I know this guy's work. Quite Pynchon-adjacent yet not quite Pynchonian....imo

[Mark Kohut]

*Our Enemy, the State* Taught Me to Stop Confusing Government with Society

A critical review of Albert Jay Nock’s 1935 classic for anyone questioning
centralized power.
[image: Diamond-Michael Scott]
DIAMOND-MICHAEL SCOTT
<https://www.theadvocates.org/authors/diamond-michael-scott/>
PUBLISHED IN BIG GOVERNMENT
<https://www.theadvocates.org/category/big-government/>- SEP 11, 2026
[image: Our Enemy, the State Taught Me to Stop Confusing Government with
Society]

*AI-generated portrait of Albert Jay Nock, based on a historical
photograph.*

Government is not society. The State is not a community. Political
participation is not the same thing as self-government. Albert Jay Nock’s *Our
Enemy, the State* asks us to stop treating those ideas as interchangeable.

If you believe legitimate authority begins with the individual, Nock will
feel less like an introduction and more like a provocation. He does not ask
whether better people should administer the State. He asks whether the
State is structurally different from society and whether its expansion
necessarily comes at society’s expense.
*Who Was Albert Jay Nock?*