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Murray Rothbard
Rothbard c. 1994
Born	(1926-03-02)March 2, 1926 Bronx, New York, U.S.
Died	January 7, 1995(1995-01-07) (aged 68) New York City, New York, U.S.
Nationality	American
Academic career
Field	Economics, political economy, natural law, anarchism, praxeology, numismatics, philosophy of law, ethics, economic history
Institution	Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute, University of Nevada, Las Vegas
School or tradition	Austrian School
Alma mater	Columbia University
Influences	Hayek, Locke, Mises, Rand, Spooner, Barnes, Tucker, Harper
Contributions	Anarcho-capitalism, natural law theory, and historical revisionism

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Murray Newton Rothbard (March 2, 1926 – January 7, 1995) was an American economist and political theorist whose writings and personal influence played a seminal role in the development of modern libertarianism. Rothbard was the founder and leading theoretician of anarcho-capitalism, a staunch advocate of historical revisionism, and a central figure in the twentieth-century American libertarian movement. He wrote over twenty books on anarchist theory, history, economics, and other subjects. Rothbard asserted that all services provided by the "monopoly system of the corporate state" could be provided more efficiently by the private sector and wrote that the state is "the organization of robbery systematized and writ large." He called fractional reserve banking a form of fraud and opposed central banking. He categorically opposed all military, political, and economic interventionism in the affairs of other nations. In the words of Hans-Hermann Hoppe, "There would be no anarcho-capitalist movement to speak of without Rothbard."

Life and work

Rothbard was born to David and Rae Rothbard, Jewish immigrants to the U.S. from from Poland and Russia respectively. David Rothbard was a chemist. Rothbard was born in the Bronx, but the family moved to the Upper West Side of Manhattan, where he attended Birch Wathen, a private school on the Upper East Side. Rothbard later stated that he much preferred Birch Wathen to the "debasing and egalitarian public school system" he had previously attended. Rothbard wrote of having grown up as a "right-winger" (adherent of the "Old Right") among, friends and neighbors who were "communists or fellow-travelers." Like Rothbard, his father was a rightist. In contrast, he recalled that "all socialism seemed to monstrously coercive and abhorrent." He attended Columbia University, where received a Bachelor of Arts degree in mathematics in 1945 and eleven years later, his PhD in economics in 1956. The delay in receiving his PhD was due in part to conflict with his advisor, Joseph Dorfman, and in part to Arthur Burns rejecting his doctoral dissertation. Burns was a longtime friend of the Rothbard family and their neighbor at their Manhattan apartment building. It was only after Burns' went on leave from the Columbia faculty to head President Eisenhower's Council of Economic Advisors that Rothbard's thesis was accepted and he received his doctorate. Rothbard later stated that all of his fellow students there were extreme leftists and that he was one of only two Republicans on the Columbia campus at the time.

During the early 1950s, Rothbard attended the unofficial seminar of Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises, who was then teaching at the Wall Street division of New York University Business School. Rothbard was greatly influenced by Mises' book, Human Action. Rothbard attracted the attention of the William Volker Fund, a group that provided financial backing to promote various "right-wing" ideologies in the 1950s and early 1960s. The Volker Fund paid Rothbard to write a textbook to explain Human Action in a form which could be used to introduce college undergraduates to Mises' views; a sample chapter he wrote on money and credit won Mises’s approval. As Rothbard continued his work, he enlarged the project. The result was Rothbard's book Man, Economy, and State, published in 1962. Upon its publication, Mises praised Rothbard's work effusively and, for Mises, uncharacteristically.

In 1964, at age 37, Rothbard took his first academic job as one of two instructors who taught economics to the engineering students at Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute. Rothbard continued in this role for twenty-two years, until 1986. Then 60 years old, Rothbard left Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute for the Butt Business School at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, where he held the title of S.J. Hall Distinguished Professor of Economics, an endowed chair paid for by an admirer of his work. Rothbard maintained his position at UNLV from 1986 until his death. Rothbard founded the Center for Libertarian Studies in 1976 and the Journal of Libertarian Studies in 1977. He was associated with the 1982 creation of the Ludwig von Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama, and was vice president of academic affairs until 1995. In 1987, he started a journal called Review of Austrian Economics, now called the Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics.

In 1953, in New York City, he married JoAnn Schumacher (1928–1999), whom he called Joey. He died in 1995 in Manhattan of a heart attack. The New York Times obituary called Rothbard "an economist and social philosopher who fiercely defended individual freedom against government intervention."

Ethical and theoretical views

Ethics

Rothbard adopted von Mises' deductive method of thought but parted with Mises on the issue of ethics. Mises did not make ethical arguments but instead used economic analysis to demonstrate that specific interventionist policies failed to achieve their intended goals. Mises viewed ethical values as subjective. Unlike Mises, Rothbard stated that interventionist policies do in fact benefit some people, including individuals whose actions he viewed with contempt. Therefore, unlike Mises, Rothbard chose to assert an objective ethical basis for the free market. He called this principle "self-ownership," loosely basing the idea on the writings of John Locke and also borrowing concepts from classical liberalism and the anti-imperialism of the Old Right.

In 1954, Rothbard, along with several other students of Ludwig von Mises, including George Reisman and Ralph Raico, associated with novelist Ayn Rand, the founder of Objectivism. He soon parted from her, writing, among other things, that her ideas were not as original as she proclaimed but similar to those of Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas and Herbert Spencer. In 1958, after the publication of her novel, Atlas Shrugged, Rothbard wrote a "fan letter" to Rand, calling her book "an infinite treasure house," and "not merely the greatest novel ever written, it is one of the very greatest books ever written, fiction or nonfiction." He also wrote that "you introduced me to the whole field of natural rights and natural law philosophy," prompting him to learn "the glorious natural rights tradition." He rejoined her circle for a few months, but soon broke with Rand over various differences, including his defense of anarchism. Later, Rothbard lampooned Rand's circle in his play Mozart Was a Red and essay, "The Sociology of the Ayn Rand Cult."

