Author: Murray N. Rothbard

[This article first appeared in The Libertarian Forum, January 1, 1970.] Now that the New Left has abandoned its earlier loose, flexible non-ideological stance, two ideologies have been adopted as guiding theoretical positions by New Leftists: Marxism-Stalinism, and anarcho-communism. Marxism-Stalinism has unfortunately conquered SDS, but anarcho-communism has attracted many leftists who are looking for a way out of the bureaucratic and statist tyranny that has marked the Stalinist road. And many libertarians, who are looking for forms of action and for allies in such actions, have become attracted by an anarchist creed which seemingly exalts the voluntary way and calls … Continue reading →

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[Making Economic Sense (1995)] Protectionism, often refuted and seemingly abandoned, has returned, and with a vengeance. The Japanese, who bounced back from grievous losses in World War II to astound the world by producing innovative, high-quality products at low prices, are serving as the convenient butt of protectionist propaganda. Memories of wartime myths prove a heady brew, as protectionists warn about this new “Japanese imperialism,” even “worse than Pearl Harbor.” This “imperialism” turns out to consist of selling Americans wonderful TV sets, autos, microchips, etc., at prices more than competitive with American firms. Is this “flood” of Japanese products really … Continue reading →

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This essay originally appeared in the January 1993 issue of The Rothbard-Rockwell Report. Yes, I confess: I’m a veteran anti-fluoridationist, thereby – not for the first time – risking placing myself in the camp of “right-wing kooks and fanatics.” It has always been a bit of mystery to me why left-environmentalists, who shriek in horror at a bit of Alar on apples, who cry “cancer” even more absurdly than the boy cried “Wolf,” who hate every chemical additive known to man, still cast their benign approval upon fluoride, a highly toxic and probably carcinogenic substance. And not only let fluoride … Continue reading →

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This article is excerpted from Wall Street, Banks, and American Foreign Policy, chapter 8, “Rockefeller, Morgan, and War” (1984; 2011). During the 1930s, the Rockefellers pushed hard for war against Japan, which they saw as competing with them vigorously for oil and rubber resources in Southeast Asia and as endangering the Rockefellers’ cherished dreams of a mass “China market” for petroleum products. On the other hand, the Rockefellers took a noninterventionist position in Europe, where they had close financial ties with German firms such as I.G. Farben and Co., and very few close relations with Britain and France. The Morgans, … Continue reading →

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[From a memo to Mr. Kenneth Templeton at the William Volker Fund, April 18, 1962.] It is not often that one is privileged to review a book of monumental import, a truly significant “breakthrough” from obscuran­tism to historical knowledge and insight. But such a book is the magnificent work by A.J .P. Taylor, The Origins of the Second World War (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1961 — now New York: Athenaeum, 1962). As Taylor points out and explains at the beginn­ing of this book, Revisionism of World War II, in every country of the world, has been virtually non-existent. In the United … Continue reading →

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Our country is beset by a large number of economic myths that distort public thinking on important problems and lead us to accept unsound and dangerous government policies. Here are ten of the most dangerous of these myths and an analysis of what is wrong with them. Myth #1 Deficits are the cause of inflation; deficits have nothing to do with inflation. In recent decades we always have had federal deficits. The invariable response of the party out of power, whichever it may be, is to denounce those deficits as being the cause of our chronic inflation. And the invariable … Continue reading →

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The Irrepressible Rothbard Essays of Murray N. Rothbard Edited by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr. . November 1993 I’m puzzled. I’d like to know why so many free-marketeers, so many free-market think-tanks and pundits, are not simply pro-Nafta, but are fervently, frantically, almost hysterically pro-Nafta. Look, I can understand, though not agree with, mild approval. An old libertarian friend of mine, for example, told me that he was mildly pro-Nafta but not really interested in the entire topic. That seems sensible. So why the furor, the passion, the enormous resources poured into praising Nafta and reviling its critics? Why is there … Continue reading →

