Murray Rothbard
Founder of anarcho-capitalism and key figure in the 20th-century American libertarian movement.
He taught economics part-time at the Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute starting in 1966.[1] David and Rae Rothbard, who were Jewish immigrants—David from Poland and Rae from Russia—were Rothbard's parents.[2] After encountering Ludwig von Mises's book Human Action in 1949, Rothbard was profoundly influenced by it.[3] In 1962, Rothbard's work Man, Economy, and State was released.[4]
During the 1970s, Rothbard, in collaboration with oil billionaire Charles Koch, helped establish the Cato Institute.[1] After parting ways with Cato and Koch, he co-founded the Mises Institute in Alabama in 1982 alongside Lew Rockwell and Burton Blumert.[1]
Quick Facts
- Birth name
- Murray Newton Rothbard
- Born
- 2 March 1926
- Birthplace
- New York City, U.S.
- Died
- 7 January 1995
- Resting place
- Oakwood Cemetery, Unionville, Virginia, U.S.
- Institution
- Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute; University of Nevada, Las Vegas
- School of thought
- Austrian School
- Movement
- American libertarianism
Facts from the source article.
What the cited sources add
According to a 2008 Reason article, during the period from roughly 1989 to 1994, Rothbard championed an open strategy of exploiting racial and class resentment to build a coalition with populist "paleoconservatives".[5] The same article states that Rothbard pointed to David Duke and Joseph McCarthy as models for an "Outreach to the Rednecks" effort.[5] Rothbard wrote that cops must be "allowed to administer instant punishment" and should "clear the streets of bums and vagrants".[5] In his own essay "Life in the Old Right", Rothbard wrote that he grew up in a communist culture among family, friends, or neighbors who were either communists or fellow-travelers.[6]
He wrote that after moving from the "debasing and egalitarian public school system" to a private school, he found himself in an odd ideological climate and enjoyed the private school a great deal.[6]
References
- Wikipedia, "Murray Rothbard" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Raimondo, "An Enemy of the State: The Life of Murray N. Rothbard", Prometheus Books, 2000; "American Conservatism: An Encyclopedia", ISI Books, 2006, p. 750; Doherty, "The Encyclopedia of Libertarianism", Sage Publications, 2008, p. 10, 441–43; Ronald Hamowy, ed., 2008, The Encyclopedia of Libertarianism, Cato Institute, Sage, , p. 62: "a leading economist of the Austrian school"; pp. 11, 365, 458: "Au; Hawley 2016, p. 128-129, 164; Wasserman, "Marginal Revolutionaries: How Austrian economists fought the war of ideas", Yale University P en.wikipedia.org
- Wikipedia, "Murray Rothbard" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Hoppe, "Murray N. Rothbard: Economics, Science, and Liberty", The Ludwig von Mises Institute, 1999; Raimondo, "An Enemy of the State: The Life of Murray N. Rothbard", Prometheus Books, Publishers, 2000, p. 34; Rothbard, "Life in the Old Right", Lew Rockwell (we also read that source) en.wikipedia.org
- Wikipedia, "Murray Rothbard" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Raimondo, "An Enemy of the State: The Life of Murray N. Rothbard", Prometheus Books, 2000; Doherty, "Radicals for capitalism: a freewheeling history of the modern American libertarian movement", PublicAffairs, 2007; Wasserman, "Marginal Revolutionaries: How Austrian economists fought the war of ideas", Yale University Press, 2019, p. 257; Ronald Hamowy, ed., 2008, The Encyclopedia of Libertarianism, Cato Institute, Sage, , p. 62: "a leading economist of the Austrian school"; pp. 11, 365, 458: "Au; Slobodian, "Crack-up capitalism: market en.wikipedia.org
- Wikipedia, "Murray Rothbard" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Gordon, "The Essential Rothbard", Ludwig von Mises Institute, 2007; Jensen, "Repurposing Mises: Murray Rothbard and the Birth of Anarchocapitalism", Journal of the History of Ideas, April 2022, p. 315–32; Kaldis, "Encyclopedia of Philosophy and the Social Sciences", Sage Publications, 2013, p. 44 (we also read that source) en.wikipedia.org
- Sanchez, "Who Wrote Ron Paul's Newsletters?", Reason, January 16, 2008. facts only, no text reused. reason.com
- Rothbard, "Life in the Old Right", Lew Rockwell. facts only, no text reused. lewrockwell.com
Each numbered sentence above was checked against the source it cites before publication. Sentences citing Wikipedia adapt text from the English Wikipedia article Murray Rothbard (contributors), used under CC BY-SA 4.0; this entry is available under the same licence. Other sources were used for facts only; no text or images are copied from them.
More in Scientists & Inventors
Elsewhere in Historical Figures
Spotted an error? Know more?
Reader corrections go straight into our review queue. Suggest an edit · How this site is sourced