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162-590: Murray Newton Rothbard ( / ˈ r ɒ θ b ɑːr d / ; March 2, 1926 – January 7, 1995) was an American economist of the Austrian School , economic historian , political theorist , and activist . Rothbard was a central figure in the 20th-century American libertarian movement , particularly its right-wing strands, and was a founder and leading theoretician of anarcho-capitalism . He wrote over twenty books on political theory, history, economics, and other subjects. Rothbard argued that all services provided by

324-518: A gold standard to constrain growth in fiduciary media. Friedrich Hayek took a different perspective not focusing on gold but focusing on regulation of the banking sector via strong central banking . Some economists argue money is endogenous , and argue that this refutes the Austrian Business Cycle Theory . However, this would simply shift the brunt of the blame from central banks to private banks when it comes to credit expansion;

486-584: A heart attack on January 7, 1995, in St. Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital Center in Manhattan, at the age of 68. The New York Times obituary called Rothbard "an economist and social philosopher who fiercely defended individual freedom against government intervention". Lew Rockwell, president of the Mises Institute, told The New York Times that Rothbard was "the founder of right-wing anarchism". William F. Buckley Jr. wrote

648-628: A paleolibertarian , a conservative reaction against the cultural liberalism of mainstream libertarianism. Paleolibertarianism sought to appeal to disaffected working class whites through a synthesis of cultural conservatism and libertarian economics. According to Reason , Rothbard advocated right-wing populism in part because he was frustrated that mainstream thinkers were not adopting the libertarian view and suggested that former Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard David Duke , as well as Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy , were models for an "Outreach to

810-486: A " People's Republic " style draft . It was during this phase that he associated with Karl Hess (a former Barry Goldwater speechwriter who had rejected conservatism) and founded Left and Right: A Journal of Libertarian Thought with Leonard Liggio and George Resch. Raimondo described Rothbard during this time as "a man of the Old Culture: he believed that it was possible to be a revolutionary, an anarchist, and lead

972-400: A "dismal monetary and banking situation". He called John Stuart Mill a "wooly man of mush" and speculated that Mill's "soft" personality led his economic thought astray. Rothbard was critical of monetarist economist Milton Friedman . In his polemic "Milton Friedman Unraveled", he called Friedman a "statist", a "favorite of the establishment", a friend of and "apologist" for Richard Nixon and

1134-604: A "fan letter", calling the book "an infinite treasure house" and "not merely the greatest novel ever written, [but] one of the very greatest books ever written, fiction or nonfiction". He also wrote: "[Y]ou introduced me to the whole field of natural rights and natural law philosophy", prompting him to learn "the glorious natural rights tradition". Rothbard rejoined Rand's circle for a few months, but soon broke with Rand again over various differences, including his defense of his interpretation of anarchism. Rothbard later satirized Rand's acolytes in his unpublished one-act farce Mozart Was

1296-455: A "fringe existence" in academia, as described by his protégé Hans-Hermann Hoppe . Rothbard rejected mainstream economic methodologies and instead embraced the praxeology of Ludwig von Mises . Rothbard taught economics at a Wall Street division of New York University , later at Brooklyn Polytechnic , and after 1986 in an endowed position at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas . Partnering with

1458-518: A "fringe existence" in academia, but he was able to attract a large number of "students and disciples" through his writings, thereby becoming "the creator and one of the principal agents of the contemporary libertarian movement". Libertarian economist Jeffrey Herbener, who called Rothbard his friend and "intellectual mentor", said in a memoriam that Rothbard received "only ostracism" from mainstream academia. Rothbard kept his position at UNLV from 1986 until his death. Throughout his life, Rothbard engaged in

1620-484: A "pernicious influence" on public policy. Rothbard said that libertarians should scorn rather than celebrate Friedman's academic prestige and political influence. Noting that Rothbard has "been nasty to me and my work", Friedman responded to Rothbard's criticism by calling him a "cult builder and a dogmatist". In a memorial volume published by the Mises Institute, Rothbard's protégé and libertarian theorist Hans-Hermann Hoppe wrote that Man, Economy, and State "presented

1782-561: A "positivist" who failed to represent the views of Ludwig von Mises. Rothbard stated that in fact Machlup shared the opposing positivist view associated with economist Milton Friedman . Mises and Machlup had been colleagues in 1920s Vienna before each relocated to the United States, and Mises later urged his American protege Israel Kirzner to pursue his PhD studies with Machlup at Johns Hopkins University . According to libertarian economists Tyler Cowen and Richard Fink, Rothbard wrote that

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1944-498: A "private property anarchist" and published works about private property anarchism in 1954; later, in 1971, he began to use " anarcho-capitalist " to describe his political ideology. In his anarcho-capitalist model, the system of private property is upheld by private firms, such as hypothesized protection agencies, which compete in a free market and are voluntarily supported by consumers who choose to use their protective and judicial services. Anarcho-capitalists describe this as "the end of

2106-490: A "senior analyst". As Rothbard continued his work, he enlarged the project. The result was his book Man, Economy, and State , published in 1962. Upon its publication, Mises praised Rothbard's work effusively. In contrast to Mises, who considered security the primary justification for the state, Rothbard in the 1950s began to argue for a privatized market for the military, police and judiciary. Rothbard's 1963 book America's Great Depression blamed government policy failures for

2268-697: A "truce between (for lack of better terms) the GMU Austro-libertarians and the Auburn Austro-libertarians" was signed around 2011. Many theories developed by "first wave" Austrian economists have long been absorbed into mainstream economics . These include Carl Menger's theories on marginal utility, Friedrich von Wieser's theories on opportunity cost and Eugen Böhm von Bawerk's theories on time preference, as well as Menger and Böhm-Bawerk's criticisms of Marxian economics . Former American Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said that

2430-480: A 1920 essay " Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth " that the pricing systems in socialist economies were necessarily deficient because if the government owned the means of production , then no prices could be obtained for capital goods as they were merely internal transfers of goods in a socialist system and not "objects of exchange", unlike final goods. Therefore, they were unpriced and hence

2592-497: A Bachelor of Arts degree in mathematics in 1945 and a PhD in economics in 1956. His first political activism came in 1948, on behalf of the segregationist South Carolinian Strom Thurmond 's presidential campaign. In the 1948 presidential election , Rothbard, "as a Jewish student at Columbia, horrified his peers by organizing a Students for Strom Thurmond chapter, so staunchly did he believe in states' rights ", according to The American Conservative . The delay in receiving his PhD