Rothbard advocated the Lockean proviso, arguing that if an individual mixes his labor with unowned land then he becomes the proper owner, and that after that time it is private property which may change hands only by trade or gift.

Economics

In graduate school, Rothbard wrote a paper entitled "Toward a Reconstruction of Utility and Welfare Economics".Libertarian economist Bryan Caplan wrote that Rothbard's view of welfare economics "implausably den the coherence of the theory of public goods" and calls Rothbard's theory of choice "inadequate."

Rothbard was contemptuous of John Maynard Keynes. and wrote that governmental regulation of money and credit creates a "dismal monetary and banking situation". He strongly opposed central banking, fiat money, and fractional reserve banking and advocated a 100% reserve requirement for banks.

State intervention

In Man, Economy, and State Rothbard divides the various kinds of state intervention in three categories: "autistic intervention", which is interference with private non-economic activities; "binary intervention", which is forced exchange between individuals and the state; and "triangular intervention", which is state-mandated exchange between individuals. According to Sanford Ikeda, Rothbard's typology "eliminates the gaps and inconsistencies that appear in Mises's original formulation." Rothbard writes in Power and Market that the role of the economist in a free market is limited but is much larger in a government that solicits economic policy recommendations. Rothbard argues that self-interest therefore prejudices the views of many economists in favor of increased government intervention.

Anarcho-capitalism

In the late 1940s, Rothbard questioned why, under laissez-faire economics, private police protection could not replace government protective services and in 1949 came to the conclusion it could. He was influenced by nineteenth-century American individualist anarchists, like Lysander Spooner and Benjamin Tucker, and the Belgian economist Gustave de Molinari who wrote about how such a system could work. Thus he "combined the laissez-faire economics of Mises with the absolutist views of human rights and rejection of the state" from individualist anarchists.

Rothbard began to consider himself a private property anarchist in the 1950s and later began to use "anarcho-capitalist". In his anarcho-capitalist model, a system of protection agencies compete in a free market and are voluntarily supported by consumers who choose to use their protective and judicial services. Anarcho-capitalism would mean the end of the state monopoly on force. In the words of Hans-Hermann Hoppe, "There would be no anarcho-capitalist movement to speak of without Rothbard."

In 1975, Rothbard implied that the American distrust of government after the Watergate scandal marked the breakdown of the U.S. Government. He wrote, "We stand at the threshold of the rollback of statism and the victory of liberty; the forces of statism are in rout at every hand."

Noninterventionism

Like Randolph Bourne, Rothbard believed that "war is the health of the state." According to David Gordon, this was the reason for Rothbard's opposition to aggressive foreign policy. Rothbard believed that stopping new wars was necessary and that knowledge of how government had led citizens into earlier wars was important. Two essays expanded on these views "War, Peace, and the State" and "The Anatomy of the State." Rothbard used insights of Vilfredo Pareto, Gaetano Mosca, and Robert Michels to build a model of state personnel, goals, and ideology. In an obituary for his friend historical revisionist Harry Elmer Barnes, Rothbard wrote:

Our entry into World War II was the crucial act in foisting a permanent militarization upon the economy and society, in bringing to the country a permanent garrison state, an overweening military-industrial complex, a permanent system of conscription. It was the crucial act in creating a mixed economy run by Big Government, a system of state-monopoly capitalism run by the central government in collaboration with Big Business and Big Unionism.

Rothbard's The Libertarian Forum blamed the Middle East conflict on "Israeli aggression", "fueled by American arms and money." He was strongly anti-Zionist and also opposed U.S. involvement in the Middle East. Rothbard personally denounced the Camp David Accords for having betrayed Palestinian aspirations and opposed Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon. Rothbard warned that the mid-East conflict would draw the U.S. into a world war. In his essay, "War Guilt in the Middle East," Rothbard states that Israel's "refusal to let these refugees return and reclaim the property taken from them."

Historical revisionism

Rothbard embraced “historical revisionism” as an antidote to what he perceived to be the dominant influence exerted by corrupt “court intellectuals” over mainstream historical narratives. Rothbard wrote that these mainstream intellectuals distorted the historical record in favor of “the state” in exchange for “power, prestige, and loot” from the state. Rothbard characterized the revisionist task as "penetrating the fog of lies and deception of the State and its Court Intellectuals, and to present to the public the true history". Rothbard, like libertarians associated with the Ludwig von Mises Institute, held that historical revisionism is related to freedom of speech, truth and rationality as opposed to propaganda, indoctrination and mythologies promoted to a gullible public. He was influenced by and a champion of Harry Elmer Barnes. Rothbard endorsed Barnes's revisionism on World War II and the Cold War, and promoted him as an influence for revisionists.

Rothbard's endorsing of World War II revisionism and his association with revisionist historians have drawn criticism from within the political right. Kevin D. Williamson wrote an opinion piece published by National Review which condemned Rothbard for "making common cause with the 'revisionist' historians of the Third Reich", a term he used to describe American Holocaust Deniers associated with Rothbard, such as James J. Martin of the Institute for Historical Review. The piece also characterized "Rothbard and his faction" as being "culpably indulgent" of Holocaust Denial, the view which "specifically denies that the Holocaust actually happened or holds that it was in some way exaggerated".

