Cover
Table of Contents
Preface
Author's Note
Introduction
1. The Capitalist State
1.1 Violence, Obedience, Preference
1.2 Title and Contract
1.3 The Contours of the Minimal State
1.4 If States Did Not Exist, Should They Be Invented
1.5 Inventing the State: The Social Contract
1.6 Inventing the State: The Instrument of Class Rule
1.7 Closing the Loop by False Consciousness
2. The Adversary State
2.1 Repression, Legitimacy and Consent
2.2 Taking Sides
2.3 Tinker's Licence
2.4 The Revealed Preference of Governments
2.5 Interpersonal Justice
2.6 Unintended Effects of Producing Interpersonal Utility and Justice
3. Democratic Values
3.1 Liberalism and Democracy
3.2 Through Equality to Utility
3.3 How Justice Overrides Contracts
3.4 Egalitarianism as Prudence
3.5 Love of Symmetry
3.6 Envy
4. Redistribution
4.1 Fixed Constitutions
4.2 Buying Consent
4.3 Addictive Redistribution
4.4 Rising Prices
4.5 Churning
4.5 Towards a Theory of the State
5. State Capitalism
5.1 What Is to Be Done
5.2 The State as Class
5.3 On the Plantation
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The State

Anthony de Jasay, courtesy of the author
Jasay, Anthony de
(1925- )
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Card Catalog Information
First Pub. Date
1985
Publisher
Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund, Inc.
Pub. Date
1998
Comments
Copyright
The text of this edition is under copyright. Picture courtesy of the author.
About this Book

Though this book leans on political philosophy, economics, and history, it leans on each lightly enough to remain accessible to the educated general reader, for whom it is mainly intended. Its central theme—how state and society interact to disappoint and render each other miserable—may concern a rather wide public among both governors and governed. Most of the arguments are straightforward enough not to require for their exposition the rigour and the technical apparatus that only academic audiences can be expected to endure, let alone to enjoy.... [From the Preface]

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