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This was written in January 1992. WHAT IS RIGHT-WING POPULISM? The basic right-wing populist insight is that we live in a statist country and a statist world dominated by a ruling elite, consisting of a coalition of Big Government, Big Business, and various influential special interest groups. More specifically, the old America of individual liberty, private property, and minimal government has been replaced by a coalition of politicians and bureaucrats allied with, and even dominated by, powerful corporate and Old Money financial elites (e.g., the Rockefellers, the Trilateralists); and the New Class of technocrats and intellectuals, including Ivy League academics and … Continue reading →

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The Irrepressible Rothbard Essays of Murray N. Rothbard Edited by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr. . October 1994 American political life has experienced a veritable transformation. As usually happens when we are in the midst of a radical social change, we are barely aware that anything is happening, much less its full scope and dimension. In the words of Bob Dylan taunting the hated bourgeoisie in the 1960s: “You don’t know what’s happening, do you, Mr. Jones?” Except that now the tables have been turned, and “Mr. Jones” is the comfortably ensconced member of the liberal and Beltway elite ruling this … Continue reading →

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This originally appeared in the March 1994 issue of The Rothbard-Rockwell Report. On December 16, President Clinton named retired Admiral Bobby Ray Inman to fill the post of secretary of defense. To say that the nominee was universally hailed would be a masterpiece of understatement. To pundits, media people, politicians, and leading “well-informed sources” inside the Beltway, Bobby Ray Inman could walk on water. He was the perfect choice to bring order and prestige to Clinton’s troubled and screwed-up foreign and military policies. Bobby Ray was brilliant, sober, knowledgeable, the Insiders’ Insider, Mr. Intelligence. When Bobby Ray retired from many … Continue reading →

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This originally appeared in the March 1994 issue of The Rothbard-Rockwell Report. On December 16, President Clinton named retired Admiral Bobby Ray Inman to fill the post of secretary of defense. To say that the nominee was universally hailed would be a masterpiece of understatement. To pundits, media people, politicians, and leading “well-informed sources” inside the Beltway, Bobby Ray Inman could walk on water. He was the perfect choice to bring order and prestige to Clinton’s troubled and screwed-up foreign and military policies. Bobby Ray was brilliant, sober, knowledgeable, the Insiders’ Insider, Mr. Intelligence. When Bobby Ray retired from many … Continue reading →

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Perhaps the leading argument for democracy is that it substitutes “ballots for bullets”: that it replaces the inconvenient and disruptive processes of violent change by peaceful changes expressing the majority will. Some democrats have defined democracy as majority rule, while others have placed on this rule the limitation that minorities must themselves be left free to try to become a majority. But, whichever the definition, the peaceful change argument is the dominant one. (The other major argument for democracy is that the decisions of the majority are always, or almost always, morally right, but support for this article of faith … Continue reading →

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Quick: which is America’s Most Persecuted Minority? No, you’re wrong. (And it’s not Big Business either: one of Ayn Rand’s more ludicrous pronouncements.) All right, consider this: Which group has been increasingly illegalized,shamed and denigrated first by the Establishment, and then, following its lead, by society at large? Which group, far from coming out of the “closet,” has been literally forced back into the closet after centuries of walking proudly in the public square? And which group has tragically internalized the value-system of its oppressors, so that they are deeply ashamed and guilty about practicing their rites and customs? Which … Continue reading →

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The Free Market 9, no. 12 (December 1991) Labor unions are flexing their muscles again. Last year, a strike against the New York Daily News succeeded in inflicting such losses upon the company that it was forced to sell cheap to British tycoon Robert Maxwell, who was willing to accept union terms. Earlier, the bus drivers’ union struck Greyhound and managed to win a long and bloody strike. How were the unions able to win these strikes, even though unions have been declining in numbers and popularity since the end of World War II? The answer is simple: in both … Continue reading →

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This article is excerpted from volume 2, chapter 10 of An Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought (1995). An MP3 audio file of this chapter, narrated by Jeff Riggenbach, is available for download. Karl Marx, as the world knows, was born in Trier, a venerable city in Rhineland Prussia, in 1818, son of a distinguished jurist, and grandson of a rabbi. Indeed, both of Marx’s parents were descended from rabbis. Marx’s father Heinrich was a liberal rationalist who felt no great qualms about his forced conversion to official Lutheranism in 1816. What is little known is that, in his … Continue reading →

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