Children's rights and parental obligations

In the Ethics of Liberty, Rothbard explores issues regarding children's rights in terms of self-ownership and contract. These include support for a woman's right to abortion, condemnation of parents showing aggression towards children, and opposition to the state forcing parents to care for children, especially those with severe health problems. He also holds children have the right to run away from parents and seek new guardians as soon as they are able to choose to do so. He suggested parents have the right to put a child out for adoption or even sell the rights to the child in a voluntary contract, which he feels is more humane than artificial governmental restriction of the number of children available to willing and often superior parents.

In Rothbard's view of parenthood, "the parent should not have a legal obligation to feed, clothe, or educate his children, since such obligations would entail positive acts coerced upon the parent and depriving the parent of his rights." Thus, Rothbard stated that parents should have the legal right to let any infant die by starvation. However, according to Rothbard, "the purely free society will have a flourishing free market in children". In a fully libertarian society, he wrote, "the existence of a free baby market will bring such 'neglect' down to a minimum".

Economist Gene Callahan of Cardiff University, formerly a scholar at the Rothbard-affiliated Mises Institute, condemned the argument. He argues that Rothbard allows "the logical elegance of his legal theory" to "trump any arguments based on the moral reprehensibility of a parent idly watching her six-month-old child slowly starve to death in its crib." He criticizes the absolutism of Rothbard's system, arguing that Rothbard has "taken a valid concern in political reflection, that of property rights, and treated it as if it were the only valid concern".

Anti-egalitarianism

The title essay of Rothbard's 1974 book Egalitarianism as a Revolt Against Nature and Other Essays held, "Equality is not in the natural order of things, and the crusade to make everyone equal in every respect (except before the law) is certain to have disastrous consequences." In it, Rothbard wrote, "At the heart of the egalitarian left is the pathological belief that there is no structure of reality; that all the world is a tabula rasa that can be changed at any moment in any desired direction by the mere exercise of human will."

Race, civil rights, and "racialist science"

In a 1963 article, Rothbard wrote that "the Negro Revolution has some elements that a libertarian must favor, others that he must oppose. Thus, the libertarian opposes compulsory segregation and police brutality, but also opposes compulsory integration and such absurdities as ethnic quota systems in jobs." According to Rothbard biographer Justin Raimondo, Rothbard considered black separatist Malcolm X to be a "great black leader” and integrationist Martin Luther King to be favored by whites because he “was the major restraining force on the developing Negro revolution." Rothbard also compared Lyndon B. Johnson's use of troops to crush urban riots in 1968 after King's assassination to Johnson's use of American troops in the Vietnam War. Rothbard later called for the elimination of "the entire 'civil rights' structure" stating that it "tramples on the property rights of every American." Rothbard also urged the (state) police to crackdown on "street criminals", writing that "cops must be unleashed" and "and allowed to administer instant punishment, subject of course to liability when they are in error". He also advocated that the police "clear the streets of bums and vagrants", and quipped "Who cares?" in response to the question of where these people would go after being removed from public property.

In 1994, Rothbard wrote about Richard J. Herrnstein and Charles Murray's book The Bell Curve. Rothbard stated that Herrnstein-Murray book's marked a new willingness to discuss issues of race, after decades of neoconservative and liberal statists' suppression of academic research on racial difference in intelligence. Rothbard believed that this purported suppression served the goal of those who use the state to enforce egalitarian objectives. He wrote that "while neocons and liberals want the planners and national statists to sort, subsidize, and control, for which they need scientific data such as intelligence as guides, paleos are very different. Paleos believe in Liberty; paleos believe in the rights of person and property; paleos want no government subsidizers or controllers. Paleos want Big Government off all of our backs, be we smart or dumb, black, brown or white." As a means to this end, he regarded the study of similarities and differences between different ethnic groups — what he termed "racialist science" — as "an operation in defense of private property against assaults by aggressors."

Self-defense and police action

In The Ethics of Liberty, Rothbard seeks to derive an "inclusive and deductively correct legal order from a minimal set of rationally justified principles." In his chapter on “Self-Defense” Rothbard explores the right to self-defense of person and property and hold it exists “up to the point at which he begins to infringe on the property rights of someone else” at which point it becomes a criminal offense. He uses the examples of criminal actions factory or store owners using violence against nonviolent picketers and boycotters who cost them money or a store owner who shoots a child for stealing a piece of candy. He wrote that judicial rules must ensure individuals are presumed not to be criminals and to enjoy all the rights of the innocent. Rothbard qualifies this by saying “police may use such coercive methods provided that the suspect turns out to be guilty, and provided that the police are treated as themselves criminal if the suspect is not proven guilty.” He writes that police who use such force should be criminally prosecuted “if the suspect is not convicted”; there can be no "special immunities" or "special licenses" for police. Gene Callahan writes that Rothbard gives no consideration to the widely held belief that torture is inherently wrong, no matter who the victim. Callahan goes on to state that Rothbard's scheme gives the police a strong motive to frame the suspect, after having tortured her.

Science and scientism

In the course of defending Ron Paul from Andrew Sullivan's criticism of Paul's "evolution denial," Rothbard's longtime friend and confidante Lew Rockwell noted that, like Paul, Rothbard "had doubts about the official church of Darwinism".

In an essay condemning "scientism in the study of man", Rothbard rejected the application of causal determinism to human beings, arguing that the actions of human beings, as opposed to those of everything else in nature, are not determined by prior causes but by "free will". He argued that "determinism as applied to man, is a self-contradictory thesis, since the man who employs it relies implicitly on the existence of free will." Rothbard opposed what he considered the overspecialization of the academy and sought to fuse the disciplines of economics, history, ethics, and political science to create a "science of liberty." Rothbard described the moral basis for his anarcho-capitalist position in two of his books: For a New Liberty, published in 1973, and The Ethics of Liberty, published in 1982. In his Power and Market (1970), Rothbard describes how a stateless economy might function.

