FOLIO I · THINKER · GEN. 04 · N° 047

Murray N. Rothbard

Works
46
Articles
111
Generation
4.
Portrait of Murray N. RothbardPortrait of Murray N. Rothbard: Junger Murray Rothbard (1955)Portrait of Murray N. Rothbard: Rothbard an der Tafel (1985)
FOL. 04 · N° 047 · Murray N. Rothbard
BIOGRAPHY

Life and Work

Perhaps the most important student of Mises in the New World was Murray N. Rothbard. Rothbard took a B.A. in mathematics and a Ph.D. in economics at Columbia University. During this time, in the 1950s, he attended Mises's seminar at New York University. He was later a professor at the Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute (1966–1986) and at the University of Nevada in Las Vegas (1986–1995). Already in his expansive two-volume early work Man, Economy and State (1962), Rothbard was able to deepen his teacher's approaches further, particularly in the areas of monetary theory, the theory of monopoly, and the theory of capital and interest. In America's Great Depression (1963), drawing on a firm grasp of economic theory and history, he set out the channels through which the inflation responsible for the artificial boom of the "Golden Twenties" had proceeded, an inflation that then led inevitably to the stock market crash of 1929. With this interpretation he contradicted the still-prevailing, Keynesian-tinged reading of "Black Thursday". With his two-volume work in the history of economic doctrine, An Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought (1995), Rothbard presented a wide-ranging history of economic theory from the perspective of the Austrians. Besides his teaching in New York and Las Vegas, he wrote well over a thousand articles and 25 books, including works on political philosophy and natural-law ethics. As a political agitator, he sharply criticized the aggressive foreign policy of the United States, the expansion of the state, and the curtailment of fundamental liberties, and he developed into a radical representative of the libertarian movement, while always retaining his fundamentally pacifist outlook.
Metadata
Born
2. März 1926
Died
7. Januar 1995
Generation
Generation 4
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Life stations

Stations

  1. 1926
    1926
    Birth · New York City
    Birth

    Born in New York City on 2 March 1926.[1]

  2. ⁦1945–1956⁩
    ⁦1945–1956⁩
    Studies · New York City
    Studies at Columbia University

    Earned a B.A. in mathematics and a Ph.D. in economics at Columbia University.

  3. ⁦1949–1959⁩
    ⁦1949–1959⁩
    Conference · New York City
    Mises's Private Seminar at NYU

    After reading Mises's <em>Human Action</em>, he began attending the private seminar at NYU regularly in 1949; he remained active into the 1970s. bio_de names the 1950s as the central period.[1]

  4. ⁦1950–1962⁩
    ⁦1950–1962⁩
    Career · New York City
    Senior Analyst at the William Volker Fund

    From the 1950s until 1962 as a “senior analyst” with a research grant from the William Volker Fund – the financial basis for Rothbard's early major works.[1]

  5. 1953
    1953
    Marriage · New York City
    Marriage to JoAnn Schumacher

    Married JoAnn Beatrice Schumacher in New York City in 1953; she remained his life partner until Rothbard's death in 1995.[8]

  6. 1956
    1956
    Doctorate · New York City
    Ph.D., Columbia (<em>The Panic of 1819</em>)

    Received his doctorate in 1956 with the dissertation “The Panic of 1819” at Columbia University. The work had been delayed for years – Arthur Burns rejected it; only after Burns had left the Columbia faculty to chair Eisenhower's Council of Economic Advisers was it accepted under Joseph Dorfman.[1]

  7. 1962
    1962
    Publication · New York City
    <em>Man, Economy, and State</em>

    Publication of the two-volume early work <em>Man, Economy, and State</em>, in which Rothbard further developed Mises's approaches in monetary theory, the theory of monopoly, and the theory of capital and interest.[1]

  8. 1963
    1963
    Publication · New York City
    <em>America's Great Depression</em>

    Publication of <em>America's Great Depression</em>. Rothbard set out how the inflation of the 'Roaring Twenties' led to the stock market crash of 1929, and contested the Keynesian interpretation.[1]

  9. 1964
    1964
    Publication · New York City
    <em>What Has Government Done to Our Money?</em>

    A pamphlet-like work on monetary history and state intervention in the monetary system; one of the most influential pleas for the gold standard in the second half of the 20th century.[1]