2754-600: A Red and his essay "The Sociology of the Ayn Rand Cult". He characterized Rand's circle as a "dogmatic, personality cult". His play parodies Rand (through the character Carson Sand) and her friends and is set during a visit from Keith Hackley, a fan of Sand's novel The Brow of Zeus (a play on Atlas Shrugged ). By the late 1960s, according to The American Conservative , Rothbard's "long and winding yet somehow consistent road had taken him from anti- New Deal and anti-interventionist Robert A. Taft supporter into friendship with

2916-620: A blistering refutation of all variants of mathematical economics" and included it among Rothbard's "almost mind-boggling achievements". Hoppe lamented that, like Mises, Rothbard died without winning the Nobel Prize and, while acknowledging that Rothbard and his work were largely ignored by academia, called him an "intellectual giant" comparable to Aristotle , John Locke , and Immanuel Kant . Georgetown Professor Randy Barnett says, regarding Rothbard's "insistence on complete ideological purity", that "[a]lmost every intellectual who entered his orbit

3078-465: A bourgeois life", and wrote that the "respectably dressed, if a bit rumpled" Rothbard was "immune to the blandishments of sixties youth culture". During this time, Rothbard proposed that black Americans should embrace racial separatism and secession . He was frustrated that blacks and whites in the New Left instead decided to work together for egalitarian goals. In the 1970s, Rothbard turned sharply against

3240-567: A concomitant decline in real wages and living standards for workers in urban areas. Prior to the industrial revolution, economies in Europe were dominated by the guild system which had originated in the Middle Ages . The guilds were expected to protect the interests of the owners, labourers, and consumers through regulation of wages, prices, and standard business practices. However, as the increasingly unequal and oligarchic guild system deteriorated in

3402-535: A critical obituary in the National Review , criticizing Rothbard's "defective judgment" and views on the Cold War . Hoppe, Rockwell, and Rothbard's other colleagues at the Mises Institute took a different view, arguing that he was one of the most important philosophers in history. Rothbard was an advocate and practitioner of the Austrian School tradition of his teacher Ludwig von Mises . Like Mises, Rothbard rejected

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3564-463: A criticism of planned economies which was first stated by Max Weber in 1920. Mises subsequently discussed Weber's idea with his student Friedrich Hayek, who developed it in various works including The Road to Serfdom . What the calculation problem essentially states is that without price signals, the factors of production cannot be allocated in the most efficient way possible, rendering planned economies inefficacious. Austrian theory emphasizes

3726-684: A decisive influence upon America's Founding Fathers in fomenting the Revolution". From 1978 to 1983, Rothbard was associated with the Libertarian Party Radical Caucus , allying himself with Justin Raimondo , Eric Garris and Williamson Evers . He opposed the "low-tax liberalism" espoused by 1980 Libertarian Party presidential candidate Ed Clark and Cato Institute president Edward H Crane III . According to Charles Burris, "Rothbard and Crane became bitter rivals after disputes emerging from

3888-583: A key figure in the John Randolph Club , which was an alliance between the Mises Institute and the paleoconservative Rockford Institute . He supported the presidential campaign of Pat Buchanan in 1992, writing that "with Pat Buchanan as our leader, we shall break the clock of social democracy ". When Buchanan dropped out of the Republican primary race, Rothbard then shifted his interest and support to Ross Perot , who Rothbard wrote had "brought an excitement,

4050-478: A leader of the historical school, responded with an unfavorable review, coining the term "Austrian school" in an attempt to characterize the school as outcast and provincial. The label endured and was adopted by the adherents themselves. The Salamanca School of economic thought , emerging in 16th-century Spain, is often regarded as an early precursor to the Austrian School of Economics due to its development of

4212-688: A means of reducing unemployment, it will do so for any length of time only while it accelerates. "Mild" steady inflation cannot help—it can lead only to outright inflation. That inflation at a constant rate soon ceases to have any stimulating effect, and in the end merely leaves us with a backlog of delayed adaptations, is the conclusive argument against the "mild" inflation represented as beneficial even in standard economics textbooks. Even prominent Austrian economists have been confused since Austrians define inflation as 'increase in money supply' while most people including most economists define inflation as 'rising prices'. The economic calculation problem refers to

4374-433: A middle of the roader on the archy question. In Man, Economy, and State , Rothbard divides the various kinds of state intervention in three categories: "autistic intervention" (interference with private non-economic activities); "binary intervention", (exchange between individuals and the state); and "triangular intervention" (state-mandated exchange between individuals). Sanford Ikeda wrote that Rothbard's typology "eliminates

4536-444: A monetary ideal—a position "not all that different from Mr [Scott] Sumner 's". According to economist Peter Boettke, Rothbard is better described as a property rights economist than as an Austrian economist. In 1988, Boettke noted that Rothbard "vehemently attacked all of the books of the younger Austrians". Although Rothbard adopted Ludwig von Mises' deductive methodology for his social theory and economics, he parted with Mises on

4698-469: A number of different political movements to promote Old Right and libertarian political principles. George Hawley writes that "unfortunately for Rothbard, the Old Right was ending as an intellectual and political force just as he was maturing as an intellectual", with the militantly anticommunist conservative movement exemplified by William F. Buckley Jr. supplanting the Old Right's isolationism. Rothbard

4860-430: A number of leading modern economists. He vilified Adam Smith , calling him a "shameless plagiarist" who set economics off track, ultimately leading to the rise of Marxism . Rothbard praised Smith's contemporaries, including Richard Cantillon , Anne Robert Jacques Turgot and Étienne Bonnot de Condillac , for developing the subjective theory of value . In response to Rothbard's charge that Smith's The Wealth of Nations

5022-721: A priori approach to economics. Ludwig Lachmann , a radical subjectivist, also largely rejected Mises' formulation of Praxeology in favor of the verstehende Methode ("interpretive method") articulated by Max Weber . In the 20th century, various Austrians incorporated models and mathematics into their analysis. Austrian economist Steven Horwitz argued in 2000 that Austrian methodology is consistent with macroeconomics and that Austrian macroeconomics can be expressed in terms of microeconomic foundations. Austrian economist Roger Garrison writes that Austrian macroeconomic theory can be correctly expressed in terms of diagrammatic models . In 1944, Austrian economist Oskar Morgenstern presented

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5184-403: A productivity explanation for interest rates, viewing the average period of production as an unfortunate remnant of damaged classical economic thought on Böhm-Bawerk. In Mises's definition, inflation is an increase in the supply of money: In theoretical investigation there is only one meaning that can rationally be attached to the expression Inflation: an increase in the quantity of money (in

