Frank Chodorov: State

“Men live by production, but the State lives by appropriation. While the haves and the have-nots struggle over the division of existing wealth, it is the business of the State to improve itself at the expense of both; it picks up the marbles while the boys are fighting. That has been the story of men in organized society since the beginning.”

Frank Chodorov

Source: The Income Tax: Root of All Evil (1954), p. 36

Men , Boy , Business , Fight

“The ultimate of taxation-for-social-purposes is absolutism, not only because the growing fiscal power carries an equal increase in political power, but because the investment of revenue in the individual by the State gives it a pecuniary interest in him. If the State supplies him with all his needs and keeps him in health and a degree of comfort, it must account him a valuable asset, a piece of capital. Any claim to individual rights is liquidated by society's cash investment. The State undertakes to protect society's investment, as to reimbursement and profit, by way of taxation. The motor power lodged in the individual must be put to the best use so that the yield will further social ends, as foreseen by the management. Thus, the fiscal scheme which begins with distribution is forced by the logic of events into control of production. And the concept of natural rights is inconsistent with the social obligation of the individual. He lives for the State which nurtured him. He belongs to the State by right of purchase.”

Frank Chodorov

“Taxation is Robbery,” Chicago: Human Events Associates (1947)

Health , Way , Nature

“The corruption of freedom is in proportion to the moral deterioration of the people. For a people who have lost their sense of self-respect have no need for freedom. And the income tax, by transferring the property of earners to the State, has disintegrated the moral fiber of Americans to such a degree that they do not even recognize the fact.”

Frank Chodorov

Source: The Income Tax: Root of All Evil (1954), p. 52

People , Sense , Freedom

“Private Capitalism makes a steam engine; State Capitalism makes pyramids.”

Frank Chodorov

As quoted in “Frank Chodorov: Champion of Liberty,” Aaron Steelman, FEE, (Foundation for Economic Education), (December 1, 1996) https://fee.org/articles/frank-chodorov-champion-of-liberty/

“On the other hand, the State is an anti-social organization, originating in conquest and concerned only with the confiscation of property. The State began with the practice of nomadic tribes swooping down on some agricultural community, confiscating the movable wealth and, after slaying the less productive inhabitants, carrying off to slavery a number of others. Slavery is the first institution of the State.”

Frank Chodorov

Source: Out of Step: The Autobiography of an Individualist (1962), p. 147

Communication , Wealth

“When the individual is relieved of the obligation of self-respect, he acquires the habits of helplessness; he is inclined to retreat to the security of the prenatal state. The more he is taken care of the more he wants care.”

Frank Chodorov

Source: The Income Tax: Root of All Evil (1954), p. 41

“The State is that group of people who having got hold of the machinery of compulsion, legally or otherwise, use it to better their circumstances; that is, by use of the political means.”

Frank Chodorov

Source: Out of Step: The Autobiography of an Individualist (1962), p. 147

People

“Dependence on the State became a virtue; dependence on oneself was derided as ‘rugged individualism.”

Frank Chodorov

Source: Out of Step: The Autobiography of an Individualist (1962), p. 154

Dependency

“All wars come to an end, at least temporarily. But the authority acquired by the state hangs on; political power never abdicates.”

Frank Chodorov

Source: Fugitive Essays: Selected Writings of Frank Chodorov (1980), p. 363

War

“The income tax completely destroys the immunity of property. It flatly declares a prior right of the State to all things produced. What it permits the individual to retain is a concession to expediency, not by any means a right; for the State retains the liberty to set rates and to fix exemptions from year to year, as its convenience dictates. Thus, the sacred right of private property is violated, and the fact that it is done pro forma makes the violation no less real than when it is done arbitrarily by an autocrat.”

Frank Chodorov

Source: One is A Crowd: Reflections of An Individualist (1952), p. 47

“Since the State thrives on what it expropriates, the general decline in production that it induces by its avarice foretells its own doom. Its source of income dries up. Thus, in pulling Society down it pulls itself down. Its ultimate collapse is usually occasioned by a disastrous war, but preceding that event is a history of increasing and discouraging levies on the marketplace, causing a decline in the aspirations, hopes, and self-esteem of its victims.”

Frank Chodorov

Source: The Rise & Fall of Society (1959), p. 150

War , Hope , History

“The more subsidized it is, the less free it is. What is known as 'free education' is the least free of all, for it is a state-owned institution; it is socialized education—just like socialized medicine or the socialized post office—and cannot possibly be separated from political control.”

Frank Chodorov

Source: Fugitive Essays: Selected Writings of Frank Chodorov (1980), p. 237, “Why Free Schools Are Not Free,” analysis, (October 1948)

Education