Austrian economics Rothbard was an advocate and practitioner of the
Austrian School tradition of his teacher
Ludwig von Mises. Like Mises, Rothbard rejected the application of the
scientific method to economics and dismissed
econometrics, empirical and statistical analysis, and other tools of mainstream social science as outside the field (economic history might use those tools, but not Economics proper). He instead embraced
praxeology, the strictly
a priori methodology of Mises. Praxeology conceives of economic laws as akin to geometric or mathematical
axioms: fixed, unchanging, objective, and discernible through logical reasoning. praises Rothbard as brilliant, his writing style persuasive, his economic arguments nuanced and logically rigorous and his Misesian methodology sound. But Skousen concedes that Rothbard was effectively "outside the discipline" of mainstream economics and that his work "fell on deaf ears" outside his ideological circles. Rothbard wrote extensively on
Austrian business cycle theory and, as part of this approach, strongly opposed
central banking,
fiat money, and
fractional-reserve banking, advocating a
gold standard and a 100% reserve requirement for banks.
Polemics against mainstream economics Rothbard wrote a series of
polemics in which he deprecated a number of leading modern economists. He vilified
Adam Smith, calling him a "shameless plagiarist" who set economics off track, ultimately leading to the rise of
Marxism. Rothbard praised Smith's contemporaries, including
Richard Cantillon,
Anne Robert Jacques Turgot and
Étienne Bonnot de Condillac, for developing the
subjective theory of value. In response to Rothbard's charge that Smith's
The Wealth of Nations was largely plagiarized,
David D. Friedman castigated Rothbard's scholarship and character, saying that he "was [either] deliberately dishonest or never really read the book he was criticizing". Tony Endres called Rothbard's treatment of Smith a "travesty". Rothbard was equally scathing in his criticism of
John Maynard Keynes, calling him weak on economic theory and a shallow political opportunist. Rothbard also wrote more generally that Keynesian-style governmental regulation of money and credit created a "dismal monetary and banking situation". He called
John Stuart Mill a "wooly man of mush" and speculated that Mill's "soft" personality led his economic thought astray. Rothbard was critical of monetarist economist
Milton Friedman. In his polemic "Milton Friedman Unraveled", he called Friedman a "statist", a "favorite of the establishment", a friend of and an "apologist" for
Richard Nixon, and a "pernicious influence" on public policy. Rothbard said that libertarians should scorn rather than celebrate Friedman's academic prestige and political influence. Noting that Rothbard has "been nasty to me and my work", Friedman responded to Rothbard's criticism by calling him a "cult builder and a dogmatist". In a memorial volume published by the Mises Institute, Rothbard's protégé and libertarian theorist
Hans-Hermann Hoppe wrote that
Man, Economy, and State "presented a blistering refutation of all variants of mathematical economics" and included it among Rothbard's "almost mind-boggling achievements". Hoppe lamented that, like Mises, Rothbard died without winning the
Nobel Prize and, while acknowledging that Rothbard and his work were largely ignored by academia, called him an "intellectual giant" comparable to
Aristotle,
John Locke, and
Immanuel Kant.
Disputes with other Austrian economists Georgetown Professor
Randy Barnett says, regarding Rothbard's "insistence on complete ideological purity", that "[a]lmost every intellectual who entered his orbit was eventually spun off, or self-emancipated, for some deviation or another. For this reason, the circle around Rothbard was always small." Although he self-identified as an Austrian economist, Rothbard's methodology was at odds with that of many other Austrians. In 1956, Rothbard deprecated the views of Austrian economist
Fritz Machlup, stating that Machlup was no praxeologist and calling him instead a "positivist" who failed to represent the views of Ludwig von Mises. Rothbard noted that, in fact, Machlup shared the opposing positivist view associated with economist
Milton Friedman. Mises and Machlup had been colleagues in 1920s Vienna before each relocated to the United States, and Mises later urged his American protege
Israel Kirzner to pursue his PhD studies with Machlup at
Johns Hopkins University. According to libertarian economists
Tyler Cowen and Richard Fink, Rothbard wrote that the term
evenly rotating economy (ERE) could be used to analyze complexity in a world of change. Mises introduced ERE as an alternative nomenclature for the mainstream economic method of
static equilibrium and
general equilibrium analysis. Cowen and Fink found "serious inconsistencies in both the nature of the ERE and its suggested uses". With the sole exception of Rothbard, no other economist adopted Mises' term, and the concept continued to be called "equilibrium analysis". In a 2011 article critical of Rothbard's "reflexive opposition" to inflation,
The Economist noted that his views were increasingly gaining influence among politicians and laypeople on the right. The article contrasted Rothbard's categorical rejection of inflationary policies with the monetary views of "sophisticated Austrian-school monetary economists such as
George Selgin and
Lawrence H. White", [who] follow
Hayek in treating stability of nominal spending as a monetary ideal—a position "not all that different from Scott Sumner|Mr [Scott] Sumner's". According to economist
Peter Boettke, Rothbard is better described as a
property rights economist than as an Austrian economist. In 1988, Boettke noted that Rothbard "vehemently attacked all of the books of the younger Austrians".
