Rothbard Research Articles

Libertarian Film Critics in the Late Twentieth Century: A Brief Introduction

Movies are uniquely American and over time have become a part of our shared cultural heritage. So too then has the film critic had his or her own time in the spotlight, offering sharp barbs or delightful praise on those films deemed worthy. During the latter half of the twentieth century, film critics saw both their precipitous rise and fall. Libertarian magazines and publications were not exempt from adding their own takes to the array of voices already in the fray. Men like Murray Rothbard, John Hospers, and David Brudnoy are just a few of the libertarian names who aimed to bring film criticism to the readers of libertarian literature like Reason, Libertarian Forum, and the Libertarian Review. A closer look at these men and their understanding of American cinema and culture sheds light on libertarianism as well as a better understanding of what unified and differentiated libertarian film critics from each other and their peers.

The Myth of the Price Premium

A basic proposition of modern economics is the so-called price premium proposed by Irving Fisher (1907, 1922, 1930): the nominal rate of interest is composed of the real rate and a price, or inflation, premium that reflects the change in the value of money. Murray Rothbard offered a critique of Fisher’s interest theory, arguing that the price premium is largely nonexistent and proposing in its stead a terms-of-trade premium (Rothbard 2009). In the present article, we argue that Rothbard’s critique is fundamentally correct. Fisher’s price premium is an incoherent concept that does not correctly reflect monetary and financial reality. Instead we combine Rothbard’s terms-of-trade component with Mises’s (1953, 1998) understanding of inflation and interest to suggest a Mises-Rothbard premium based on the Cantillon effect as the correct understanding of the relation between money and interest. This approach allows us to explain the experience of persistently low interest rates over recent decades as a result of money creation.

Is the Rothbardian Theory of Punishment Retributive?

Murray Rothbard claims that it is “evident that our theory of proportional punishment—that people may be punished by losing their rights to the extent that they have invaded the rights of others—is frankly a retributive theory of punishment, a ‘tooth (or two teeth) for a tooth’ theory.” The present paper argues that it is not. The role that Rothbard assigns for victims in determining punishment justifies classifying his theory of punishment as corrective rather than retributive, for vesting victims with rights over punishment defeats the retributive justice requirement that criminals are punished solely because they deserve it and in accordance with their respective deserts. Instead of giving offenders what they objectively deserve, the Rothbardian theory of punishment allows victims to seek compensation in various forms, including revenge.

Fragments of libertarianism and neoliberal ascendancy: ideological features and limitations of the liberal breakthrough in Finland

ABSTRACT This article explores the fragmentary history of libertarianism in Finland. We identify actors who have advanced libertarian ideas and agendas between 1970 and 2000 and discuss the purposes for which they have been mobilized in a Finnish context. Theoretically, we emphasize the primacy of local political cultures and context in the transnational circulation of political ideologies. In Finland, the introduction of libertarianism was contingent particularly upon foreign policy developments. Empirically, we proceed from the observation that Finland was a Nordic latecomer. Programmatic libertarian views, or serious discussions of Ayn Rand or Murray Rothbard, were conspicuously absent in Cold War Finland, and even in the 1990s they figured primarily as a subculture on the nascent World Wide Web. However, when more broadly understood as a positive emancipatory promise of individual freedom, libertarian ideas were important in pushing for a liberal turn in Finnish politics and society in the 1980s and 1990s. In the end, however, anti-statist and cultural libertarianism were subsumed by statist and economic neoliberalism.

Externalities and the State

Murray Rothbard and Ludwig von Mises argued that cases of negative externalities all turn out to be instances of failure of government to enforce individual property rights adequately. This article goes beyond Rothbard and Mises in claiming that failure to enforce property rights is far from the only way in which government gives rise to externalities. Indeed, rather than externalities requiring government intervention to remedy the problems they cause, this article argues that most actions of the government actually cause externalities. Looking at externalities in this way leads to the logical conclusion that government interventions are the main obstacle to markets’ attaining maximum social utility. The line of reasoning leading to this conclusion is as follows: (1) government failures lead to externalities; (2) externalities lead to market failures; ergo (3) government failures lead to market failures. Specific government actions whose externality-generating effects are analyzed include taxes, subsidies, price controls, government spending, monetary policy, prohibitions, and income redistribution.