  10. ⁦1966–1986⁩
    ⁦1966–1986⁩
    Academic post · New York City
    Professorship at Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute

    Professor at Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute from 1966 to 1986.[1]

  11. 1973
    1973
    Publication · New York City
    <em>For a New Liberty</em>

    A major libertarian manifesto; it outlines a systematic anarcho-capitalist social order.[1]

  12. 1976
    1976
    Founding · New York City
    Co-founding of the Center for Libertarian Studies— approximate

    Co-founder of the Center for Libertarian Studies, a libertarian research and lecture organisation.[6]

  13. 1977
    1977
    Founding · Washington, D.C.
    Co-founding of the Cato Institute

    Co-founder of the Cato Institute together with Charles Koch and Edward Crane; later a break with the Cato Institute. In the same year, founding of the “Journal of Libertarian Studies”.[1]

  14. 1982
    1982
    Founding · Auburn, Alabama
    Co-founding of the Ludwig von Mises Institute

    Co-founder of the Ludwig von Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama; as Academic Vice-President, the central academic figure of the institute until his death.[1]

  15. 1982
    1982
    Publication · New York City
    <em>The Ethics of Liberty</em>

    A systematic foundation for natural-law libertarianism.[1]

  16. ⁦1986–1995⁩
    ⁦1986–1995⁩
    Academic post · Las Vegas
    Professorship at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas

    Professor at the University of Nevada in Las Vegas from 1986 to 1995.[1]

  17. 1995
    1995
    Publication
    “An Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought”

    Publication of the two-volume work on the history of economic doctrine, presenting a comprehensive history of economic theory from the perspective of the Austrians.[1]

  18. 1995
    1995
    Death · New York City
    Death

    Died on 7 January 1995 in New York City.[1]

Relationships

Influences

Influenced by · 4
  1. ⁦1949–1959⁩
    ⁦1949–1959⁩
    Teacher

    Regarded as perhaps the most important Mises student in the New World; Rothbard deepened his teacher's approaches especially in the theory of money, monopoly, capital and interest.[1]

  2. ⁦1956–1956⁩
    ⁦1956–1956⁩
    Doctoral advisor
    Joseph Dorfman⁦(1904–1991)⁩ · US-Wirtschaftsgeschichte

    Doctoral advisor at Columbia University: after Burns's move to Eisenhower's Council of Economic Advisers, the dissertation “The Panic of 1819” was accepted in 1956 under Joseph Dorfman.[1]

  3. —
    —
    Doctoral advisor
    Arthur Burns⁦(1904–1987)⁩ · NBER / US-Notenbank

    Originally the doctoral advisor at Columbia, he rejected the dissertation “The Panic of 1819” for years; a family acquaintance of the Rothbards. Only after Burns moved to Eisenhower's Council of Economic Advisers (1953) could the doctorate be completed.

  4. —
    —
    Antipode
    Milton Friedman⁦(1912–2006)⁩ · Chicago School

    Intellectual antipode to Milton Friedman: Rothbard as a radical-libertarian Austrian counter-model to the monetarist Chicago School, with numerous public debates on monetary, central-bank and business-cycle policy.[1]

Influenced · 3
  1. ⁦1986–1995⁩
    ⁦1986–1995⁩
    Teacher

    Hoppe went to the USA for the purpose of study and became a long-standing student of Murray N. Rothbard; he eventually took over his chair at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.[2]

  2. —
    —
    Academic influence
    Samuel Edward Konkin III⁦(1947–2004)⁩ · US-Agorismus

    Samuel Edward Konkin III wird in der Wikipedia-EN-Infobox als „notable student" Rothbards aufgeführt; sein Agorismus baut explizit auf Rothbards anarchokapitalistischem Ansatz auf.[3]

  3. —
    —
    Academic influence
    Walter Block⁦(1941–living)⁩ · Wiener Schule (zeitgenoessisch)

    Walter Block wird in der Wikipedia-EN-Infobox als „notable student" Rothbards geführt; sein Werk steht ausdruecklich in der Rothbard-Tradition.[5]

Private seminar, colleagues, Mont Pèlerin · 7
  1. ⁦1949–1959⁩
    ⁦1949–1959⁩
    Private seminar