Political activism

As a young man, Rothbard considered himself part of the Old Right, an anti-statist and anti-interventionist branch of the Republican Party. In the 1948 presidential election, Rothbard, "as a Jewish student at Columbia, horrified his peers by organizing a Students for Strom Thurmond chapter, so staunchly did he believe in states’ rights."

By the late 1960s, Rothbard's "long and winding yet somehow consistent road had taken him from anti-New Deal and anti-interventionist Robert Taft supporter into friendship with the quasi-pacifist Nebraska Republican Congressman Howard Buffett (father of Warren Buffett) then over to the League of (Adlai) Stevensonian Democrats and, by 1968, into tentative comradeship with the anarchist factions of the New Left." Rothbard advocated an alliance with the New Left anti-war movement, on the grounds that the conservative movement had been completely subsumed by the statist establishment. However, Rothbard later criticized the New Left for supporting a "People's Republic" style draft. It was during this phase that he associated with Karl Hess and founded Left and Right: A Journal of Libertarian Thought with Leonard Liggio and George Resch, which existed from 1965 to 1968. From 1969 to 1984 he edited The Libertarian Forum, also initially with Hess (although Hess's involvement ended in 1971).

Rothbard criticized the "frenzied nihilism" of left-wing libertarians, but also criticized right-wing libertarians who were content to rely only on education to bring down the state; he believed that libertarians should adopt any non-immoral tactic available to them in order to bring about liberty.

During the 1970s and 1980s, Rothbard was active in the Libertarian Party. He was frequently involved in the party's internal politics. He was one of the founders of the Cato Institute, and "came up with the idea of naming this libertarian think tank after Cato’s Letters, a powerful series of British newspaper essays by John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon which played a decisive influence upon America's Founding Fathers in fomenting the Revolution." From 1978 to 1983, he was associated with the Libertarian Party Radical Caucus, allying himself with Justin Raimondo, Eric Garris and Williamson Evers. He opposed the "low-tax liberalism" espoused by 1980 Libertarian Party presidential candidate Ed Clark and Cato Institute president Edward H Crane III. According to Charles Burris, "Rothbard and Crane became bitter rivals after disputes emerging from the 1980 LP presidential campaign of Ed Clark carried over to strategic direction and management of Cato."

Rothbard split with the Radical Caucus at the 1983 national convention over cultural issues and aligned himself with what he called the "right-wing populist" wing of the party, notably Lew Rockwell and Ron Paul, who ran for President on the Libertarian Party ticket in 1988. "Rothbard worked closely with Lew Rockwell (joined later by his long-time friend Burt Blumert) in nurturing the Ludwig von Mises Institute, and the publication, The Rothbard-Rockwell Report; which after Rothbard’s 1995 death evolved into the popular website, LewRockwell.com."

Paleolibertarianism

In 1989, Rothbard left the Libertarian Party and began building bridges to the post-Cold War anti-interventionist right, calling himself a paleolibertarian. He supported the presidential campaign of Pat Buchanan in 1992, and wrote that "with Pat Buchanan as our leader, we shall break the clock of social democracy."

In 1992 Rothbard argued that white nationalist and former Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard David Duke had won a majority of the white vote in a losing gubernatorial election in Louisiana by running as a "right-wing populist", an ideology Rothbard embraced. According to Reason, Rothbard advocated right-wing populism in part because he was frustrated that mainstream thinkers were not adopting the libertarian view and suggested that Duke and former Wisconsin U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy were models for an "Outreach to the Rednecks" effort that could be used by a broad libertarian/paleoconservative coalition. In discussing what he called the "hysteria" against Duke, whom he noted was newly converted to Christianity, Rothbard described "right wing populism" as opposition to a "statist world dominated by a ruling elite, consisting of a coalition of Big Government, Big Business, and various influential special interest groups". Rothbard also argued that there was "nothing" in Duke's political program that "could not also be embraced by paleoconservatives or paleo-libertarians; lower taxes, dismantling the bureaucracy, slashing the welfare system, attacking affirmative action and racial set-asides, calling for equal rights for all Americans, including whites."

Like Buchanan, Rothbard opposed the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). However, later he became disillusioned with Buchanan, believing that the latter's "commitment to protectionism was mutating into an all-round faith in economic planning and the nation state." Rothbard then shifted his interest and support to Ross Perot, who Rothbard wrote had "brought an excitement, a verve, a sense of dynamics and of open possibilities to what had threatened to be a dreary race." Rothbard ultimately supported George Bush over Bill Clinton in the 1992 election.

After Rothbard's death in 1995 Llewellyn Rockwell, President of the von Mises Institute, told The New York Times that Rothbard was "the founder of right-wing anarchism". William F. Buckley, Jr. wrote a critical obituary in the National Review criticizing Rothbard's "defective judgment" and views on the Cold War. The von Mises Institute published Murray N. Rothbard, In Memoriam which included memorials from 31 individuals, including libertarians and academics.

Personal life

Rothbard was an atheist.

