United StatesWho was Murray Rothbard?
Murray Newton Rothbard was born in New York City in 1926 and studied mathematics and economics at Columbia University, completing a doctorate in 1956 on the Panic of 1819. After reading Ludwig von Mises's Human Action he joined Mises's seminar at New York University. He taught at the Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute and from 1986 at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. His books include Man, Economy, and State (1962), America's Great Depression (1963), For a New Liberty (1973) and The Ethics of Liberty (1982). He helped found the Cato Institute and the Mises Institute and died in New York in 1995.
Political views
Concluded in 1949 that if markets should supply goods and services, defense and protection should also be provided on the market rather than by a coercive monopoly.
Source: mises.orgBuilt his political ethics on self-ownership, holding that a compulsory state monopoly of protection is illegitimate.
Source: mises.orgArgued for abolishing the state rather than merely shrinking it, applying a nonaggression principle to taxation, conscription, war, welfare and regulation.
Source: mises.orgOpposed the Federal Reserve's credit expansion, blaming it for boom and bust cycles, and favored the gold standard with 100 percent reserve banking.
Source: mises.orgOpposed militarism and Cold War interventionism, linking the growth of state power to war.
Source: mises.orgArgued that the Great Depression of 1929 was a correction of Federal Reserve-induced excess rather than a failure of free markets.
Source: mises.orgEdited Left and Right (1965-1968) and The Libertarian Forum (1969-1984), seeking temporary alliances with any groups opposing militarism.
Source: mises.orgHeld a maximally permissive view of original appropriation, placing no limit on acquiring unowned resources.
Source: plato.stanford.edu
Legacy
Rothbard is regarded as a founder of modern anarcho-capitalism and was called Mr. Libertarian by admirers; the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy describes him as the major voice of libertarianism in the United States in his lifetime. Supporters credit him with a consistent rights-based case for liberty and peace. Critics argue that a stateless society would not protect rights reliably, and others question his shifting political alliances, from the New Left in the 1960s to paleoconservatives in the 1990s.