If you want to understand
Murray Rothbard, you need to keep one principle in mind. If you remember this,
you will have the key to grasping his thought. And you should want to understand Murray Rothbard, because
he was the greatest American defender of liberty in the twentieth century.
The principle in question is that Murray Rothbard had a consistent
vision of the good society that he upheld throughout his long career. He
described this vision in a vast number of books and articles, including Man, Economy, and State, Power and Market, The Ethics of Liberty, and Egalitarianism as a Revolt Against Nature. That vision was
always the same.
Some people, even among those who knew
and admired Murray, fail to realize this because they view him through a
political lens. They point to shifts in his political alliances, seeing him as
shifting from Old Right to Left and finally to Paleolibertarian. They miss the
essential point.
Of course, Murray wanted to put
his vision into practice. But for him the vision was primary. If you
concentrate on Murray’s political tactics you will miss the real Murray.
What was
this vision? As everybody knows, Murray believed in a complete free market. The
State , which Nietzsche called “that coldest of all cold monsters” was the
enemy.
In order
to maintain a free society, people needed to hold certain values. Murray was a
traditionalist who believed in natural law and the family. He deplored assaults
on tradition such as the modern feminist movement. In cultural matters, Murray
started out on the Right, and he always remained there.
Here
are a few samples of what he said: “In our century, we have been inundated by a
flood of evil, in the form of collectivism, socialism, egalitarianism, and
nihilism. It has always been crystal clear to me that we have a compelling
moral obligation, for the sake of ourselves, our loved ones, our posterity, our
friends, our neighbors, to do battle against that evil.”
To do
so, we must stick with the wisdom of the perennial philosophy: “In contrast to
other specific sciences or to history, there can be little genuine innovation
in philosophy from one decade, or even century, to the next. Philosophy deals
with eternal problems through rational discourse. Moreover, genuine philosophy
is only refined common sense, which is in no greater supply now than in ancient
Greece. So there is nothing much new that philosophers can legitimately say.”
He
had no use for modern feminism: “At the root of the women’s liberation movement
is resentment against the very existence of women as a distinctive entity.”
Murray saw leftist elites as
enemies of the values he upheld: He said 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.” As he summed up, “The big danger is the elite, not the
masses.”
During
the 1960s, it became evident to Murray that the CIA agent Bill Buckley had
thrust aside the non-interventionist Old Right. “Conservatives” in that period
like the ex-Communist Frank Meyer and the ex-Trotskyite James Burnham wanted a
preventive war to annihilate the Soviet Union.
For Murray, the struggle against war
was always the primary political goal. “War is the health of the state,” in
Randolph Bourne’s famous phrase, and the battle against the State is a battle
against war. The Left during the 60s and 70s opposed the Vietnam War and the
Cold War generally. Because of this, he formed a temporary political alliance
with them.
One fact must always be borne in
mind about this alliance. It was strictly confined to foreign policy. Murray
never changed his mind about conservative social values or, of course, the free
market.
When Murray saw how leftwing values had
taken over much of the Libertarian Party, he helped start the famous “Paleoalliance.”
He joined forces with traditionalists who also opposed war. In doing so, he
remained true to his consistent vision. In that vision, he never wavered.
If
you want to know what Rothbard’s vision applied to contemporary America would
be like in practice, you should look to Ron Paul. Dr. Paul’s career in
Congress, marked by his opposition to war and the Fed, is the best example of
the anti-elitist free market values that Murray supported.
Those
too much enamored of the “zigzag of politics” miss what is most real and most
vital in Murray Rothbard’s work.
The Ethics of LibertyMurray
N. RothbardCheck Amazon for Pricing.
Egalitarianism as a Re...Murray
N. RothbardCheck Amazon for Pricing.Against the State: An ...Llewellyn
RockwellCheck Amazon for Pricing.Fascism versus CapitalismLlewellyn
H. Rockwell Jr.Check Amazon for Pricing.
Egalitarianism as a Re...Murray
N. RothbardCheck Amazon for Pricing.Against the State: An ...Llewellyn
RockwellCheck Amazon for Pricing.Fascism versus CapitalismLlewellyn
H. Rockwell Jr.Check Amazon for Pricing.
Llewellyn
H. Rockwell, Jr. [send him mail], former editorial assistant to
Ludwig von Mises and congressional chief of staff to Ron Paul, is founder and
chairman of the Mises
Institute, executor for the estate of Murray N. Rothbard, and editor
of LewRockwell.com.
He is the author of Against the State: an Anarcho-Capitalist Manifesto.
Follow him on Facebook and Twitter.