Bibliography

Books

• Man, Economy, and State, D. Van Nostrand Co., 1962; Full text reprint of second edition (Scholar's Edition), Mises Institute, 2004, ISBN 0-945466-30-7
• The Panic of 1819: Reactions and Policies, Columbia University Press, June 1962; Full text reprint, Mises Institute, 2004, ISBN 1-933550-08-2.
• America's Great Depression, D. Van Nostrand Co., 1973; Full text reprint, fifth edition, Mises Institute, 2005, ISBN 0-945466-05-6
• Power and Market: Government and the Economy, Sheed Andrews and McMeel, 1970; Full text reprint, reattached to Man, Economy, and State, Mises Institute, 2004, ISBN 0-945466-30-7
• For a New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto, Collier Books, 1973, 1978; Full text reprint/Audio book, Mises Institute, ISBN 0-945466-47-1)
• The Essential von Mises, "Bramble Minibook", 1973; Full text reprint, Mises Institute, 1988
• Egalitarianism as a Revolt Against Nature and Other Essays, Libertarian Review Press, 1974; Full text reprint, Second edition, Mises Institute, 2000, ISBN 0-945466-23-4.
• Conceived in Liberty, (4 vol.), Arlington House Publishers 1975-1979; Full text collected in single volume, Mises Institute, 2012, ISBN 0-945466-26-9
• The Logic of Action (2 vol.), Edward Elgar Pub, 1997, ISBN 1-85898-015-1 and ISBN 1-85898-570-6; Full text reprint as Economic Controversies, Mises Institute, 2011
• The Ethics of Liberty, Humanities Press, 1982; New York University Press, 1998; Full text reprint/Audio Book, Mises Institute, ISBN 0-8147-7506-3
• The Mystery of Banking, Richardson and Snyder, Dutton, 1983; Full text reprint, Mises Institute, 2007, ISBN 978-1105528781
• The Case Against the Fed, Mises Institute, 1994; Full text reprint, Mises Institute, ISBN 0-945466-17-X
• An Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought, (2 vol.), Edward Elgar Pub, 1995, ISBN 0-945466-48-X; Full text reprints Vo1. 1 and Vol. 2, Mises Institute, 2009
• Making Economic Sense, Mises Institute, 2007, ISBN 0-945466-18-8; Full text reprint updated 7/15/2011 version
• The Betrayal of the American Right, Mises Institute publication of 1970s unpublished work, 2007, ISBN 978-1-933550-13-8, Full text reprint

Monographs

• The Case for the 100 Percent Gold Dollar, originally published in Leland B. Yeager (editor), In Search of a Monetary Constitution, Harvard University Press, 1962; published separately by Mises Institute, 1991, 2005, ISBN 0-945466-34-X; Full text reprint/Audio Book
• What Has Government Done to Our Money?, Pine Tree Press, 1963; Full text reprint, Mises Institute, 1980; Audio book, ISBN 0-945466-44-7
• Economic Depressions: Causes and Cures, Constitutional Alliance of Lansing, Michigan, 1969; Full text reprint, Ludwig von Mises Institute, 2007
• Wall Street, Banks, and American Foreign Policy, World Market Perspective, 1984; Center for Libertarian Studies, 1995, Mises Institute 2005; Full text reprint, Second edition, Mises Institute, 2011
• Education: Free and Compulsory, Center for Independent Education, 1972; Full text reprint, Mises Institute, 1999, ISBN 0-945466-22-6
• Individualism and the Philosophy of the Social Sciences, introduction by Friedrich Hayek, Cato Institute, 1979, ISBN 0-932790-03-8

Articles/Essays

• Left and Right, Selected Essays 1954–65, (includes essays by Rothbard, Leonard Liggio, etc.), Arno Press (The New York Times Company), 1972, ISBN 0405004265; Mises Institute information page
• Ebeling, Richard M., (editor), The Austrian Theory of the Trade Cycle and Other Essays, (includes also essays by Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich Hayek, Gottfried Haberler, Mises Institute, 1996, ISBN 0-945466-21-8; Full text reprint, Mises Institute, 2009

Collections

• Rockwell, Llewellyn H., Jr., (editor), The Irrepressible Rothbard: The Rothbard-Rockwell Report Essays of Murray N. Rothbard, LewRockwell.com, 2000, ISBN 1-883959-02-0
• Salerno, Joseph T., (editor), A History of Money and Banking in the United States, (Rothbard writings), Mises Institute, 2002, ISBN 0-945466-33-1, Full tex reprint
• Rothbard, Murray (editor), The Complete Libertarian Forum (1969–84; 2 vol.), 2006; Full text reprint at LewRockwell.com, ISBN 1-933550-02-3
• Modugno, Roberta A. (2009). Murray N. Rothbard vs. The Philosophers: Unpublished Writings on Hayek, Mises, Strauss, and Polanyi, Mises Institute, 2009, ISBN 978-1-933550-46-6; Full text reprint

