Against Politics

Against Politics


A Hungarian-born philosopher who became a British citizen and now lives in France, Jasay describes the state as nothing more uplifting than “an enforcing mechanism to enable a winning coalition to exploit the residual losing coalition without resource to violence.” He adds that “the delusions of necessity and convenience are of course an aid to the efficiency of the process.”

From an ethical perspective, he skillfully picks apart statist doctrines allegedly based on “fairness,” “reasonableness” “solidarity,” “equality of opportunity,” “good government,” “democracy” and other buzz words.


He explains there isn`t anything moral about constitutions since they`re a product of collective decision-making. He goes on to tell how constitutions make it too easy to use coercion. He takes issue with “piecemeal social engineering” accepted by Karl Popper and other classical liberalish thinkers.