    Participant in the Mises-Privatseminar at NYU from 1949 to the end of the 1950s, with activity into the 1970s.[1]

  2. ⁦1950–1962⁩
    ⁦1950–1962⁩
    Other relationship
    William Volker Fund · US-Libertarismus (Förderfonds)

    William Volker Fund förderte Rothbard über zehn Jahre als Senior Analyst und Stipendiat – die finanzielle Basis seiner frühen Hauptwerke.[1]

  3. ⁦1977–1981⁩
    ⁦1977–1981⁩
    Co-author
    Charles Koch⁦(1935–living)⁩ · US-Libertarismus

    Co-founder, with Charles Koch and Edward Crane, of the Cato Institute in 1977; break in 1981.[6]

  4. ⁦1977–1981⁩
    ⁦1977–1981⁩
    Co-author
    Edward H. Crane⁦(1944–2026)⁩ · US-Libertarismus (Cato)

    Co-founder of the Cato Institute in 1977 together with Edward Crane and Charles Koch; break in 1981 (Rothbard was removed from the board).[7]

  5. 1980
    1980
    Colleague

    Garrison war über Jahrzehnte Adjunct Scholar am Mises Institute und teilte mit Rothbard die Verteidigung der Mises-Hayek-Konjunkturtheorie.

  6. ⁦1982–1995⁩
    ⁦1982–1995⁩
    Co-author
    Llewellyn H. Rockwell jr.⁦(1944–living)⁩ · Wiener Schule / Mises Institute

    Mit Lew Rockwell Mitbegründer des Ludwig von Mises Institute (Auburn, Alabama) 1982; Rockwell wird in mises.org/profile als „Institutsgründer" und akademischer Weggefaehrte Rothbards bis zu dessen Tod geführt.[1]

  7. ⁦1986–1995⁩
    ⁦1986–1995⁩
    Colleague

    From 1986 Hoppe and Rothbard worked together at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas; after Rothbard's death in 1995 Hoppe took over his chair.

Murray N. Rothbard in the context of the School as a whole: five generations, their teacher-student lineages, circles and collegial ties.

Show in the family tree →
SOURCES ON STATIONS AND RELATIONSHIPS29 citations · 4 sources
Buch (Sekundärliteratur)· 2
  • [6]Hawley 2016: Right-Wing Critics of American Conservatism, S. 129, 164 · 2×
  • [7]Hawley 2016: Right-Wing Critics of American Conservatism, S. 129, 164, 166
Topography

