Nock’s major departure from George and Oppenheimer was his pessimism. His utopian predecessors had believed in human improvability. Nock began his career as a curmudgeon and died a committed misanthrope. In his 1939 biography, Nock chastised George for trying to reach “the ineducable nine-tenths, or more, of the human race.”
As the New Deal order took root, Nock despaired of politics entirely. In “Isaiah’s Job,” published in The Atlantic in 1936, Nock expressed his sincere belief that trying to convince “the masses” of anything was futile. The Prophet Isaiah is instructed to warn his fellow Israelites of impending punishment though he knows they will not listen, and Nock believed the obligation of the serious philosopher was to do the same, to speak to the public only to avoid leaving “the small but socially valuable minority somewhat out in the cold.”
But even as he discarded the universal and egalitarian commitments of Progress and Poverty, Nock maintained the perfection of its remedy. Only by eliminating landholder domination could the masses reach what meager potential they did have.
In 1941, Nock cemented his alienation from polite society with the publication of an antisemitic article in The Atlantic, “The Jewish Problem in America.” He turned to fringe magazines, where his cultural criticism ran adjacent to Nazi apologia.
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