5346-746: A public debate or lecture hall. In 1797 the L.C.S was outlawed by parliament, temporarily crushing the British labour movement. Additionally, forming unions or combinations was made illegal under legislation such as the 1799 Combination Act . Trade unionism in the United Kingdom illegally continued into the 19th century despite increasing hardship. Determined workers refused to allow the law to entirely eradicate trade unionism. Some employers chose to forgo legal prosecution and instead bargained and cooperated with workers' demands. The Scottish weavers of Glasgow went on strike around 1805, demanding enforcement of

5508-680: A response to capitalism and the Industrial Revolution of the late 18th and early 19th centuries, at about the same time as socialism . The early goals of the movement were the right to unionise , the right to vote , democracy and the 40-hour week . As these were achieved in many of the advanced economies of western Europe and north America in the early decades of the 20th century, the labour movement expanded to issues of welfare and social insurance, wealth distribution and income distribution , public services like health care and education, social housing and common ownership . Labor

5670-654: A rigorous schematization of an ordinal utility function (the Von Neumann–Morgenstern utility theorem ) in Theory of Games and Economic Behavior . In 1981, Fritz Machlup listed the typical views of Austrian economic thinking as such: He included two additional tenets held by the Mises branch of Austrian economics: The opportunity cost doctrine was first explicitly formulated by the Austrian economist Friedrich von Wieser in

5832-531: A round of strikes and riots throughout England. Other notable radicals at the time included John Jebb , Major Cartwright , and John Horne . With the advent of the French Revolution , radicalism became even more prominent in English politics with the publication of Thomas Paine's The Rights of Man in 1791 and the foundation of the working-class focused London Corresponding Society in 1792. Membership in

5994-565: A second—and if it could, all you'd want to do is get out, or commit suicide or something." Active Defunct Publications Works According to anarcho-capitalists , various theorists have espoused legal philosophies similar to anarcho-capitalism ; however, Rothbard was credited with coining the terms "anarcho-capitalist" and "anarch-capitalism" in 1971 (though "anarchocapitalism [sic]" had been attested earliest in Karl Hess 's 1969 essay The Death of Politics ). He synthesized elements from

6156-523: A series of Libertarian Forum articles. In 1982, Rothbard called Reagan's claims of spending cuts a "fraud" and a "hoax" and accused Reaganites of doctoring the economic statistics to give the false impression that their policies were successfully reducing inflation and unemployment. He further criticized the "myths of Reaganomics " in 1987. Rothbard criticized the "frenzied nihilism" of left-wing libertarians but also criticized right-wing libertarians who were content to rely only on education to bring down

6318-627: A speech by Henry Hunt, a group of Spenceans initiated the Spa Fields riots . This outbreak of lawlessness led to a government crackdown on agitation in 1817 known as the Gagging Acts , which included the suppression of the Spencean society, a suspension of habeas corpus , and an extension of power to magistrates which gave them the ability to ban public gatherings. In protest of the Gagging Acts, as well as

6480-450: A thing may fall short, to any amount, of its value in use; but that it can ever exceed the value in use, implies a contradiction; it supposes that persons will give, to possess a thing, more than the utmost value which they themselves put upon it as a means of gratifying their inclinations." While marginalism was generally influential, there was also a more specific school that began to coalesce around Menger's work, which came to be known as

6642-486: A verve, a sense of dynamics and of open possibilities to what had threatened to be a dreary race". Rothbard eventually withdrew his support from Perot, and endorsed George H. W. Bush in the 1992 election . Like Buchanan, Rothbard opposed the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA); however, he had become disillusioned with Buchanan by 1995, believing that the latter's "commitment to protectionism

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6804-486: A wedge between Mises and Hayek on [the role of knowledge in economic calculation], especially to the disparagement of Hayek, is unfair to these two great men, unfaithful to the history of economic thought". He went on to call the rift subversive to economic analysis and the historical understanding of the fall of Eastern European communism. In a 1999 book published by the Ludwig von Mises Institute , Hoppe asserted that Rothbard

6966-556: A week gave him freedom to contribute to developments in libertarian politics. Rothbard continued in this role until 1986. Then 60 years old, Rothbard left Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute for the Lee Business School at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV), where he held the title of S.J. Hall Distinguished Professor of Economics, a chair endowed by a libertarian businessman. According to Rothbard's friend, colleague and fellow Misesian economist Hans-Hermann Hoppe , Rothbard led

7128-437: Is a key concept in mainstream economics and has been described as expressing "the basic relationship between scarcity and choice ". The notion of opportunity cost plays a crucial part in ensuring that resources are used efficiently. The Austrian theory of capital and interest was first developed by Eugen Böhm von Bawerk . He stated that interest rates and profits are determined by two factors, namely supply and demand in

7290-571: Is not consumption, but rather production that should be emphasized. A country cannot become rich by consuming, and therefore, by using up all their resources. Instead, production is what enables consumption as a possibility in the first place, since a producer would be working for nothing, if not for the desire to consume. According to Ludwig von Mises , central banks enable the commercial banks to fund loans at artificially low interest rates, thereby inducing an unsustainable expansion of bank credit and impeding any subsequent contraction and argued for

7452-615: Is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration. — Abraham Lincoln , December 3, 1861 The labour movement has its origins in Europe during the Industrial Revolution of the late 18th and early 19th centuries, when agricultural and cottage industry jobs disappeared and were replaced as mechanization and industrialization moved employment to more industrial areas like factory towns causing an influx of low-skilled labour and

7614-425: Is private property which may change hands only by trade or gift. Rothbard was a strong critic of egalitarianism . The title essay of Rothbard's 1974 book Egalitarianism as a Revolt Against Nature and Other Essays held: "Equality is not in the natural order of things, and the crusade to make everyone equal in every respect (except before the law) is certain to have disastrous consequences." In it, Rothbard wrote: "At

7776-650: Is why the labor-hater and labor-baiter is virtually always a twin-headed creature spewing anti-Negro epithets from one mouth and anti-labor propaganda from the other mouth. With ever-increasing levels of international trade and increasing influence of multinational corporations, there has been debate and action among labour movements to attempt international co-operation. This has resulted in renewed efforts to organize and collectively bargain internationally. A number of international union organizations have been established in an attempt to facilitate international collective bargaining, to share information and resources and to advance

