The State

The State is Franz Oppenheimer’s sociological account of the origin and development of the class state. Its importance for this wiki is concentrated in two ideas: states arise through conquest rather than contract, and political means differ categorically from economic means.

What the Book Argues

Oppenheimer treats the state as a historical class institution. His argument rejects both the social-contract story and the idea that class stratification naturally follows from peaceful economic scarcity. The state begins when a conquering group discovers that recurring domination and tribute are more profitable than one-time plunder. The result is organized exploitation over territory.

The book then follows the state through several forms: primitive feudal rule, maritime predation and exchange, developed feudalism, the constitutional state, and the projected tendency toward a society in which class exploitation disappears. The stage theory is not libertarian doctrine, and Oppenheimer’s own reform program is not Rothbardian. The usable contribution here is the historical-causal account of state formation.

Political and Economic Means

The source concept is Political Means and Economic Means. Economic means are production and voluntary exchange. Political means are forcible appropriation. Oppenheimer defines the state as the developed organization of the political means.

That definition is why the book feeds directly into Evolution of the State and State Power and Intervention. It gives the libertarian state critique a historical origin story: the state is not a voluntary service association that later exceeded its mandate, but a conquest-born extraction system.

Place in This Wiki

Oppenheimer was not a libertarian. He was a German sociologist and social-democratic reformer whose work nevertheless shaped the American libertarian anti-state tradition. Our Enemy, the State applies Oppenheimer to American history, and Anatomy of the State makes the Oppenheimer definition central to Rothbard’s analytic dissection of political rule.

The book should therefore be used as an upstream sociological source. It should not be made to endorse the whole later libertarian program.

See Also

• Franz Oppenheimer - author reference
• Albert Jay Nock - American transmitter of Oppenheimer’s state theory
• Political Means and Economic Means - core distinction introduced by the book
• Evolution of the State - broader historical-state concept article
• War and State Formation - Tilly’s non-libertarian sociology of war, coercion, taxation, and state formation
• Coercion, Capital, and European States - descriptive historical-sociology comparator to Oppenheimer’s conquest thesis
• Our Enemy, the State - Nock’s American use of Oppenheimer
• Anatomy of the State - Rothbard’s explicit adoption of Oppenheimer’s definition
• State Power and Intervention - anti-state concept article extended by this source
• Libertarianism - broader topic that appropriates Oppenheimer’s state theory without adopting his whole politics
• The State as Parasite: A Thesis - reciprocal link.
• The 2026 EU Wealth-Tax Directive: Capital-Consumption Analysis - thesis applying Oppenheimer’s political-means definition of the state to a treaty-bound supranational tax on accumulated capital.

Sources

• The State: Its History and Development Viewed Sociologically - full-text Project Gutenberg aggregate with chapters and notes