Ethics Although Rothbard adopted Ludwig von Mises'
deductive methodology for his social theory and economics, he parted with Mises on the question of ethics. Specifically, he rejected Mises' conviction that ethical values remain subjective and opposed
utilitarianism in favor of principle-based,
natural law reasoning. In defense of his free-market views, Mises employed utilitarian economic arguments to contend that interventionist policies worsened society. Rothbard countered that interventionist policies do, in fact, benefit some people, including certain government employees and beneficiaries of social programs. Therefore, unlike Mises, Rothbard argued for an objective, natural-law basis for the free market. but rejected the
Lockean proviso, arguing that if an individual mixes his labor with unowned land, then he becomes the proper owner eternally and that after that time, it is private property which may change hands only by trade or gift. Rothbard was a strong critic of
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."
Noam Chomsky critiqued Rothbard's ideal society as "a world so full of hate that no human being would want to live in it... First of all, it couldn't function for a second—and if it could, all you'd want to do is get out, or commit suicide or something." The philosopher James. W. Child has even questioned whether Rothbard and other similar libertarians can sustain a standard of fraud.
Anarcho-capitalism According to
anarcho-capitalists, various theorists have espoused legal philosophies similar to
anarcho-capitalism; however, Rothbard was credited with coining the terms "anarcho-capitalist" and "anarch-capitalism" in 1971 (though "anarchocapitalism [sic]" had been attested earliest in
Karl Hess's 1969 essay
The Death of Politics). He synthesized elements from the Austrian School of economics,
classical liberalism and 19th-century American
individualist anarchists into a right-wing form of anarchism.
Lew Rockwell in a memoriam called Rothbard the "conscience" of all the various strains of what he described as "libertarian anarchism", and said their advocates had often been personally inspired by his example. During his years at graduate school in the late 1940s, Rothbard considered whether strict adherence to libertarian and
laissez-faire principles required the abolition of the state altogether. He visited
Baldy Harper, a founder of the
Foundation for Economic Education, who doubted the need for any government whatsoever. Rothbard said that during this period, he was influenced by 19th-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.
Edward Stringham opined that: "In the late 1940s, Murray Rothbard decided that that [sic] private-property anarchism was the logical conclusion of free-market thinking [...]." Rothbard began to consider himself a "private property anarchist" and published works about private property anarchism in 1954; In his anarcho-capitalist model, the system of private property is upheld by private firms, such as hypothesized protection agencies, which compete in a free market and are voluntarily supported by consumers who choose to use their protective and judicial services. Anarcho-capitalists describe this as "the end of the state
monopoly on force". In an unpublished article, Rothbard wrote that economically speaking,
individualist anarchism differs from anarcho-capitalism and jokingly pondered whether libertarians should adopt the term nonarchist. Rothbard concluded the article by affirming that he is neither an anarchist nor an "archist" but a middle-of-the-roader on the archy question. In
Man, Economy, and State, Rothbard divides the various kinds of state intervention into three categories: "autistic intervention" (interference with private non-economic activities), "binary intervention", (exchange between individuals and the state); and "triangular intervention" (state-mandated exchange between individuals). Sanford Ikeda wrote that 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 it 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.
Race, gender, and civil rights Michael O'Malley, associate professor of history at
George Mason University, describes Rothbard's tone toward the
civil rights movement and the
women's suffrage movement as "contemptuous and hostile". Rothbard criticized women's rights activists, attributing the growth of the
welfare state to politically active
spinsters "whose busybody inclinations were not fettered by the responsibilities of home and hearth". Rothbard argued that varieties of
progressivism during the
Progressive Era and after, which he regarded as a noxious influence on the United States, was spearheaded by a coalition of Yankee Protestants (people from the six
New England states and
upstate New York who were
Protestants of
English descent), Jewish women and "lesbian spinsters". Rothbard, still on the theme of
feminism, wrote that "too many American men live in a matriarchy, dominated first by Momism, then by female teachers, and then by their wives", and that women were advantaged because they were supported by their husbands. Rothbard's negative view of feminism can also be found in the 1991 article
The Great Thomas & Hill Show: Stopping The Monstrous Regiment, where he wrote "At the risk of alienating my atheist libertarian friends, I think it increasingly clear that conservatives are right: that some religion is going to be dominant in every society. And that if Christianity, for example, is scorned and tossed out, some horrendous form of religion is going to take its place: whether it be Communism, New Age occultism, feminism, or Left-Puritanism. There is no getting around this basic truth of human nature." Rothbard called for the elimination of "the entire 'civil rights' structure," which he said "tramples on the property rights of every American." He consistently favored repeal of the
1964 Civil Rights Act, including Title VII regarding employment discrimination, and called for overturning the
Brown v. Board of Education decision on the grounds that state-mandated integration of schools violated libertarian principles. In an essay called "Right-wing Populism", Rothbard proposed a set of measures to "reach out" to the "middle and working classes", which included urging the police to crack down on "street criminals", writing that "cops must be unleashed" 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." Rothbard held strong opinions about many leaders of the civil rights movement. He considered black separatist
Malcolm X to be a "great black leader" and integrationist
Martin Luther King Jr. to be favored by whites because he "was the major restraining force on the developing Negro revolution". Rothbard also suggested that opposition to Martin Luther King Jr., whom he demeaned as a "coercive integrationist", should be a litmus test for members of his "
paleolibertarian" political movement. Rothbard is described by the historian John P. Jackson Jr. as espousing
antisemitism despite Rothbard's own background as a secular Jew.