7938-765: The Australian Labor Party (ALP). The British Labour Party was created as the Labour Representation Committee , following an 1899 resolution by the Trade Union Congress . While archetypal labour parties are made of direct union representatives, in addition to members of geographical branches, some union federations or individual unions have chosen not to be represented within a labour party and/or have ended association with them. Many individuals and political groups otherwise considered to represent ruling classes may be part of, and active in,

8100-505: The Cato Institute 's journal. In 1954, Rothbard, along with several other attendees of Mises's seminar, joined the circle of novelist Ayn Rand , the founder of Objectivism . He soon parted from her, writing among other things that her ideas were not as original as she proclaimed, but similar to those of Aristotle , Thomas Aquinas and Herbert Spencer . In 1958, after the publication of Rand's novel Atlas Shrugged , Rothbard wrote her

8262-579: The Cato Institute , George Mason University (GMU) and New York University, among other institutions. They include Peter Boettke , Roger Garrison , Steven Horwitz , Peter Leeson and George Reisman . Economists of the Mises–Rothbard view include Walter Block , Hans-Hermann Hoppe , Jesús Huerta de Soto and Robert P. Murphy , each of whom is associated with the Mises Institute and some of them also with academic institutions. According to Murphy,

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8424-520: The Center for Libertarian Studies in 1976 and the Journal of Libertarian Studies in 1977. He was one of the founders of the Cato Institute in 1977 (whose funding by Charles Koch was a major infusion of money for libertarianism) and "came up with the idea of naming this libertarian think tank after Cato's Letters , a powerful series of British newspaper essays by John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon which played

8586-559: The Great Depression , and challenged the widely-held view that capitalism is unstable. In 1953, Rothbard married JoAnn Beatrice Schumacher (1928–1999), whom he called Joey, in New York City. She was a historian, Rothbard's personal editor and a close adviser as well as hostess of his Rothbard Salon. They enjoyed a loving marriage and Rothbard often called her "the indispensable framework" of his life and achievements. According to her,

8748-541: The MP John Wilkes used mass appeal to workers through public meetings, pamphleteering , and the popular press, in order to gain their support as he advocated for an increase in the voting franchise, popular rights, and an end to corruption. When he was imprisoned for criticizing King George III , his followers protested and were fired upon by the government at the Massacre of St George's Fields in 1768, which resulted in

8910-503: The Midlands started to sabotage and destroy the machinery used in textile production. As the industry was still decentralized at the time and the movement was secretive, none of the leadership was ever caught and employers in the Midlands textile industry were forced to raise wages. In 1812 the first radical, socialist, pro-labour society, the 'Society of Spencean Philanthropists', named after

9072-552: The Mises Institute and the Cato Institute . The Austrian school theorizes that the subjective choices of individuals including individual knowledge, time, expectation and other subjective factors cause all economic phenomena. Austrians seek to understand the economy by examining the social ramifications of individual choice, an approach called methodological individualism . It differs from other schools of economic thought, which have focused on aggregate variables, equilibrium analysis, and societal groups rather than individuals. In

9234-586: The Six Acts . In 1819 the social reformer Francis Place initiated a reform movement aimed at lobbying parliament into abolishing the anti-union Combination Acts. Unions were legalised in the Combination Acts of 1824 and 1825, however some union actions, such as anti- scab activities were restricted. Chartism was possibly the first mass working-class labour movement in the world, originating in England during

9396-579: The William Volker Fund , a group that provided financial backing to promote right-wing ideologies in the 1950s and early 1960s. The Volker Fund paid Rothbard to write a textbook to explain Human Action in a form that could be used to introduce college undergraduates to Mises's views; a sample chapter he wrote on money and credit won Mises's approval. For ten years, the Volker Fund paid him a retainer as

9558-411: The organizing power of markets. Hayek stated that market prices reflect information, the totality of which is not known to any single individual, which determines the allocation of resources in an economy. Because socialist systems lack the individual incentives and price discovery processes by which individuals act on their personal information, Hayek argued that socialist economic planners lack all of

9720-517: The "Philanthropic Hercules". Although this enterprise quickly folded, pro-labour political agitation and demonstrations increased in popularity throughout industrial United Kingdom culminating in 1819 with an incident in St. Peter's field, Manchester, known as the Peterloo Massacre . The British government responded with another round of draconian measures aimed at putting down the labour movement, known as

9882-407: The "monopoly system of the corporate state" could be provided more efficiently by the private sector and wrote that the state is "the organization of robbery systematized and writ large". He called fractional-reserve banking a form of fraud and opposed central banking . He categorically opposed all military , political, and economic interventionism in the affairs of other nations. Rothbard led

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10044-459: The "psychological school", "Vienna school", or "Austrian school". Menger's contributions to economic theory were closely followed by those of Eugen Böhm von Bawerk and Friedrich von Wieser . These three economists became what is known as the "first wave" of the Austrian school. Böhm-Bawerk wrote extensive critiques of Karl Marx in the 1880s and 1890s and was part of the Austrians' participation in

10206-445: The 16th and 17th centuries, spontaneous formations of journeymen within the guilds would occasionally act together to demand better wage rates and conditions, and these ad hoc groupings can be considered the forerunners of the modern labour movement. These formations were succeeded by trade unions forming in the United Kingdom in the 18th century. Nevertheless, without the continuous technological and international trade pressures during

10368-465: The 1880s to describe an innovative form of trade unionism. The new unions were generally less exclusive than craft unions and attempted to recruit a wide range of unskilled and semi-skilled workers, such as dockers, seamen, gasworkers and general labourers. The International Workingmen's Association , the first attempt at international coordination, was founded in London in 1864. The major issues included

10530-588: The 18th century. Strikes and riots by miners and framework knitters occurred throughout England over the course of the 18th century, often resorting to machine breaking and sabotage. In 1751 wool-combers in Leicestershire formed a union which both disallowed hiring non-members and provided aid for out-of-work members. In the Spitalfields area of London , weavers went on strike and rioted in 1765, 1769, and 1773 until parliament relented and allowed justices in

10692-660: The 1950s, when Mises was teaching in the Wall Street division of the New York University Stern School of Business , Rothbard attended his unofficial seminar. Rothbard wanted to promote libertarian activism; by the mid-1950s he helped form the Circle Bastiat, a libertarian and anarchist social group in New York City. He also joined the Mont Pelerin Society in the 1950s. Rothbard attracted the attention of