RARENESS IN THE INTELLECTUAL ORIGINS OF WALRAS’S THEORY OF VALUE

Historians of economic thought have carried out detailed studies of classical and marginalist approaches to value based on production cost and utility, respectively, not to mention about the fusion of both interpretations by the neoclassical school. This is not the case with rareness value, a theory commonly attributed to Léon Walras, although Aristotle surely had rareness in mind when he first attempted to explain chrematistics. This article focuses on how our understanding of rareness has evolved from the earliest economic formulations to those of Auguste and Léon Walras, contesting Murray Rothbard’s thesis that there is only one way in which the transmission of the utility theory of value can be tracked from scholasticism to the Austrian school. On the contrary, the concept of rareness continued to figure in some theories of value of the French Enlightenment, especially those that emerged within Calvinist circles, and was recovered in times of reaction against the dominant classicism.

Libertarianism, Defense of Property, and Absolute Rights

The present paper argues that libertarians (e.g. Murray Rothbard, Stephan Kinsella) who subscribe the proportionality principle while embracing the view that to have a right to property is to have a right to defend it run into what we call the Property Defense Dilemma. For if the only way to defend property is to defend it disproportionately, then a private property right – contrary to what these thinkers claim – is not accompanied by a right to defend it. The most plausible way out of the dilemma – the present paper argues – is to conceive of private property rights as only weakly absolute, to use Matthew H. Kramer’s illuminating distinction. On the other hand, libertarians who as Walter Block would like to escape the dilemma by replacing the proportionality standard with the gentleness principle run into other sorts of problems (moral implausibility, incoherence) which also shows that it is the libertarian view on rights as infinitely stringent side constraints that calls for revision and attenuation.

Murray Rothbard on War and Foreign Policy

Murray Rothbard on War and Foreign Policy

Economic planning must be polycentric, not monocentric: Introduction to a symposium on Mises and Hayek on socialism and knowledge

AbstractThe roaring (20‐) 20s are a decade of anniversaries and milestones. 2020 was the 100th anniversary of Ludwig von Mises's seminal article “Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth” and the 75th anniversary of F.A. Hayek's seminal article “The Use of Knowledge in Society.” 2022 brought a series of significant anniversaries: the 100th anniversary of Mises's Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis as well as the 60th anniversary of James M. Buchanan and Gordon Tullock's The Calculus of Consent: Logical Foundations of Constitutional Democracy, Milton Friedman's Capitalism and Freedom, and Murray Rothbard's Man, Economy, and State. It was also the 20th anniversary of Vernon Smith's Nobel Prize. The works and milestones celebrating anniversaries in 2022 owe much to Mises's and Hayek's pathbreaking contributions. This paper summarizes and contextualizes Mises's and Hayek's arguments about socialism and knowledge and introduces a Southern Economic Journal symposium on the anniversaries of “Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth” and “The Use of Knowledge in Society.”

Objectivism and Libertarian Political Thought: A Comparative Introduction

ABSTRACT The purpose of the present article is to provide a comparative introduction to Ayn Rand’s philosophy of Objectivism by exploring her most significant intellectual interactions with some of the leading figures of the libertarian movement. While revolving around Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich Hayek, Murray Rothbard, and Robert Nozick, it nevertheless pays attention to Rand’s and Objectivism’s relationship, affinities, and differences with additional authors belonging to this tradition.

Repurposing Mises: Murray Rothbard and the Birth of Anarchocapitalism.

This article examines how Murray Rothbard, though he claimed to follow Ludwig von Mises very closely, ended up making a number of radical leaps that Mises never did. It argues that Rothbard constructed anarchocapitalism by repurposing Mises's economic theory. First, whereas Mises responded to interwar socialism, Rothbard redeployed his mentor's economics in response to the militarism of the right-wing. Second, whereas Mises defended the market as a consumers' democracy against ideas about economic democracy, Rothbard developed an anti-democratic view of the market in response to the egalitarianism of the counterculture. These differences in context account for the distinctiveness of anarchocapitalism.