Places of Activity

CATALOGUE OF WORKS · CHRONOLOGICAL

The Books

1960s
1962
36 yrs.
Book·2 editions
Man, Economy, and State is Murray N. Rothbard's systematic treatise on economic theory. Building from the action axiom and two subsidiary postulates, Rothbard deduces the whole corpus of economics step by step, moving from Crusoe economics and barter to indirect exchange, the pricing of consumers' goods, an integrated theory of production, capital and interest, factor pricing, and entrepreneurship. He advances a pure time-preference theory of interest synthesized with Frank Fetter's rent theory, rejects the prevailing short-run theory of the firm, and argues that monopoly price can arise only from a state grant of privilege. The final chapters apply praxeological analysis to coercive intervention: price control, taxation, inflation, business cycles, and government expenditure. The book includes Rothbard's preface, an extensive footnote apparatus, and a full bibliography.
OriginalEnglish
Further editions
The Case for a 100 Percent Gold Dollar
Book
OriginalEnglish
The Panic of 1819: Reactions and Policies
Book
OriginalEnglish
1963
37 yrs.
Book·2 editions
In this short monograph, first published in 1963, Murray N. Rothbard explains the origin and function of money and the consequences of government control over it. The first part derives money from the free market: as the most marketable commodity selected through indirect exchange, traded by weight, with private coinage and full-reserve warehousing. Rothbard argues that any supply of money suffices and that inflation, defined as money substitutes not backed by the metal stock, only redistributes wealth. The second part traces how government seizes the mint, debases coin, exploits Gresham's Law, charters central banks, and finally abandons the gold standard. A third part, added in 1974, narrates the monetary breakdown of the West in nine phases from the classical gold standard to the fluctuating fiat currencies after 1973.
OriginalEnglish
Further editions
1969
43 yrs.
Economic Depression: Causes and Cures
Book
OriginalEnglish
1970s
1970
44 yrs.
Book
With the tools of praxeological economics, "Power and Market" analyses the effects of state intervention in the market and society. Murray N. Rothbard assigns every form of intervention to one of three types: autistic, binary, and triangular. For each he shows that it reduces the utility of those involved and misdirects resources. In the first chapter he argues that even defence and legal services could be provided through the market, so that the state would be superfluous. The middle chapters deal with price controls, monopoly privileges (licences, tariffs, patents, conservation laws), the incidence and effect of taxes, as well as government expenditure. The penultimate chapter criticizes anti-market ethics (equality, security, love of one's neighbour by coercion) as partly contradictory. The work, originally written as the concluding part of "Man, Economy, and State", first appeared in 1970.
OriginalEnglish
1972
46 yrs.
A New History of Leviathan [ed. with Ronald Radosh]
Book
OriginalEnglish
Book
Murray N. Rothbard's essay argues that education is an individual, lifelong process of self-development, and that compulsory state schooling runs counter to this nature. Since people differ greatly in aptitude, pace and interests, individual instruction by the parents is the ideal, whereas state-mandated uniform instruction presses all children into a single mould. The first part develops this individualist theory of education and the fundamental question of whether the parents or the state have authority over the child. The second and third parts provide a historical account of compulsory schooling: from the Reformation (Luther, Calvin) through Prussia, France and England to fascism, National Socialism and communism, as well as its development in the United States from New England to "progressive education". Rothbard draws on Spencer, Isabel Paterson and Ludwig von Mises, and interprets state schooling as an instrument of standardization and of training in obedience.
OriginalEnglish
1973
47 yrs.
Book
In America's Great Depression (first published 1963) Murray N. Rothbard applies Ludwig von Mises's monetary theory of the business cycle to the United States slump of 1929. The thesis runs counter to the prevailing view: the depression was not a failure of laissez-faire capitalism but the consequence of prior government and Federal Reserve intervention. Part I sets out the Austrian cycle theory, arguing that bank credit expansion distorts the structure of production and makes a corrective recession inevitable, and rebuts Keynesian, underconsumptionist, acceleration-principle and Schumpeterian alternatives. Part II documents the inflationary boom of 1921 to 1929, tracing reserve growth, acceptance and securities policy, and the Federal Reserve's cooperation with the Bank of England. Part III examines the contraction of 1929 to 1933, presenting Herbert Hoover as an interventionist who propped up wage rates, expanded public works and farm supports, and thereby prolonged the depression. An appendix estimates the rising fiscal burden of government on private product.
OriginalEnglish
Book·2 editions