Views on war 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's colleague Joseph Stromberg notes that Rothbard made two exceptions to his general condemnation of war: "the
American Revolution and the
War for Southern Independence, as
viewed from the Confederate side", referring to the
American Civil War. Rothbard condemned the "
Northern war against slavery", saying it was inspired by "fanatical" religious faith and characterized by "a cheerful willingness to uproot institutions, to commit mayhem and mass murder, to plunder and loot and destroy, all in the name of high moral principle". He celebrated
Jefferson Davis,
Robert E. Lee, and other prominent Confederates as heroes while denouncing
Abraham Lincoln,
Ulysses S. Grant, and other Union leaders, who he said had "opened the Pandora's Box of genocide and the extermination of civilians". Rothbard saw
secession movements as a tool for undermining and disintegrating the state, according to historian
Quinn Slobodian, who wrote that "Rothbard's life was marked by a search for signs of potential secession" and that "When he found them, he did his best to deepen them." His friend
Harry Elmer Barnes, the Holocaust-denying historian, used similar language, "court historians". Rothbard favorably cited Barnes' view that "the murder of Germans and Japanese was the overriding aim of World War II". In an obituary for 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." Besides broadly supporting his historical views, Rothbard promoted Barnes as an influence for future revisionists. Rothbard's endorsement of World War II revisionism and his association with Barnes and other Holocaust deniers have drawn criticism.
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". In an article for Rothbard's 50th birthday, Rothbard's friend and
Buffalo State College historian
Ralph Raico stated that Rothbard "is the main reason that revisionism has become a crucial part of the whole libertarian position".
Middle East conflict Rothbard's
The Libertarian Forum blamed the Middle East conflict on Israeli aggression "fueled by American arms and money". Rothbard warned that the Middle East conflict would draw the United States into a world war. He was
anti-Zionist and opposed United States involvement in the Middle East. Rothbard said the
Camp David Accords betrayed Palestinian aspirations and opposed
Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon. In his essay, "War Guilt in the Middle East", Rothbard wrote that Israel refused "to let these refugees return and reclaim the property taken from them," and took negative views of a
two-state solution for the
Israeli–Palestinian conflict. He wrote: "On the one hand there are the Palestinian Arabs, who have tilled the soil or otherwise used the land of Palestine for centuries; and on the other, there are a group of external fanatics, who come from all over the world, and who claim the entire land area as 'given' to them as a collective religion or tribe at some remote or legendary time in the past. There is no way the two claims can be resolved to the satisfaction of both parties. There can be no genuine settlement, no 'peace' in the face of this irrepressible conflict; there can only be either a war to the death, or an uneasy practical compromise which can satisfy no one."
Children's rights and parental obligations In the
Ethics of Liberty, Rothbard explores issues regarding
children's rights regarding 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. 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 argued that parents have the right to put a child out for
adoption or sell the rights to the child in a voluntary contract in what Rothbard suggests will be a "flourishing free market in children". He believes that
selling children as consumer goods in accord with market forces—while "superficially monstrous"—will benefit "everyone" involved in the market: "the natural parents, the children, and the foster parents purchasing". 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."
Retributive theory of criminal justice In
The Ethics of Liberty, Rothbard advocates for a "frankly
retributive theory of punishment" or a system of "a tooth (or two teeth) for a tooth". Rothbard emphasizes that all punishment must be proportional, stating that "the criminal, or invader, loses his rights to the extent that he deprived another man of his". Applying his retributive theory, Rothbard states that a thief "must pay double the extent of theft". Rothbard gives the example of a thief who stole $15,000 and says he must return the stolen money and provide the victim an additional $15,000, money to which the thief has forfeited his right. The thief would be "put in a [temporary] state of enslavement to his victim" if he is unable to pay him immediately. Rothbard also applies his theory to justify beating and torturing violent criminals, although the beatings are required to be proportional to the crime.
Torture of criminal suspects In chapter twelve of
Ethics, Rothbard turns his attention to suspects arrested by the police. 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. == Works ==