See also

• American philosophy
• List of American philosophers

Notes

1. Rothbard, Murray (August 17, 2007). "Floyd Arthur 'Baldy' Harper, RIP". Mises Daily. Ludwig von Mises Institute. Retrieved August 13, 2013. First published in The Libertarian Forum, May 1973.
2. The following sources identify Rothbard as an economist:
   • David Boaz, Libertarianism - The Struggle Ahead, originally published at Encyclopedia Britannicablog, April 25, 2007; reprinted at Cato Institute website. Boaz describes Rothbard as: "a professional economist and also a movement builder".
   • Doherty, Brian. Radicals for Capitalism: A Freewheeling History of the Modern American Libertarian Movement. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: PublicAffairs. p. 5. ISBN 978-0-7867-3188-6.
   • David Miller, Blackwell Encyclopaedia of Political Thought, p. 290. Quote: "the American economist Murray Rothbard"
   • F. Eugene Heathe. Encyclopedia of Business Ethics and Society, SAGE, 2007, p. 89; Quote: "an economist of the Austrian school"
   • Ronald Hamowy, Editor, The Encyclopedia of Libertarianism, Cato Institute, SAGE, 2008, ISBN 1412965802 Quotes: p. 62 calls Rothbard "a leading economist of the Austrian school"; pp. 11, 365, 458 describe Rothbard as an "Austrian economist"
   • Kevin D. Williamson, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Socialism, Regnery Publishing, 2010, p. 75, ISBN 1596981741 Quote: "the Austrian economist Murray Rothbard".
   • Casey, Gerard (2010). Meadowcroft, John (ed.). Murray Rothbard. Major Conservative and Libertarian Thinkers. Vol. 15. London: Continuum. pp. 5, 16–17. ISBN 978-1-4411-4209-2.
3. ^ Raimondo, Justin (2000). An Enemy of the State: The Life of Murray N. Rothbard. Amherst, New York: Prometheus Books. ISBN 1-61592-239-3. OCLC 43541222.
4. ^ Miller, David, ed. (1991). Blackwell Encyclopaedia of Political Thought. Blackwell Publishing. p. 290. ISBN 0-631-17944-5.
5. Doherty, Brian (2008). "Rothbard, Murray (1926-1995)". In Hamowy, Ronald (ed.). The Encyclopedia of Libertarianism. Thousand Oaks, California: Sage Publications. pp. 441–443. ISBN 978-1-4129-6580-4. OCLC 233969448.
6. Rothbard, Murray (1997). "The Myth of Neutral Taxation". The Logic of Action Two: Applications and Criticism from the Austrian School. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar. p. 67. ISBN 1-85898-570-6. First published in The Cato Journal, Fall 1981.
7. Hoppe, Hans-Hermann (1998). "Introduction [to] The Ethics of Liberty". Ludwig von Mises Institute.
8. Rothbard, Murray (2002) . "The Nature of the State". The Ethics of Liberty. New York: New York University Press. pp. 167–168. ISBN 0-8147-7506-3. {{cite book}}: External link in |chapterurl= (help); Unknown parameter |chapterurl= ignored (|chapter-url= suggested) (help)
9. Rothbard, Murray. The Great Society: A Libertarian Critique
10. Rothbard, Murray.The Noble Task of Revisionism
11. Rothbard, Murray. The Fallacy of the 'Public Sector'
12. ^ Rothbard, Murray (2008) . The Mystery of Banking (2nd ed.). Auburn, Alabama: Ludwig von Mises Institute. pp. 111–113. ISBN 978-1-933550-28-2.
13. ^ Casey, Gerard (2010). Meadowcroft, John (ed.). Murray Rothbard. Major Conservative and Libertarian Thinkers. Vol. 15. London: Continuum. ISBN 978-1-4411-4209-2.
14. {{cite news |first=Manuel S. |last=Klausner |title=The New Isolationism: An Interview with Murray Rothbard and Leonard Liggio |work=Reason
15. ^ Hoppe, Hans-Hermann (December 31, 2001). "Anarcho-Capitalism: An Annotated Bibliography". Retrieved June 2, 2013.
16. Hoppe, Hans-Hermann (1999). "Murray N. Rothbard: Economics, Science, and Liberty". The Ludwig von Mises Institute. Reprinted from 15 Great Austrian Economists, edited by Randall G. Holcombe.
17. Flood, Anthony. "Murray Newton Rothbard: Notes toward a Biography". Retrieved 11 August 2013.
18. Rothbard, Murray (August 1994). Life in the Old Right, LewRockwell.com, first published in Chronicles
19. French, Doug (2010-12-27) Burns Diary Exposes the Myth of Fed Independence, Mises Institute
20. David Gordon, (editor), Strictly Confidential: The Private Volker Fund Memos of Murray N. Rothbard, 2010; Full text reprint Quote from Rothbard: "The Volker Fund concept was to find and grant research funds to hosts of libertarian and right-wing scholars and to draw these scholars together via seminars, conferences, etc."
21. McVicar, Michael J. (July 2011). "Aggressive Philanthropy: Progressivism, Conservatism, and the William Volker Charities Fund". Missouri Historical Review 105 (4): 191–212.
22. ^ Gordon, David (2007). The Essential Rothbard (PDF). Auburn, Alabama: Ludwig von Mises Institute. ISBN 978-1-933550-10-7. OCLC 123960448.
23. ^ David Stout, Obituary: Murray N. Rothbard, Economist And Free-Market Exponent, 68, The New York Times, January 11, 1995.
24. Peter G. Klein, Editor, F. A. Hayek, The Fortunes of Liberalism: Essays on Austrian Economics and the Ideal of Freedom, University of Chicago Press, 2012, p. 54, ISBN 0226321169
25. Frohnen, Bruce; Beer, Jeremy; Nelson, Jeffrey O., eds. (2006). "Rothbard, Murray (1926-95)". American Conservatism: An Encyclopedia. Wilmington, Delaware: ISI Books. p. 750. ISBN 978-1-932236-43-9. Quote: "Only after several decades of teaching at the Polytechnic Institute of New York did Rothbard obtain an endowed chair, and like that of Mises at NYU, his own at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas was established by an admiring benefactor."
26. ^ Gordon, David. "Biography of Murray N. Rothbard (1926-1995)". Ludwig von Mises Institute. Retrieved August 13, 2013.
27. Grimm, Curtis M.; Hunn, Lee; Smith, Ken G. Strategy as Action: Competitive Dynamics and Competitive Advantage. New York Oxford University Press (US). 2006. p. 43
28. Olsaretti, Serena. 2004. Liberty, Desert and the Market. Cambridge University Press. p. 91
29. ^ Burns, Jennifer (2009). Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right. Oxford Univ. Press. ISBN 978-0-19-532487-7.
30. "Mises and Rothbard Letters to Ayn Rand", Journal of Libertarian Studies, Volume 21, No. 4 (Winter 2007): 11–16.
31. Murray Rothbard play Mozart was a Red, early 1960s, at LewRockwell.com.
32. Rothbard, Murray (1972). "The Sociology of the Ayn Rand Cult."
33. Kyriazi, Harold (2004). "31 Reckoning with Rothbard". American Journal of Economics and Sociology. 63 (2): 451–84. doi:10.1111/j.1536-7150.2004.00298.x.
34. Caplan, Bryan (1999). "The Austrian Search for Realistic Foundations". Southern Economic Journal. 65 (4): 823–838. JSTOR 1061278. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
35. Keynes the Man, originally published in Dissent on Keynes: A Critical Appraisal of Keynesian Economics, Edited by Mark Skousen. New York: Praeger, 1992, pp. 171–198; Online edition at The Ludwig von Mises Institute
36. Rothbard, Murray (1991) . "The Case for a 100 Percent Gold Dollar". Ludwig von Mises Institute. Retrieved August 13, 2013.
37. North, Gary (October 10, 2009). "What Is Money? Part 5: Fractional Reserve Banking". LewRockwell.com. Retrieved August 13, 2013.
38. Ikeda, Sanford, Dyamics of the Mixed Economy: Toward a Theory of Interventionism, Routledge UK, 1997, 245.
39. Rothbard, Murray. Chapter 2 "Fundamentals of Intervention" from Man, Economy and State, Ludwig von Mises Institute.
40. Peter G. Klein, "Why Intellectuals Still Support Socialism", Ludwig von Mises Institute, November 15, 2006
