L'histoire selon Rothbard

And to wind up at my own doctrine about history, followingAlbert Jay Nock, history is essentially a race or a conflict between state power and social power, as Nock put it. Social power is a network of voluntary interactions: the economy, civilization, everything that is voluntarily interacting. Nock calls that social power.

And state power, of course, is the State. It's always trying to repress social power, cripple it, tax it, loot it, etc.

So history becomes a race between these two forces.

-Murray N. Rothbard