Leaving politics aside

In his March 2021 report “The undermining of science is Trump’s legacy” (page 24), David Kramer conflates science itself with his personal preference for the government planning of scientific research. They are two different things.Throughout the piece, Kramer smuggles in his own value judgments about what governments should do regarding science. For combating climate change, for example, he ranks the 2015 Paris Agreement highly. Another person with the same understanding of and appreciation for climate science might prefer, for whatever reason, that governments do the opposite of what Kramer wants. (Murray Rothbard’s essay “Law, property rights, and air pollution” provides insight into environmentalism without interventionism.11. M. N. Rothbard, Cato J. 2, 55 (1982).)Similar implied value judgments hold for Kramer’s comments on federal budgets and workforce: It is not interfering with scientific research to cut federal funding. Tax-funded research funnels resources into what Kramer ostensibly deems important. But all goods are scarce, so what is the opportunity cost—that is, what scientific research is not performed in other areas? No one can say. Kramer is suggesting that governments should determine the amount and direction of societal spending on scientific research, and others may simply have different opinions.Kramer’s report is not about undermining objective science itself. Rather, it is a description of the high subjective value he places on government-directed scientific research.ReferenceSection:ChooseTop of pageReference <<1. M. N. Rothbard, Cato J. 2, 55 (1982). Google Scholar© 2021 American Institute of Physics.

The Alt-Right: Neoliberalism, Libertarianism and the Fascist Temptation

There is by now broad consensus in the critical literature that neoliberalism and social conservatism have frequently coexisted in practice. Yet the alt-right fits none of the previously identified alliances: this is not the neoliberal neoconservatism of the Reagan and Bush years, nor the neoliberal communitarianism of the Third Way, nor even a form of neoliberal authoritarianism. Instead, the alt-right claims intellectual descent from economic libertarianism, on the one hand, and paleo- (as opposed to neo-) conservatism on the other. This paper traces the contours of this ‘paleolibertarian’ alliance, first by following the volatile political trajectory of Murray Rothbard, the foremost philosopher of American libertarianism, and, second, by uncovering precedents in the longer history of the American far right. It will be argued that paleoconservatism makes for a uniquely powerful ally because it offers a workable response to libertarianism’s intrinsic contradictions.

A Realistic Libertarianism

«Libertarianism is logically consistent with almost any attitude toward culture, society, religion, or moral principle. In strict logic, libertarian political doctrine can be severed from all other considerations; logically one can be —and indeed most liber-tarians in fact are: hedonists, libertines, immoralists, militant enemies of religion in general and Christianity in particular— and still be consistent adherents of libertarian politics. In fact, in strict logic, one can be a consistent devotee of property rights politically and be a moocher, a scamster, and a petty crook and racketeer in practice, as all too many libertarians turn out to be. Strictly logically, one can do these things, but psychologically, sociologically, and in practice, it simply doesn’t work that way.» [my emphasis, HHH]&#x0D; Murray Rothbard, «Big-Government Libertarians,» in: L. Rockwell, ed., The Irrepressible Rothbard, Auburn, Al: Ludwig von Mises Institute, 2000, p. 101&#x0D; Let me begin with a few remarks on libertarianism as a pure deductive theory.&#x0D; If there were no scarcity in the world, human conflicts would be impossible. Interpersonal conflicts are always and everywhere conflicts concerning scarce things. I want to do X with a given thing and you want to do Y with the same thing.&#x0D; Because of such conflicts —and because we are able to com - municate and argue with each other— we seek out norms of behavior with the purpose of avoiding these conflicts. The purpose of norms is conflict-avoidance. If we did not want to avoid conflicts, the search for norms of conduct would be sense-less. We would simply fight and struggle.

Rethinking Welfare: The LDS Welfare Program vs Public Welfare

Abstract In his libertarian manifesto, For a New Liberty, Murray Rothbard [15] points to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as an excellent model for what a private welfare program would look like in a free society. In analyzing this same organization, we can see that nearly 50 years later Rothbard’s analysis is truer than ever. Unlike the public welfare programs in the U.S., the LDS church has successfully helped lift countless individuals out of poverty and off the welfare rolls by increasing their level of productivity – a point that Henry Hazlitt [7] made in his book, The Conquest of Poverty. Public welfare, on the other hand, has continuously failed to increase the standard of living or even lift those it ostensibly seeks to help out of poverty; on the contrary, it is a system that prevents economic independence. The analysis in the present paper seeks to revive, amplify and bring up to date Rothbard’s observation and provide further insight on key factors that other private organizations can take from the Church’s model. Ultimately, it reveals that the successful journey out of poverty is not a public but rather a private endeavor.