10854-483: The 1980 LP presidential campaign of Ed Clark carried over to strategic direction and management of Cato". Janek Wasserman wrote that "The tempestuous tale of the Rothbard-Koch-Cato relationship has been told and retold because of its floridness". Rothbard sought to cultivate radical anarcho-capitalists, while Crane and Koch wanted a more reformist approach to influence government and gain political power. Rothbard

11016-712: The 19th century, such as the Chartist movement in the United Kingdom during 1838–48. In 1891, localised labour parties were formed, by trade union members in British colonies in Australasia . In 1899, the Labour Party for the Colony of Queensland briefly formed the world's first labour government , lasting one week. From 1901, when six colonies federated to form the Commonwealth of Australia , several labour parties amalgamated to form

11178-530: The 20th and 21st centuries, economists with a methodological lineage to the early Austrian school developed many diverse approaches and theoretical orientations. Ludwig von Mises organized his version of the subjectivist approach, which he called " praxeology ", in a book published in English as Human Action in 1949. In it, Mises stated that praxeology could be used to deduce a priori theoretical economic truths and that deductive economic thought experiments could yield conclusions which follow irrefutably from

11340-530: The Austrian School of economics, classical liberalism and 19th-century American individualist anarchists into a right-wing form of anarchism. According to his protégé Hans-Hermann Hoppe , "[t]here would be no anarcho-capitalist movement to speak of without Rothbard". Lew Rockwell in a memoriam called Rothbard the "conscience" of all the various strains of what he described as "libertarian anarchism", and said their advocates had often been personally inspired by his example. During his years at graduate school in

11502-546: The Austrian school are the subjective theory of value , marginalism in price theory and the formulation of the economic calculation problem In the 1970s, the Austrian school attracted some renewed interest after Friedrich Hayek shared the 1974 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences with Gunnar Myrdal . The Austrian school owes its name to members of the German historical school of economics , who argued against

11664-420: The Austrian school can be distinguished from other schools of economic thought through two categories—economic theory and political theory. According to Block, while Hayek can be considered an Austrian economist, his views on political theory clash with the libertarian political theory which Block sees as an integral part of the Austrian school. Both criticism from Hoppe and Block to Hayek apply to Carl Menger,

11826-524: The Austrians during the late 19th-century Methodenstreit ("methodology struggle"), in which the Austrians defended the role of theory in economics as distinct from the study or compilation of historical circumstance. In 1883, Menger published Investigations into the Method of the Social Sciences with Special Reference to Economics , which attacked the methods of the historical school. Gustav von Schmoller ,

11988-513: The Belgian economist Gustave de Molinari who wrote about how such a system could work. Thus, he "combined the laissez-faire economics of Mises with the absolutist views of human rights and rejection of the state" from individualist anarchists. Edward Stringham opined that: "In the late 1940s, Murray Rothbard decided that that [sic] private-property anarchism was the logical conclusion of free-market thinking [...]." Rothbard began to consider himself

12150-477: The English tradition to sustain these positions. When saying that the libertarian political theory is an integral part of the Austrian school and supposing Hayek is not a libertarian, Block excludes Menger from the Austrian school, too, since Menger seems to defend broader state activity than Hayek—for example, progressive taxation and extensive labour legislation. Economists of the Hayekian view are affiliated with

12312-491: The Holocaust denier Harry Elmer Barnes . Later in his career, Rothbard advocated a libertarian alliance with paleoconservatism (which he called paleolibertarianism ), favoring right-wing populism and describing David Duke and Joseph McCarthy as models for political strategy. In the 2010s, he received renewed attention as an influence on the alt-right . Rothbard's parents were David and Rae Rothbard, Jewish immigrants to

12474-534: The Industrial Revolution, these trade unions remained sporadic and localised only to certain regions and professions, and there was not yet enough impetus for the formation of a widespread and comprehensive labour movement. Therefore, the labour movement is usually marked as beginning concurrently with the Industrial Revolution in the United Kingdom , roughly around 1760-1830. In England the guild system

12636-520: The Radical Caucus at the 1983 national convention over cultural issues and aligned himself with what he called the " right-wing populist " wing of the party, notably Lew Rockwell and Ron Paul , who ran for president on the Libertarian Party ticket in 1988 . In 1989, Rothbard left the Libertarian Party and began building bridges to the post- Cold War anti-interventionist right, calling himself

12798-587: The Rednecks" effort that could be used by a broad libertarian/paleoconservative coalition. Working together, the coalition would expose the "unholy alliance of 'corporate liberal' Big Business and media elites, who, through big government, have privileged and caused to rise up a parasitic Underclass". Rothbard blamed this "Underclass" for "looting and oppressing the bulk of the middle and working classes in America". Regarding Duke's political program, Rothbard asserted that there

12960-525: The Scottish reformers Thomas Muir , Rev. Thomas Fyshe Palmer , Joseph Gerrald , and Maurice Margarot were transported , and, in 1794, the leadership of the L.C.S was arrested and tried. Speech and public gatherings were tightly restricted by the Two Acts of 1795 which made certain words acts of treason, limited public gatherings to fifty people or fewer, and enforced licensing for anyone who wanted to speak in

13122-507: The United States from Poland and Russia, respectively. David was a chemist. He attended Birch Wathen Lenox School , a private school in New York City. Rothbard later said he much preferred Birch Wathen to the "debasing and egalitarian public school system " he had attended in the Bronx . Rothbard wrote of having grown up as a " right-winger " (adherent of the " Old Right ") among friends and neighbors who were " communists or fellow-travelers ". He

13284-492: The University of Vienna in the 1920s and later participated in private seminars held by Ludwig von Mises . These included Gottfried Haberler , Friedrich Hayek , Fritz Machlup , Karl Menger (son of Carl Menger), Oskar Morgenstern , Paul Rosenstein-Rodan, Abraham Wald , and Michael A. Heilperin, among others, as well as the sociologist Alfred Schütz . By the mid-1930s, most economists had embraced what they considered

13446-647: The Volker Fund's patronage allowed Rothbard to work from home as a freelance theorist and pundit for the first 15 years of their marriage. The Volker Fund collapsed in 1962, leading Rothbard to seek employment from various New York academic institutions. He was offered a part-time position teaching economics to engineering students at Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute in 1966 at age 40. The institution had no economics department or economics majors and Rothbard derided its social science department as " Marxist ". Justin Raimondo , his biographer, writes that Rothbard liked teaching at Brooklyn Polytechnic because working only two days

