Author: Murray N. Rothbard

[First published in Inquiry, November 12, 1979.] A half-century ago, America — and then the world — was rocked by a mighty stock-market crash that soon turned into the steepest and longest-lasting depression of all time. It was not only the sharpness and depth of the depression that stunned the world and changed the face of modern history: it was the length, the chronic economic morass persisting throughout the 1930s, that caused intellectuals and the general public to despair of the market economy and the capitalist system. Previous depressions, no matter how sharp, generally lasted no more than a year … Continue reading →

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 →

[Libertarian Forum (March 1983)] Wisdom has taught us to be calm and meek, To take one blow, and turn the other cheek; It is not written what a man shall do, If the rude caitiff smite the other too! —Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. . Somewhere in Ayn Rand’s Fountainhead there is a striking passage where one of the Bad Guys (and Rand’s Bad Guys are always unmistakably bad) abandons the Communist Party and rushes off to India to plunge into Hindu/guru mysticism. Rand caught one of the striking intellectual movements of our age. Time and time again, left-collectivists, after toiling … Continue reading →