Taking Government Out of Politics: Murray Rothbard on Political and Local Reform During the Progressive Era

Abstract

Murray Rothbard’s The Progressive Era contains nine full chapters of Rothbard’s unfinished manuscript as well as later published essays on material he wanted to discuss (Rothbard 2017). Chapter 9, “The National Civic Federation: Big Business Organized for Progressivism,” documents the cartelizing state and local reforms pushed by big business, big government, and court intellectuals in the early twentieth century. In Chapter 10, of which only notes remain because it was unfortunately not written, Rothbard would have continued his analysis of local Progressive Era interventions by analyzing both their political and urban reforms. Using his published writings and lectures, this paper discusses what Rothbard would have written about in the tenth chapter of the book.