13608-468: The Working Classes," in which he advocated a series of reforms including limits on the length of the work day, a living wage, the elimination of child labour, the rights of labour to organise, and the duty of the state to regulate labour conditions. Throughout the world, action by labourists has resulted in reforms and workers' rights , such as the two-day weekend , minimum wage , paid holidays , and

13770-537: The achievement of the eight-hour day for many workers. There have been many important labour activists in modern history who have caused changes that were revolutionary at the time and are now regarded as basic. For example, Mary Harris Jones , better known as "Mother Jones", and the National Catholic Welfare Council were important in the campaign to end child labour in the United States during

13932-559: The application of the scientific method to economics and dismissed econometrics , empirical and statistical analysis and other tools of mainstream social science as outside the field (economic history might use those tools, but not Economics proper). He instead embraced praxeology , the strictly a priori methodology of Mises. Praxeology conceives of economic laws as akin to geometric or mathematical axioms : fixed, unchanging, objective and discernible through logical reasoning. According to Misesian economist Hans-Hermann Hoppe , eschewing

14094-542: The area to fix wage rates. Artisans and workers would also create small craft clubs or trade clubs in each town or locality and these groups such as the hatters in London, shipwrights in Liverpool , or cutlers in Sheffield could use their clubs to unionize. Workers could also use the ubiquitous friendly societies , which had increasingly cropped up British society since 1700, as cover for union activities. In politics,

14256-611: The banking system throws savings and investment out of balance, resulting in misdirected investment projects that are eventually found to be unsustainable, at which point the economy has to rebalance itself through a period of corrective recession. Austrian economist Fritz Machlup summarized the Austrian view by stating, "monetary factors cause the cycle but real phenomena constitute it." This may be unrealistic since successful entrepreneurs will realise that interest rates are artificially low and will adjust their investment decisions based on projected long term interest rates. For Austrians,

14418-535: The broader sense of the term, so as to include fiduciary media as well), that is not offset by a corresponding increase in the need for money (again in the broader sense of the term), so that a fall in the objective exchange-value of money must occur. Hayek claimed that inflationary stimulation exploits the lag between an increase in money supply and the consequent increase in the prices of goods and services: And since any inflation, however modest at first, can help employment only so long as it accelerates, adopted as

14580-414: The century, that show instances of labourers "combining" together to raise wages had become a phenomenon in various regions and professions. These early trade unions were fairly small and limited in scope and were separated from unions in other geographical areas or unions in other professions. The unions would strike, collectively bargain with employers, and, if that did not suffice, petition parliament for

14742-534: The concept continued to be called "equilibrium analysis". In a 2011 article critical of Rothbard's "reflexive opposition" to inflation, The Economist noted that his views were increasingly gaining influence among politicians and laypeople on the right. The article contrasted Rothbard's categorical rejection of inflationary policies with the monetary views of "sophisticated Austrian-school monetary economists such as George Selgin and Lawrence H. White ", [who] follow Hayek in treating stability of nominal spending as

14904-415: The early 19th century, but were becoming increasingly dead letter by the mid 18th century. Consequently, from 1760 on, real wages began to fall and food prices began to rise giving increased motivation for political and social agitation. As the guild system became increasingly obsolete and parliament abolished the old medieval labour protections, forswearing responsibility for maintaining living standards,

15066-755: The early 20th century. Historically labour markets have often been constrained by national borders that have restricted movement of workers. Labour laws are also primarily determined by individual nations or states within those nations. While there have been some efforts to adopt a set of international labour standards through the International Labour Organisation (ILO), international sanctions for failing to meet such standards are very limited. In many countries labour movements have developed independently and represent those national boundaries. Modern labour parties originated from an increase in organising activities in Europe and European colonies during

15228-448: The economy when people will not. However, the heart of Austrian macroeconomic theory assumes the government "fine tuning" through expansions and contractions in the money supply orchestrated by the government are actually the cause of business cycles because of the differing impact of the resulting interest rate changes on different stages in the structure of production. Austrian economist Thomas Woods further supports this view by arguing it

15390-533: The enforcement of the Elizabethan statues. The first groups in England to practice early trade unionism were the West of England wool workers and the framework knitters in the Midlands . As early as 1718 a royal proclamation was given in opposition to the formation of any unsanctioned bodies of journeymen attempting to affect wages and employment. Despite the presumption that unionising was illegal, it continued throughout

15552-496: The founder of the Austrian school. Hoppe emphasizes that Hayek, which for him is from the English empirical tradition, is an opponent of the supposed rationalist tradition of the Austrian school; Menger made strong critiques to rationalism in his works in similar vein as Hayek's. He emphasized the idea that there are several institutions which were not deliberately created, have a kind of "superior wisdom" and serve important functions to society. He also talked about Edmund Burke and

15714-415: The founders of the Austrian school "reached far into the future from when most of them practiced and have had a profound and, in my judgment, probably an irreversible effect on how most mainstream economists think in this country". In 1987, Nobel Laureate James M. Buchanan told an interviewer: "I have no objections to being called an Austrian. Hayek and Mises might consider me an Austrian but, surely some of

15876-542: The free market. He called this principle " self-ownership ", loosely basing the idea on the writings of John Locke and also borrowing concepts from classical liberalism and the anti-imperialism of the Old Right . Rothbard accepted the labor theory of property , but rejected the Lockean proviso , arguing that if an individual mixes his labor with unowned land, then he becomes the proper owner eternally and that after that time it

16038-465: The fundamental underlying issue would be the same, and a free-market full-reserve system would still be the fix. Organized labor The labour movement is the collective organisation of working people to further their shared political and economic interests. It consists of the trade union or labour union movement , as well as political parties of labour. It can be considered an instance of class conflict . The labour movement developed as

16200-562: The gaps and inconsistencies that appear in Mises's original formulation". Rothbard writes in Power and Market that the role of the economist in a free market is limited, but it is much larger in a government that solicits economic policy recommendations. Rothbard argues that self-interest therefore prejudices the views of many economists in favor of increased government intervention. Austrian School The Austrian school originated in Vienna with

16362-498: The good will and understanding of those who profit by exploiting us [...] They are shocked that action organizations, sit-ins, civil disobedience and protests are becoming our everyday tools, just as strikes, demonstrations and union organization became yours to insure that bargaining power genuinely existed on both sides of the table [...] Our needs are identical to labor's needs: decent wages, fair working conditions, livable housing, old age security, health and welfare measures [...] That