In this manifesto, Murray N. Rothbard sets out the libertarian position: every human being owns himself and whatever he appropriates from unowned nature through labour, from which follow free exchange, unrestricted private property, and the non-aggression axiom. The state here appears as the central, institutionalized violator of rights, acting in a systematically aggressive manner through taxation, conscription, and war and legitimizing its rule with the help of a caste of intellectuals. After this theoretical part, Rothbard applies the principle to specific contested issues: education, welfare, inflation and the business cycle, roads and police, the courts, the environment, and foreign policy, in each case with the proposal to replace state services with private, market-based solutions. The work closes with a strategy for disseminating the doctrine. It first appeared in 1973.
OriginalEnglish
Further editions
The Essential von Mises
Book
OriginalEnglish
1974
48 yrs.
Egalitarianism as a Revolt Against Nature and Other Essays
Book
OriginalEnglish
1975
49 yrs.
Conceived in Liberty: Volume 1
Book
OriginalEnglish
Book
Volume 2 of Murray Rothbard's narrative history "Conceived in Liberty" treats the American colonies in the first half of the eighteenth century, the era of British "salutary neglect" that conventional textbooks dismiss as uneventful. Rothbard argues the reverse: this was the period in which colonial Assemblies used their control of the purse to wrest power from royally appointed governors, while lax enforcement of mercantilist restrictions under Walpole and Newcastle left the colonies virtually self-governing. The book first surveys developments in the separate colonies (land tenure, slavery, the rise of Franklin, Quaker abolitionism, the Paxton Boys) and then turns to intercolonial currents: paper-money inflation, freedom of the press, the Great Awakening, the growth of Deism, and the spread of English libertarian thought. A final part examines the conflict between Assembly and governor, mercantilist trade policy, and the imperial wars from King George's War through the French and Indian War, reading events through the recurring contest of Liberty against Power.
OriginalEnglish
1976
50 yrs.
Book
Conceived in Liberty is Murray N. Rothbard's narrative history of colonial and revolutionary America, comprising four original volumes (1975-1979). Rothbard states his guiding theme explicitly: history as a recurring conflict between liberty ("social power," voluntary interaction) and state power, following Albert Jay Nock and Lord Acton. Volume 1 covers the seventeenth-century founding of the colonies, volume 2 the "salutary neglect" of the early eighteenth century, volume 3 the mounting resistance from the French and Indian War to Lexington and Concord, and volume 4 the Revolutionary War and its aftermath. The method is deliberately detailed narrative rather than compressed summary, organized by colony and by period, so that the reader can weigh the events directly. Each volume closes with a bibliographical essay, and a combined preface explains the project's libertarian and methodological premises, citing Ludwig von Mises's Theory and History.
OriginalEnglish
1979
53 yrs.
Book
Conceived in Liberty is Murray N. Rothbard's multi-volume narrative history of the British colonies in North America and of the American Revolution. As he explains in the Preface, Rothbard seeks to recover the narrative factual level of history that is lost in the usual textbooks, and he organizes the material around the perennial conflict he regards as central: that between Liberty and Power, between society and the state. Volume 1 covers the seventeenth century and the founding of the colonies; Volume 2 the first half of the eighteenth century under 'salutary neglect'; Volume 3 the road to revolution from 1760 to 1775; and Volume 4 the Revolutionary War together with its political and financial history. Methodologically, Rothbard explicitly draws on Ludwig von Mises (Theory and History), Lord Acton, and Albert Jay Nock. The account is arranged chronologically and colony by colony, and is furnished with extensive bibliographical essays in each volume.
OriginalEnglish
Book
Conceived in Liberty is Murray N. Rothbard's narrative history of colonial America and the American Revolution, originally comprising four volumes. Beginning with Europe at the close of the Middle Ages, the work traces the founding and growth of the thirteen colonies through the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and culminates in the Revolutionary War of 1775 to 1784. Rothbard's organizing theme, stated in the preface, is the recurring conflict between liberty and state power, drawing on Albert Jay Nock's distinction between social power and state power and on Lord Acton's moral emphasis. The account restores the detailed factual narrative that Rothbard argues survey textbooks have squeezed out, covering land tenure, mercantilist restrictions, religious dissent, paper-money inflation, and the military and political history of the Revolution, including the drive toward the Articles of Confederation.
OriginalEnglish
Book
