Author: Murray N. Rothbard

This first appeared in The Libertarian Forum, Volume XI, NO.2, March-April, 1978 Someone has, indubitably, shot and almost assassinated Larry Flynt, creator and publisher of Hustler and other publications. Why did he do it? The Establishment theory is that a lone nut Christian did it, and indeed they picked up an authentic Christian at the scene of the crime, only to find that he was not the assassin. Let us examine the alternative possible theories: (1) the Lone Nut Christian. But why would the lone Christian, however nutty, try to kill Larry Flynt shortly after he had converted from pornography to Jesus? Maybe before, … Continue reading →

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Abolition of the public sector means, of course, that all pieces of land, all land areas, including streets and roads, would be owned privately, by individuals, corporations, cooperatives, or any other voluntary groupings of individuals and capital. The fact that all streets and land areas would be private would by itself solve many of the seemingly insoluble problems of private operation. What we need to do is to reorient our thinking to consider a world in which all land areas are privately owned. Let us take, for example, police protection. How would police protection be furnished in a totally private economy? Part of … Continue reading →

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This article, originally published in the December 1994, is collected in Lew Rockwell’s The Irrepressible Rothbard. For some time I have been hammering at the theme that the main cultural and political problem of our time is not “secular humanism.” The problem with making secularism the central focus of opposition is that, by itself, secularism would totally lack the fanaticism, the demonic energy, the continuing and permanent drive to take over and remake the culture and the society, that has marked the left for two centuries. Logically, one would expect a secular humanist to be a passive skeptic, ready to adapt … Continue reading →

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What national boundaries can be considered as just? In the first place, it must be recognized that there are no just national boundaries per se; that real justice can only be founded on the property rights of individuals. If fifty people decided voluntarily to set up an organization for common services or self-defense of their persons and properties in a certain geographical area, then the boundaries of that association, based on the just property rights of the members, will also be just. National boundaries are only just insofar as they are based on voluntary consent and the property rights of their members or citizens. Just national boundaries … Continue reading →

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Liberals will generally concede the right of every individual to his “personal liberty,” to his freedom to think, speak, write, and engage in such personal “exchanges” as sexual activity between “consenting adults.” In short, the liberal attempts to uphold the individual’s right to the ownership of his own body, but then denies his right to “property,” i.e., to the ownership of material objects. Hence, the typical liberal dichotomy between “human rights,” which he upholds, and “property rights,” which he rejects. Yet the two, according to the libertarian, are inextricably intertwined; they stand or fall together. Take, for example, the liberal … Continue reading →

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The government imposes price controls largely in order to divert public attention from governmental inflation to the alleged evils of the free market. As we have seen, “Gresham’s Law”—that an artificially overvalued money tends to drive an artificially undervalued money out of circulation—is an example of the general consequences of price control. The government places, in effect, a maximum price on one type of money in terms of the other. Maximum price causes a shortage—disappearance into hoards or exports—of the currency suffering the maximum price (artificially undervalued) and leads it to be replaced in circulation by the overpriced money. We … Continue reading →

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The Murray Rothbard wall poster depicts a graying professor pecking at a typewriter. His words rise magically from the machine and blend into a black flag of anarchy rippling above his head. Beneath the drawing is the caption: “Murray N. Rothbard—the greatest living enemy of the state.” The poster, like almost everything else relating to politics, causes Rothbard to laugh. He has a penchant for humor that, in his younger days, let him write an Off-Broadway play, Mozart Was a Red, which poked fun at the Ayn Rand cult of the individual. Today he still laughs very easily. If someone … Continue reading →

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Everyone will agree that the American tax system is a mess. Taxes are far too high, and the patchwork system is so complicated that even IRS officials don’t understand it. Hence the evident need for some sort of dramatic, even drastic, reform. As often happens, a group of dedicated and determined reformers has arisen to satisfy that need. But before we embrace this new gospel, we should heed the old maxim about jumping from the frying pan into the fire, and also remember the warning of the great H.L. Mencken, who defined “reform” as “Mainly a conspiracy of prehensile charlatans … Continue reading →

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Mention “free-market economics” to a member of the lay public and chances are that if he has heard the term at all, he identifies it completely with the name Milton Friedman. For several years, Professor Friedman has won continuing honors from the press and the profession alike, and a school of Friedmanites and “monetarists” has arisen in seeming challenge to the Keynesian orthodoxy. However, instead of the common response of reverence and awe for “one of our own who has made it,” libertarians should greet the whole affair with deep suspicion: “If he’s so devoted a libertarian, how come he’s … Continue reading →

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What I call the Old Right is suddenly back! The terms “old” and “new” inevitably get confusing, with a new “new” every few years, so let’s call it the “Original” Right, the right wing as it existed from 1933 to approximately 1955. This Old Right was formed in reaction against the New Deal, and against the Great Leap Forward into the leviathan state that was the essence of that New Deal. This anti–New Deal movement was a coalition of three groups: the “extremists” — the individualists and libertarians, like H.L. Mencken, Albert Jay Nock, Rose Wilder Lane, and Garet Garrett; … Continue reading →

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The Free Market 18, no. 11 (November 2000) [Editorial Note: In this unpublished piece from the Murray Rothbard archives, dated February 1956, he examines the politics of the Poujadists and finds them to be worthy not only of sympathy but praise.] Who is Pierre Poujade? Is he just another evidence of French instability? Is he a “semi-fascist” or worse? Or is his leap into worldwide fame something to cheer about? The first thing for Americans to realize: don’t fall blindly for the cry of “fascist.” Remember how the leftist press is always ready to smear anti-Communists and anti-Socialists or anti-internationalist … Continue reading →

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This first appeared in World Market Perspective (1984) and later as a monograph published by the Center for libertarian Studies (1995). Afterword By Justin Raimondo. Businessmen or manufacturers can either be genuine free enterprisers or statists; they can either make their way on the free market or seek special government favors and privileges. They choose according to their individual preferences and values. But bankers are inherently inclined toward statism. Commercial bankers, engaged as they are in unsound fractional reserve credit, are, in the free market, always teetering on the edge of bankruptcy. Hence they are always reaching for government aid … Continue reading →

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Review of Austrian Economics, Volume 8, No. 2 (Summer 1995). The Alleged Self-Evidence of Equality One of the great glories of mankind is that, in contrast to other species, each individual is unique, and hence irreplaceable; whatever the similarities and common attributes among men, it is their differences that lead us to honor, or celebrate, or deplore the qualities or actions of any particular person.1  It is the diversity, the heterogeneity, of human beings that is one of the most striking attributes of mankind. This fundamental heterogeneity makes all the more curious the pervasive modern ideal of “equality.” For “equality” means … Continue reading →

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This short manuscript is dated 1954. For many years now, demagogues have been in great disfavor. They are not sober, they are not respectable, they are not “gentlemen.” And yet there is a great and growing need for their services. What, exactly, have been the charges leveled against the demagogues? They are roughly three in number. In the first place, they are disruptive forces in the body politic. They stir things up. Second, they supposedly fail to play the game in appealing to the base emotions, rather than to cool reason. From this stems the third charge: that they appeal … Continue reading →

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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 emissions off the hook, but endorse uncritically the massive and continuing dumping of … Continue reading →

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