16524-491: The groundwork for modern economic concepts that the Austrian School would later refine and expand upon. The school originated in Vienna in the Austrian Empire . Carl Menger 's 1871 book Principles of Economics is generally considered the founding of the Austrian school. The book was one of the first modern treatises to advance the theory of marginal utility . The Austrian school was one of three founding currents of

16686-527: The head of the labour movement demanding the lowering of taxes, the abolition of pensions and sinecures, and an end to payments of the war debt. This radicalism increased in the aftermath of the end of the Napoleonic Wars , as a general economic downturn in 1815 led to a revival in pro-labour politics. During this time, half of each worker's wages was taxed away, unemployment greatly increased, and food prices would not drop from their war time highs. After

16848-404: The heart of the egalitarian left is the pathological belief that there is no structure of reality; that all the world is a tabula rasa that can be changed at any moment in any desired direction by the mere exercise of human will." Noam Chomsky critiqued Rothbard's ideal society as "a world so full of hate that no human being would want to live in it   ... First of all, it couldn't function for

17010-493: The house or apartment, as they checked in with each other. Murray thought it was the best possible way to start a day". Rothbard was irreligious and agnostic about God, describing himself as a "mixture of an agnostic and a Reform Jew ". Despite identifying as an agnostic and an atheist , he was critical of the "left-libertarian hostility to religion". In Rothbard's later years, many of his friends anticipated that he would convert to Catholicism but he never did. Rothbard died of

17172-463: The important contributions of the early Austrians. Fritz Machlup quoted Hayek's statement that "the greatest success of a school is that it stops existing because its fundamental teachings have become parts of the general body of commonly accepted thought". Sometime during the middle of the 20th century, Austrian economics became disregarded or derided by mainstream economists because it rejected model building and mathematical and statistical methods in

17334-481: The institute's Review of Austrian Economics , a heterodox economics journal later renamed the Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics , in 1987. Rothbard "worked closely with Lew Rockwell (joined later by his long-time friend Blumert) in nurturing the Mises Institute, and the publication, The Rothbard-Rockwell Report ; which after Rothbard's 1995 death evolved into the website, LewRockwell.com ", according to

17496-413: The knowledge required to make optimal decisions. Those who agree with this criticism view it as a refutation of socialism, showing that socialism is not a viable or sustainable form of economic organization. The debate rose to prominence in the 1920s and 1930s and that specific period of the debate has come to be known by historians of economic thought as the socialist calculation debate . Mises argued in

17658-529: The labour movement. Labour festivals have long been a part of the labour movement. Often held outdoors in the summer, the music, talks, food, drink, and film have attracted hundreds of thousands of attendees each year. Labour festival is a yearly feast of all the unionism gathering, to celebrate the fulfillment of their goals, to bring solutions to certain hindrances and to reform unjust actions of their employers or government. A degree of strategic biracial cooperation existed among black and white dockworkers on

17820-527: The last of the apprentice laws which had been intended to protect wage rates and employment, but which had also fallen into serious disuse many decades before. The United Kingdom saw an increasing number of large-scale strikes, mainly in the north. In 1811 in Nottinghamshire , a new movement known as the Luddite , or machine-breaker, movement, began. In response to declining living standards, workers all over

17982-551: The late 1940s, Rothbard considered whether a strict adherence to libertarian and laissez-faire principles required the abolition of the state altogether. He visited Baldy Harper , a founder of the Foundation for Economic Education , who doubted the need for any government whatsoever. Rothbard said that during this period, he was influenced by 19th-century American individualist anarchists like Lysander Spooner and Benjamin Tucker and

18144-555: The late 19th century. Opportunity cost is the cost of any activity measured in terms of the value of the next best alternative foregone (that is not chosen). It is the sacrifice related to the second best choice available to someone, or group, who has picked among several mutually exclusive choices. Although a more ephemeral scarcity, expectations of the future must also be considered. Quantified as time preference , opportunity cost must also be valued with respect to one's preference for present versus future investments. Opportunity cost

18306-467: The late 19th-century Methodenstreit , during which they attacked the Hegelian doctrines of the historical school . Frank Albert Fetter (1863–1949) was a leader in the United States of Austrian thought. He obtained his PhD in 1894 from the University of Halle and then was made Professor of Political Economy and Finance at Cornell University in 1901. Several important Austrian economists trained at

18468-522: The left, and described equality as an evil concept. From 1969 to 1984, Rothbard edited The Libertarian Forum , also initially with Hess (although Hess's involvement ended in 1971). Despite its small readership, it engaged conservatives associated with the National Review in nationwide debate. Rothbard rejected the view that Ronald Reagan 's 1980 election as president was a victory for libertarian principles and he attacked Reagan's economic program in

18630-466: The marginalist revolution of the 1870s, with its major contribution being the introduction of the subjectivist approach in economics. Despite such claim, John Stuart Mill had used value in use in this sense in 1848 in Principles of Political Economy , where he wrote: "Value in use, or as Mr. De Quincey calls it, teleologic value, is the extreme limit of value in exchange. The exchange value of

18792-413: The market for final goods and time preference. Böhm-Bawerk's theory equates capital intensity with the degree of roundaboutness of production processes. Böhm-Bawerk also argued that the law of marginal utility necessarily implies the classical law of costs. However, many Austrian economists such as Ludwig von Mises , Israel Kirzner , Ludwig Lachmann , and Jesús Huerta de Soto entirely reject

18954-451: The mid-19th century between 1838 and 1848. It takes its name from the People's Charter of 1838, which stipulated the six main aims of the movement as: Eventually, after Chartism died out, the United Kingdom adopted the first five reforms. The Chartist movement had a lasting impact in the development of the political labour movement. In the United Kingdom, the term " new unionism " was used in

19116-518: The oil billionaire Charles Koch , Rothbard was a founder of the Cato Institute and the Center for Libertarian Studies in the 1970s. He broke with Cato and Koch, and in 1982 joined Lew Rockwell and Burton Blumert to establish the Mises Institute in Alabama . Rothbard opposed egalitarianism and the civil rights movement , and blamed women's voting and activism for the growth of the welfare state . He promoted historical revisionism and befriended

19278-409: The old Elizabethan laws empowering magistrates to fix wages to meet the costs of living; however, after three weeks the strike was ended when the police arrested the strike leaders. A renewed stimulus to organised labour in the United Kingdom can be traced back to the 1808 failure of the 'Minimum Wage Bill' in parliament which supporters had seen as a needed countermeasure for the endemic poverty among