Two essays by Murray Rothbard, published together in 1979. The first, 'The Mantle of Science,' argues that scientism, the uncritical transfer of the methods of the physical sciences to the study of human action, is itself unscientific because it denies individual consciousness and free will. Rothbard criticizes mechanical analogies (servomechanism, model-building, measurement, the use of mathematics) and organismic analogies that treat collectives such as 'society' as acting entities. The second essay, 'Praxeology as the Method of the Social Sciences,' presents the axiomatic-deductive method that Ludwig von Mises called praxeology, grounded in the axiom of purposive human action, and contrasts it with positivism. Rothbard traces this tradition through Say, Senior, Cairnes, Menger, and Böhm-Bawerk, and defends methodological individualism with reference to Weber, Hayek, and Schutz.
OriginalEnglish
1980s
1982
56 yrs.
Book·2 editions
Murray Rothbard's "The Ethics of Liberty" (1982) develops a systematic theory of liberty grounded in natural law, at the core of which lies the principle of self-ownership and original appropriation (homesteading). From the concept of property, Rothbard deductively derives a complete libertarian system of law: the theory of property and crime, of contracts as the transfer of ownership, and of punishment and proportionality, as well as the rights of children. The work is divided into five parts, ranging from the natural-law foundation, through a theory of liberty developed on the Crusoe model and a critique of the state, to an engagement with alternative theories of liberty (Mises, Hayek, Berlin, Nozick) and a strategy for bringing about a free society.
OriginalEnglish
Further editions
1983
57 yrs.
The Mystery of Banking
Book
OriginalEnglish
1984
58 yrs.
Book
Murray Rothbard's essay, published in 1984, reads American foreign and monetary policy from the Civil War to the Reagan era as a history of competing financial elites, above all the House of Morgan and the Rockefeller interests. With methodological individualism and a libertarian class analysis, Rothbard traces presidents, cabinet members and diplomats back to their banking and corporate connections, from Cleveland and Theodore Roosevelt through Wilson's entry into the war in 1917 and the founding of the Federal Reserve to the Council on Foreign Relations and the Trilateral Commission. The thesis: it is not party affiliation but the financial ties of a regime that determine its course, and investment bankers are structurally inclined towards statism. The argument draws on Austrian business cycle theory and the revisionist economic history of Gabriel Kolko.
OriginalEnglish
1990s
1994
68 yrs.
Book
In "The Case Against the Fed" argues Murray N. Rothbard that the Federal Reserve is the sole institutional source of chronic price inflation in the United States, and that the system should be abolished. The book proceeds in two parts. First, Rothbard develops a theory of money, deriving it from market exchange and gold, and then frames fractional-reserve banking as a form of legalized counterfeiting that inflates the money supply, redistributes wealth from late to early receivers of new money, and generates booms and busts. Second, he gives a revisionist history of how a banking cartel, led by the Morgan and Rockefeller interests, engineered the Fed during the Progressive Era, culminating in the 1910 Jekyll Island meeting and the Federal Reserve Act of 1913. The work closes with a concrete proposal to liquidate the Fed and return to a gold-coin standard. It draws explicitly on Austrian monetary theory.
OriginalEnglish
1995
69 yrs.
An Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought: Volume 1: Economic Thought Before Adam Smith
Book
OriginalEnglish
An Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought: Volume 2: Classical Economics
Book
OriginalEnglish
1997
71 yrs.
The Logic of Action
Book
OriginalEnglish
The Logic of Action: Volume 1: Method, Money and the Austrian School
Book
OriginalEnglish
The Logic of Action: Volume 2: Applications and Criticism from the Austrian School
Book
OriginalEnglish
2000s
2000
74 yrs.
Book
The Irrepressible Rothbard collects the journalistic essays and columns that Murray N. Rothbard wrote for The Rothbard-Rockwell Report between 1990 and 1995. The pieces argue for a radical, anti-state libertarianism allied with the Old Right and with paleoconservatism, set against what Rothbard calls the ruling elite and its neoconservative and social-democratic apologists. The opening essays lay out a strategy of right-wing populism; later sections turn to electoral politics, the Gulf War and U.S. foreign intervention, the post-Cold War nationalities question, the culture war, feminism, the Clinton administration, and a closing run of film reviews. Throughout, Rothbard tests each policy and politician against one standard: whether it moves toward or away from liberty. The volume gathers short, polemical commentary rather than the formal economic treatises for which he is otherwise known.
OriginalEnglish
2002
76 yrs.
Book
Murray Rothbard reconstructs the monetary and banking history of the United States from the colonial era to the Second World War and interprets it consistently through the lens of Austrian monetary theory. In doing so, he deliberately sets himself apart from the quantitative-positivist 'new economic history' and from Friedman and Schwartz's "A Monetary History". Rather than collecting money-supply statistics, Rothbard inquires into motives and beneficiaries and reveals which financial interests stood behind paper-money issues, the First and Second Bank of the United States, the National Banking System and the founding of the Federal Reserve. The work consists of five parts, originally published separately: colonial to pre-twentieth-century monetary history, the origins of the Federal Reserve, the Fed from Hoover to Roosevelt amid the struggle between Morgan and Rockefeller interests, the gold-exchange standard of the interwar period, and the international monetary policy of the New Deal up to Bretton Woods. A recurring thesis is that Gresham's Law, fractional-reserve banking and state-backed bank cartels produced inflation and crises.
