[NSD 11/26/02]

HONORARY SUBSCRIBER: MURRAY N. ROTHBARD

Today's Honorary Subscriber is the eminent economist, historian, and philosopher Murray N. Rothbard (1926-1995), who was one of the founders of the modern libertarian movement and of the Libertarian Party.

During his working lifetime of 45 years Rothbard is credited with inspiring a worldwide renewal in the scholarship of liberty. In 25 books and thousands of articles, he battled socialism, stateism, relativism, and scientism, awakening a passion for freedom in thousands of scholars, journalists, and activists. Like his beloved teacher, Ludwig Von Mises, he wrote for the public as well as professionals. Teaching in New York, Las Vegas, Auburn, and at conferences around the world, he led the renaissance of the Austrian School of economics and galvanized an academic and popular fight for liberty and property, against the omnipotent state and its court intellectuals.

Born in New York in 1926, Rothbard received his PhD in economics from Columbia University in 1956, and from 1963 to 1985 taught at New York Polytechnic Institute in Brooklyn. He joined the Libertarian Party around 1974 and was active until 1989, serving several terms on the Libertarian National Committee and helping to write sections of the Party's platform. He was co-founder of the John Randolph Club, the Center for Libertarian Studies, and the Cato Institute, and he wrote on economics and politics for the New York Times, the Journal of Commerce, the Washington Times, the Los Angeles Times and a variety of national journals of opinion. He was also editor of the journals Left and Right (1965-1968) and the Libertarian Forum (1969-1985).

Like Mises, Rothbard reasoned from fundamental axioms of human action, that people make choices in an effort to fulfill ends like making more money and gaining security. He explained how market incentives lead to the development of a complex, successful social order. "Each person," he wrote, "specializes in the task for which he is best suited, and each serves his fellow men in order to serve himself in exchange. Each person, by producing for exchange, co-operates with his fellow men voluntarily and without coercion." Again like Mises, he emphasized that markets and market prices are ultimately determined not by businesses but by consumers: "The consumers, through their buying and abstention from buying, decide how much of what will be produced, and at the same time determining the incomes of all the participating factors. And every man is a consumer."

Rothbard has been compared to the greatest minds in social science, but he never sought recognition beyond acceptance as an effective force for the economic theories of his mentor, Ludwig von Mises. Of course, he did much more than that as a creative and productive thinker in his own right. When he died at age 68, it could be said that he had done as much as anyone to have shown that people generally do just fine without government interference.

See http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0930073029/newsscancom/ref=nosim for Rothbard's "For a New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto"—or look for it in your favorite library. (We donate all revenue from our book recommendations to adult literacy programs.)