The Legacy of Murray N. Rothbard

A second English edition was necessary because of the importance that Rothbard’s thought has for contemporary society and because of the changes that occurred in the world since 2022. Today, we are witnessing the growth and invasiveness of states, while in Europe, a supranational Leviathan has emerged, adding heavily to the oppression that individuals already suffer at the hands of their nation states. Rothbard’s ideas are also particularly relevant today given the wars that are raging around the world.

Murray Newton Rothbard (see Block and Rockwell, 1988; Bassani, 1996; 2004; Modugno, 1998; 2009, forthcoming; Rockwell, 1995; Hoppe, 1998; Raimondo, 2000; Gordon, 2007; Casey, 2010; Marcognat, 2012; Iannello, 2017) was born in the Bronx in New York City on March 2, 1926, to Jewish parents, immigrants from Poland determined to enter American society. Rothbard’s father, David, was born near Warsaw and emigrated in 1910.

Now that we have outlined the context and personal experiences of Rothbard, we have the necessary basis for examining his work and thought. First, it should be emphasized that Rothbard, although deeply influenced by Mises and the Austrian school, combined these influences with the Old Right culture to which he was deeply attached and with the natural law tradition that permeated the American classical liberal culture of the founding fathers and Thomas Jefferson. From all this, as we will see, emerges a reworking and, in part, a revision of the Austrian school that is particularly original.

Rothbard was an extremely prolific and active author, managing to make libertarianism an autonomous current of thought and a movement with specific characteristics. In a very original way, he managed to combine Austrian economics, an ethics based on natural rights, the American individualist-anarchist tradition, and a great passion for the history of economic thought, explaining all the while, through an elaboration of the anti-statist legacy, how and why the government oppresses and robs the majority of the population. From an institutional point of view, he helped to found or otherwise worked with the major libertarian organizations from the 1940s to the 1990s, including the Foundation for Economic Education, the Volker Fund, the Institute for Humane Studies, the Libertarian Party, the Cato Institute, and the Ludwig von Mises Institute—the dream of a lifetime. Through his commitment, he has contributed to the formation of new generations of Austrian economists and libertarians in the United States and internationally.