OriginalEnglish
2007
81 yrs.
Making Economic Sense
Book
OriginalEnglish
Book
Murray N. Rothbard recounts the history of the American 'Old Right', a loose coalition of opponents of the New Deal at home and of intervention abroad, and of its displacement by a 'New Right' marked by anti-communism and militarism. The central thesis: it was not the neoconservatives but already the founding of National Review in 1955 that turned the old, market-liberal and isolationist right wing into its opposite, a 'revolution within the form'. Rothbard combines this intellectual history with a partial autobiography: from Mencken, Nock, Chodorov and the Mises seminar, through his path to Anarcho-Capitalism, to the alliance with the New Left of the 1960s. The work was published in 2007; the manuscript dates from the 1970s, supplemented by a chapter from 1991.
OriginalEnglish
2010s
2010
84 yrs.
Keynes the Man
Book
OriginalEnglish
Book
Strictly Confidential gathers more than forty previously unpublished memoranda, book reviews and letters that Murray N. Rothbard wrote for the William Volker Fund between roughly 1956 and 1962. The collection opens with the confidential strategy paper "What Is to Be Done?", in which Rothbard asks how a libertarian society can be created and calls for a deliberately militant tactic, modelled on Lenin, of building a libertarian "hard core" against dilution by conservatism. The remaining pieces are arranged under political theory, history, economics, foreign policy and literature. Recurring themes are the demarcation of libertarianism from anarchism and from National Review conservatism, a revisionist, non-interventionist foreign policy, and the critique of Keynes, of Irving Fisher's equation of exchange and of the Chicago School.
OriginalEnglish
2011
85 yrs.
Book
This collection gathers fifty-one essays by Murray N. Rothbard, arranged in seven thematic sections: economic method, the Austrian School, property and the public sector, taxation, trade and freedom, money and calculation, and criticism of rival economists. The methodological core defends praxeology, the deductive derivation of economic law from the axiom of purposive human action, against positivism, mathematical modelling, and the empirical testing borrowed from physics. Rothbard applies this framework to welfare economics, property rights and pollution liability, the incidence and alleged neutrality of taxation, mercantilism, the Austrian theory of money, and the socialist calculation debate. The closing section critiques Milton Friedman, Paul Samuelson, Robert Heilbroner, and the Buchanan-Tullock public-choice approach. The essays serve as a companion to Rothbard’s treatise Man, Economy, and State, and the book closes with a bibliography and an index.
OriginalEnglish
2012
86 yrs.
War Collectivism
Book
OriginalEnglish
2014
88 yrs.
School Sucks
Book
OriginalGerman
2015
89 yrs.
Book
In this monograph, written in 1959, Murray N. Rothbard examines whether scientific progress requires state planning, and answers in the negative. His central thesis: the allocation of resources to research and technology is an economic problem that the free market, through the price system, solves more efficiently than state direction. Against the backdrop of the Sputnik shock, he refutes the alleged shortage of scientists, the supposed scarcity of private research, and the myth that great inventions require large-scale, state-directed research. In doing so, he draws heavily on Jewkes, Sawers, and Stillerman, as well as on John R. Baker regarding Soviet science. Separate chapters address the inefficiency of state-run military research, atomic energy, specific recommendations on tax policy, and automation, whose consequences for employment he defends against the spectre of technological unemployment. An epilogue recognizes the value of technology for a free life.
OriginalEnglish
2016
90 yrs.
Book
This short collection assembles two pieces by Murray N. Rothbard. The longer one, "A Genuine Gold Dollar," argues that the only way to separate money from the state is to redefine the dollar itself as a fixed weight of gold, redeemable on demand by its issuer. Rothbard rejects Hayek's plan to denationalize money through competing private currency names, holding that new names cannot be accepted as money because, by the regression theorem, a medium of exchange must emerge from a prior commodity. He likewise rejects the commodity-basket or "commodity dollar" of Irving Fisher and others, invoking the absence of any unitary price level and the workings of Gresham's law. The second piece, "Alan Greenspan: A Minority Report" (1987), is a polemical portrait casting Greenspan as a conservative Keynesian whose professed Randianism and gold-standard sympathies never reach his actual policy.
OriginalEnglish
Never A Dull Moment
Book
OriginalEnglish
2017
91 yrs.
The Progressive Era
Book
OriginalEnglish
2019
93 yrs.
Conceived in Liberty: Volume 5
Book
OriginalEnglish
2020s
2022
96 yrs.
Mensch, Wirtschaft und Staat
Book
OriginalGerman
ARTICLES · 111 CATALOGUED