A Rational Theory of the Rights of Children

Abstract Libertarianism has often found itself under attack from those with misplaced maternal instincts, who champion the state as the honorable protector of the vulnerable – and there is no one more in need of protection than a helpless infant. Consequently, much of the vitriol aimed at libertarianism and its laissez-faire attitude has included morbid references to child abuse and exploitation which would supposedly result from its implementation. It is therefore imperative that more work be done on the topic of children’s rights in order to reinforce the philosophical framework developed by Murray Rothbard [9] and expanded on by Walter Block and others [2], [3], [5], [6]. The purpose of this paper is to provide an independent rational foundation for the conclusions drawn by Block and co-authors [2], [5] and to expand on parts that are insufficient.

Rothbard on the Economics of Slavery

Murray Rothbard wrote an unpublished note in the early 1960s on the economics of antebellum slavery. Essentially, it was a criticism of the methodology of the New Economic History, or cliometrics, of which Conrad and Meyer (1958a) was the breakthrough application, on the topic of the profitability of slavery. Rothbard points out that their procedure in no way supports their conclusion that slavery was profitable or their ideological conclusion that the Civil War was necessary to end American slavery.

The Fatal Deceit of Public Policy: Can Austrian and Public Choice Economics Complement each other?

The Fatal Deceit of Public Policy: Can Austrian and Public Choice Economics Complement each other?

Racial Determinism and Immigration in the Works of Ludwig von Mises: A comment on Slobodian’s Alt-Right Thesis

A recent argument by historian Quinn Slobodian contends that the modern Alt-Right movement’s genealogy derives, in part, from a posited ambiguity in the early 20th century writings of Ludwig von Mises about race and immigration. This article argues that while Slobodian has correctly identified an Alt-Right precursor in the work of Hans-Hermann Hoppe, he errs in attributing its derivation to earlier works by Mises or to the Austrian school of economics more generally. Mises’s arguments on immigration and race are shown to be in direct tension with the Hoppean position, and Slobodian’s treatments of the same rely upon misconstructions of Mises’s written works. The article concludes with an alternative genealogy of Hoppe’s anti-immigration arguments, showing that they emerged from a far-right adaptation of Habermasian discursive analysis and critical theory. As a result, Hoppe's epistemic framework may be better understood as what Murray Rothbard called a libertarian extension of Juergen Habermas and Karl-Otto Apel.

Czy prawo własności nieruchomości w Polsce jest nadal prawem własności?

Is legal estate in land still legal according to Polish law?The aim of the article is to investigate the possibility of implementing Murray Rothbard’s concept of absolute property right in Polish civil procedure. The historical background of this reflection is the time of dispossessions and the policies undertaken by the Polish communist government toward rightful owners of immovable property living in post-war Warsaw. The process of dispossessions was based on the edict imposed by the president of Poland at that time, Bolesław Bierut. Therefore, another aim of the study is to examine the results of Bierut’s edict, including its substantive and procedural legal effects. Furthermore, the article has shown the advantages of primal ownership rule as a fundamental and arbitrary title to being an owner of real estate as the non-aggression principle would be restored. By taking these assumptions under consideration, the author wants to highlight that the undertaken dispossessions were lawless in the normative as well as ethical view. The logical consequence of the abovementioned philosophy is the thesis that the attitude toward this issue of recent Polish governments, which have not done anything to enable legal owners to get their ownerships back from the state, could not be tolerated as it was also unlawful. Moreover, if the Polish government had acted according to the law, the rightful owners of dispossessed legal estate would have received a convenient way to regain their property as well an opportunity to demand payment and compensation.By referring to the concept of absolute property right, the author wishes to indicate that each act of dispossession undertaken by using governmental force was unlawful as it could not be justified by ethical rules of natural law. It has also been concluded that it would be worth deliberating the implementation into Polish civil procedure of an institution which would allow owners who had lost their ownership to regain their right to property. Such proceedings would remain valid not just inter partes between the parties but also erga omnes toward all.The article is also supplemented with a reflection of the economic effects of Bierut’s edict while taking into consideration the policy’s influence upon the possibility of conducting a rational economic calculation.