41. Man, Economy, and State, Chapter 7 – Conclusion: Economics and Public Policy, Ludwig Von Mises Institute.
42. ^ Roberta Modugno Crocetta, Murray Rothbard's anarcho-capitalism in the contemporary debate. A critical defense, Ludwig Von Mises Institute.
43. Oliver, Michael (February 25, 1972). "Exclusive Interview With Murray Rothbard". The New Banner: A Fortnightly Libertarian Journal. Capitalism is the fullest expression of anarchism, and anarchism is the fullest expression of capitalism.
44. Ronald Lora, William Henry Longton, editors, The Conservative Press in Twentieth-Century America, Chapter "The Libertarian Forum", Greenwood Publishing Group, 1999, p. 372
45. Joseph R. Stromberg, "Murray Rothbard on States, War, and Peace: Part I" (also see Part II), Antiwar.com, originally published June 2000.
46. See both essays: Rothbard, Murray. "War, Peace, and the State", first published 1963; "Anatomy of the State", first published 1974.
47. Rothbard, Murray (1968 (2007)). "Harry Elmer Barnes, RIP". Ludwig von Mises Institute. This article originally appeared in the final issue of Left & Right {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |year= (help)CS1 maint: year (link)
48. Ronald Lora, William Henry Longton, editors, The Conservative Press in Twentieth-Century America, Chapter "The Libertarian Forum", Greenwood Publishing Group, 1999, p. 372, ISBN 0313213909,
49. Rothbard, Murray (Autumn 1967). "War Guilt in the Middle East", Left and Right, Vol. 3 No. 3 (cited here.)
50. ^ Rothbard, Murray (February, 1976). "The Case for Revisionism." Mises.org
51. Bertrand Badie, Dirk Berg-Schlosser, Leonardo Morlino, Editors, International Encyclopedia of Political Science, Volume 1, "Revisionism" entry, SAGE, 2011 p 2310, ISBN 1412959632
52. Raimondo, Justin (2000). An Enemy of the State: The Life of Murray N. Rothbard. Amherst, New York: Prometheus Books. pp. 15, 62, 141. ISBN 1-61592-239-3. OCLC 43541222. Raimondo describes Rothbard as a "champion of Henry Elmer Barnes, the dean of world war revisionism".
53. ^ Rothbard, Murray (1968). "Harry Elmer Barnes as Revisionist of the Cold War." Cite error: The named reference ":1" was defined multiple times with different content (see the help page).
54. Walker, John (1991). "Children's Rights versus Murray Rothbard's The Ethics of Liberty". Libertarians for Life. Retrieved August 13, 2013.
55. ^ The Ethics of Liberty, Chapter 14 "Children and Rights."
56. See also: Hamowy, Ronald (2008) The Encyclopedia of Libertarianism, Cato Institute, SAGE, pp. 59–61, ISBN 1-4129-6580-2, ISBN 978-1-4129-6580-4 OCLC 233969448
57. Callahan, Gene (2013). "Liberty versus libertarianism". Politics, Philosophy & Economics, 12 (1), 48-67. doi:10.1177/1470594X11433739 ISSN 1470-594X; OCLC 828009007. (subscription required)
58. George C. Leef, "Book Review of Egalitarianism as a Revolt Against Nature and Other Essays by Murray Rothbard", edited by David Gordon (2000 edition), The Freeman, July 2001.
59. Rothbard, Murray (2003). "Egalitarianism as a Revolt Against Nature and Other Essays", essay published in full at Lewrockwell.com. See also Rothbard's essay "The Struggle Over Egalitarianism Continues", the 1991 introduction to republication of Freedom, Inequality, Primitivism, and the Division of Labor, Ludwig Von Mises Institute, 2008.
60. Rothbard, Murray (Summer 1963). "The Negro Revolution", New Individualist Review, Volume 3, Number 1.
61. ^ Sanchez, Julian; Weigel, David (January 16, 2008). "Who Wrote Ron Paul's Newsletters?". Reason. Retrieved August 14, 2013.
62. ^ Rothbard, Murray (December 1994). "Race! That Murray Book", LewRockwell.com
63. ^ Rothbard, Murray (1998). "Self-Defense". The Ethics of Liberty. New York University Press. pp. 77–84. ISBN 0-8147-7506-3.
64. Callahan, Gene (2013). "Liberty versus libertarianism". Politics, Philosophy, and Economics, 12 (1), 48-67. doi:10.1177/1470594X11433739 ISSN 1470-594X; OCLC 828009007.(subscription required)
65. Callahan, Gene (2013). "Liberty versus libertarianism". Politics, Philosophy, and Economics, 12 (1), 48-67. doi:10.1177/1470594X11433739 ISSN 1470-594X; OCLC 828009007. (subscription required)
66. Rockwell, Llewellyn H. Jr (December 29, 2007). "Ron Paul's 'Evolution Denial'?" LewRockwell.com
67. Rothbard, Murray (1960). "The Mantle of Science." Reprinted from Scientism and Values, Helmut Schoeck and James W. Wiggins, eds. (Princeton, N.J.: D. Van Nostrand), 1960, pp. 159-180, ISBN 978-0405004360 ; The Logic of Action One: Method, Money, and the Austrian School (Cheltenham UK: Edward Elgar, 1997), pp. 3-23. ISBN 978-1858980157
68. McCarthy, Daniel (March 12, 2007). "Enemies of the State". The American Conservative. Retrieved August 13, 2013. {{cite news}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)
69. Kauffman, Bill (May 19, 2008). "When the Left Was Right". The American Conservative. Retrieved August 13, 2013. {{cite news}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)
70. Riggenbach, Jeff (May 13, 2010). "Karl Hess and the Death of Politics". Ludwig von Mises Institute. Retrieved August 13, 2013.
71. Perry, Marvin (1999). "Libertarian Forum 1969-1986". In Lora, Ronald; Henry, William Longton (eds.) (eds.). The Conservative Press in Twentieth-Century America. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Publishing Group. p. 369. ISBN 0-313-21390-9. OCLC 40481045. {{cite book}}: |editor2-first= has generic name (help)
72. ^ Burris, Charles (February 4, 2011). "Kochs v. Soros: A Partial Backstory". LewRockwell.com. Retrieved August 14, 2013.
73. "25 years at the Cato Institute: The 2001 Annual Report" (PDF). pp. 11, 12. Retrieved August 18, 2013.
74. Rothbard, Murray (November 1994). "Big Government Libertarianism", Lew Rockwell.com
75. Rothbard, Murray. "Strategy for the Right". LewRockwell.com. Retrieved August 14, 2013. First published in The Rothbard-Rockwell Report, January 1992.
76. ^ Rothbard, Murray (1992). "Right-wing Populism". LewRockwell.com. Retrieved August 14, 2013. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
77. Reese, Charley (1993-10-14) "The U.S. Standard Of Living Will Decline If Nafta Is Approved", Orlando Sentinel
78. Lew Rockwell, "What I Learned From Paleoism", LewRockwell.com, 2002.
79. Rockwell, Jr., Llewellyn H. (April 8, 2005). "Still the State's Greatest Living Enemy". Mises Daily. Ludwig von Mises Institute. Retrieved August 13, 2013.
80. Rothbard, Murray (1992-06-01) "Little Texan Connects Big With Masses: Perot is a populist in the content of his views and in the manner of his candidacy", Los Angeles Times
81. Rothbard, Murray (July 30, 1992). "Hold Back the Hordes for 4 More Years: Any sensible American has one real choice – George Bush". Los Angeles Times.
82. Raimondo, Justin (October 1, 2012). "Race for the White House, 2012: Whom to Root For?". Antiwar.com. Retrieved August 13, 2013.
83. Murray N. Rothbard, In Memoriam, Preface by JoAnn Rothbard, edited by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr, published by Ludwig von Mises Institute,1995.
84. Casey, Gerard (2010). Meadowcroft, John (ed.). Murray Rothbard. Major Conservative and Libertarian Thinkers. Vol. 15. London: Continuum. p. 15. ISBN 978-1-4411-4209-2. Although Jewish by birth and upbringing, Rothbard was atheistic on religious matters.