Essays, Reviews, Lectures

1950s
1951
25 yrs.
Mises’s Human Action: Comment
Article
OriginalEnglish
Praxeology: Reply to Mr. Schuller
Article
OriginalEnglish
1956
30 yrs.
Toward a Reconstruction of Utility and Welfare Economics
Article
OriginalEnglish
1957
31 yrs.
Huntington on Conservatism: A Comment
Article
OriginalEnglish
In Defense of ‚Extreme Apriorism‘
Article
OriginalEnglish
1958
32 yrs.
A Note on Burke’s Vindication of Natural Society
Article
OriginalEnglish
1960s
1960
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1961
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The Fallacy of the ‚Public Sector‘
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1962
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Epistemological Problems of Economics: Comment
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H. L. Mencken: The Joyous Libertarian
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Review of Freedom and the Law, by B. Leoni
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The Case For a 100 Percent Gold Dollar
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1963
37 yrs.
Money, the State and Modern Mercantilism
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The Frankfort Resolutions and the Panic of 1819
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The Logic and Semantics of Government
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The Negro Revolution
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1964
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1965
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1966
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1967
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The Great Society: A Libertarian Critique
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1968
42 yrs.
Biography of Ludwig von Mises
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Harry Elmer Barnes As Revisionist of the Cold War
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1970s
1970
44 yrs.
The Hoover Myth
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1971
45 yrs.
Freedom, Inequality, Primitivism and the Division of Labor
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Lange, Mises and Praxeology: The Retreat from Marxism
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Ludwig von Mises and the Paradigm of Our Age
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1972
46 yrs.
Capitalism versus Statism
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Herbert Hoover and the Myth of Laissez Faire
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Article
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Review of Roads to Freedom: Essays in Honor of Friedrich A. von Hayek
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1973
47 yrs.
Egalitarianism As a Revolt Against Nature
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Praxeology as the Method of Economics
Article
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Praxeology as the Method of Social Sciences
Article
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Value Implications of Economic Theory
Article
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1974
48 yrs.
Historical Origins
Article
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Justice and Property Rights
Article
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Left and Right: The Prospects For Liberty
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Review of Competition and Entrepreneurship, Vol. 12, by I. Kirzner
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Review of The Twisted Dream, by D. Dowd
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The Anatomy of the State
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The Importance of the Youngstein Campaign
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1975
49 yrs.
Gold vs. Fluctuating Fiat Exchange Rates
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Justice and Property Rights
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Total Reform: Nothing Less
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1976
50 yrs.
Deflation Reconsidered
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Ludwig von Mises and Economic Calculation Under Socialism
Article
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New Light on the Prehistory of the Austrian School
Article
OriginalEnglish
Praxeology, Value Judgments, and Public Policy
Article
OriginalEnglish
Article
Murray Rothbard's essay "Praxeology: The Methodology of Austrian Economics" (1976) sets out the praxeological method as the hallmark of the Austrian School. Starting from the Axiom of Action (human beings act in a goal-directed manner), Rothbard derives central implications: purposefulness, the means-ends relation, time, uncertainty and scarcity. He explains why verbal rather than mathematical deduction is used, and discusses the epistemological status of the axioms, contrasting Mises's Kantian a priori position with his own Aristotelian-empirical reading. He then distinguishes praxeology from technology, psychology, history and ethics, and develops Mises's critique of econometrics and quantitative economics. The text draws on numerous citations from Mises, Hayek, Say, Senior, Cairnes and Schütz.
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The Austrian Theory of Money
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1977
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1978
52 yrs.
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1979
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Article
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1980s
1980
54 yrs.
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Myths and Truths About Libertarianism
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1981
55 yrs.
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58 yrs.
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59 yrs.
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1989
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Mises and the Role of the Economist in Public Policy
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Murray N. Rothbard. (n.d.). Edited by mises.at and scholarium. Accessed July 16, 2026, from https://mises.at/en/denker/murray-n-rothbard
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“Murray N. Rothbard.” n.d. Edited by mises.at and scholarium. Accessed July 16, 2026. https://mises.at/en/denker/murray-n-rothbard.
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Murray N. Rothbard, edited by mises.at and scholarium, https://mises.at/en/denker/murray-n-rothbard (accessed July 16, 2026).