but to preserve the message for the Remnant of the future. It is only through our efforts now that those who come after us will experience what we sought but knew we could never obtain: liberty.
To not go silent is necessarily to enlist in a lifelong campaign of thought and debate. This does not mean, however, that we must all aspire to be the next Murray Rothbard. The duty is far simpler: to share our mind with just one other person who is willing to listen. One must think of the Remnant as castaways, scattered across a vast and empty sea we set sail out to. Our search may yield only deserted islands, but the mere possibility of rescuing a single soul makes the voyage against towering waves worthwhile. It is always better to face the tides than to stare safely at the horizon from port.
Thereby, I tell you: speak your mind. Every idea must be brought up, written down, shared, and debated—whether an afterthought or a revolutionary philosophical treatise. It does not matter if the masses ignore it, or if current conditions render it impossible beyond the realm of abstraction. This constant intellectual evolution is far from pointless; it is the only way the Remnant survives. It is the method of our intellectual ancestors—from Isaiah, to Zhuangzi (whose Taoist philosophy resonates deeply with libertarian themes like individualism, skepticism of authority, and spontaneous order), to Bastiat, to the thinkers of today. It is now for you and me to take up their torch and walk the same path.
Each of us must find our own way to communicate these ideas—whether through essays, podcasts, videos, or any other manner. The method matters less than the act itself, for the Remnant will inevitably find the message, be it now or in a century. As Nock wrote, this is the great certainty given to the prophet: “The other certainty which the prophet of the Remnant may always have is that the Remnant will find him.”
Nock’s earthly presence may have parted nine decades to the date, but his ghost lives on, and it is our Isaiah’s job to spare him a second death. By virtue of understanding the principles of liberty, and by force of our intellect, this is the moral duty bestowed upon us—a duty we must see through, if we ever hope to break the chains that have, for millennia, enslaved humanity.