Further reading

• Block, Walter E. (2003). "Toward a Libertarian Theory of Inalienability: A Critique of Rothbard, Barnett, Gordon, Smith, Kinsella and Epstein" (PDF). Journal of Libertarian Studies. 17 (2). SSRN 1889456. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
• Doherty, Brian (2007). Radicals for Capitalism: A Freewheeling History of the Modern American Libertarian Movement. PublicAffairs. ISBN 1-58648-350-1
• Frech, H. E. (1973). "The public choice theory of Murray N. Rothbard, a modern anarchist". Public Choice. 14: 143–53. doi:10.1007/BF01718450. JSTOR 30022711.
• Hudík, Marek (2011). "Rothbardian demand: A critique". The Review of Austrian Economics. 24 (3): 311–8. doi:10.1007/s11138-011-0147-3.
• Klein, Daniel B. (2004). "Mere Libertarianism: Blending Hayek and Rothbard". Reason Papers. 27: 7–43. SSRN 473601. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
• Pack, Spencer J. (1998). "Murray Rothbard's Adam Smith" (PDF). The Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics. 1 (1): 73–9. doi:10.1007/s12113-998-1004-5.
• Touchstone, Kathleen (2010). "Rand, Rothbard, and Rights Reconsidered" (PDF). Libertarian Papers. 2 (18): 28. OCLC 820597333.

External links

• Murray Rothbard full bibliography at Mises.org
• Murray Rothbard at Mises.org Wiki
• Rothbard videos at YouTube channel of the Ludwig von Mises Institute
• Murray N. Rothbard Library and Resources from LewRockwell.com
• Murray Rothbard Institute, Belgium
• Murray Rothbard at Find a Grave

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