19440-425: The only prudent strategy for government is to leave money and the financial system to the free market's competitive forces to eradicate the business cycle's inflationary booms and recessionary busts, allowing markets to keep people's saving and investment decisions in place for well-coordinated economic stability and growth. A Keynesian would suggest government intervention during a recession to inject spending into

19602-541: The others would not". Currently, universities with a significant Austrian presence are George Mason University , New York University , Grove City College , Loyola University New Orleans , Monmouth College , and Auburn University in the United States; King Juan Carlos University in Spain; and Universidad Francisco Marroquín in Guatemala. Austrian economic ideas are also promoted by privately funded organizations such as

19764-492: The passage of the Corn Laws there was mass rioting throughout United Kingdom. Many working-class papers started being published and received by a wide audience, including Cobbet's " Weekly Political Register , Thomas Wooler 's The Black Dwarf , and William Hone 's Reformists's Register . In addition, new political clubs focused on reform, called Hampden Clubs , were formed after a model suggested by Major Cartwright. During

19926-585: The past." This legislation was intended to ensure just compensation for workers throughout the country so they could maintain a "competent livelihood". This doctrine of parliamentary involvement remained in place until about 1700 at which point the practice of wage regulation began to decline, and in 1757 parliament outright rescinded the Weavers Act of 1756, abandoning its power of wage regulation and signaling its newfound dedication to laissez-faire economics. The Elizabethan Apprentice Laws lasted in England until

20088-510: The poor working conditions in the textile industry, workers in Manchester attempted to march on London to deliver petitions in a demonstration known as the Blanketeers march, which ultimately failed. From this point onward the British government also began using hired spies and agent provocateurs to disrupt the labour movement. The most infamous early case of government anti-labour espionage

20250-552: The power of the state. Rothbard befriended the Holocaust denier Harry Elmer Barnes in 1959. In a 1966 issue of Robert LeFevre 's Rampart Journal of Individualist Thought devoted to historical revisionism , Rothbard argued that western democracies had been to blame for starting World War I, World War II, and the Cold War. Rothbard published works by Barnes in his journals before and after Barnes' death in 1968, including posthumously in

20412-557: The quasi-pacifist Nebraska Republican Congressman Howard Buffett (father of Warren Buffett ) then over to the League of (Adlai) Stevensonian Democrats and, by 1968, into tentative comradeship with the anarchist factions of the New Left ." Rothbard joined the Peace and Freedom Party and contributed writing to the New Left journal Ramparts . Rothbard later criticized the New Left for supporting

20574-594: The question of ethics. Specifically, he rejected Mises' conviction that ethical values remain subjective and opposed utilitarianism in favor of principle-based, natural law reasoning. In defense of his free market views, Mises employed utilitarian economic arguments aimed at demonstrating that interventionist policies made all of society worse off. Rothbard countered that interventionist policies do in fact benefit some people, including certain government employees and beneficiaries of social programs. Therefore, unlike Mises, Rothbard argued for an objective, natural-law basis for

20736-425: The radical social agitator Thomas Spence , was formed. Spence, a pamphleteer in London since 1776, believed in the socialized distribution of land and changing England into a federalized government based on democratically elected parish communes. The society was small and had only a limited presence in English politics. Other leaders such Henry Hunt , William Cobbet , and Lord Cochrane , known as Radicals , rose to

20898-517: The relevance of labour to globalization is not new, and it is far more significant in shaping the world than is usually recognized. The movement gained major impetus during the late 19th and early 20th centuries from the Catholic Social Teaching tradition which began in 1891 with the publication of Pope Leo XIII 's foundational document, Rerum novarum , also known as "On the Condition of

21060-570: The right of the workers to organize themselves, and the right to an 8-hour working day. In 1871 workers in France rebelled and the Paris Commune was formed. From the mid-19th century onward the labour movement became increasingly globalised: Labour has been central to the modern globalization process. From issues of the embodied movement of workers to the emergence of a global division of labour, and organized responses to capitalist relations of production,

21222-442: The risk of ship owners pitting one race against the other. Black and white dockworkers also cooperated during protracted labour strikes, including the general levee strikes in 1892 and 1907 as well as smaller strikes involving skilled workers such as screwmen in the early 1900s: Negroes in the United States read the history of labour and find it mirrors their own experience. We are confronted by powerful forces telling us to rely on

21384-437: The school split to some degree in the late 20th century. One camp of Austrians, exemplified by Mises, regards neoclassical methodology to be irredeemably flawed; the other camp, exemplified by Friedrich Hayek , accepts a large part of neoclassical methodology and is more accepting of government intervention in the economy. Henry Hazlitt wrote economics columns and editorials for a number of publications and wrote many books on

21546-540: The scientific method and empiricism distinguishes the Misesian approach "from all other current economic schools", which dismiss the Misesian approach as "dogmatic and unscientific." Mark Skousen of Chapman University and the Foundation for Economic Education , a critic of mainstream economics, praises Rothbard as brilliant, his writing style persuasive, his economic arguments nuanced and logically rigorous and his Misesian methodology sound. But Skousen concedes that Rothbard

21708-490: The society increased rapidly and by the end of the year it may have had as many as three thousand chapters in the United Kingdom. Fearful of this new English Jacobinism , the government responded with wide-scale political repression spearheaded by prime minister Pitt the Younger . Paine was forced to flee the country after his work was deemed to be seditious , booksellers selling Paine's or other radical works were arrested,

21870-427: The state monopoly on force ". In this way Rothbard differed from Mises, who favored a state to uphold markets. In an unpublished article, Rothbard wrote that economically speaking individualist anarchism is different from anarcho-capitalism, and jokingly pondered whether libertarians should adopt the term nonarchist. Rothbard concluded the article by affirming that he is neither an anarchist or an "archist" but rather

22032-474: The state; he believed that libertarians should adopt any moral tactic available to them to bring about liberty. Imbibing Randolph Bourne's idea that "war is the health of the state", Rothbard opposed all wars in his lifetime and engaged in anti-war activism. During the 1970s and 1980s, Rothbard was active in the Libertarian Party . He was frequently involved in the party's internal politics. Rothbard founded

22194-460: The study of economics. Mises' student Israel Kirzner recalled that in 1954, when Kirzner was pursuing his PhD, there was no separate Austrian school as such. When Kirzner was deciding which graduate school to attend, Mises had advised him to accept an offer of admission at Johns Hopkins because it was a prestigious university and Fritz Machlup taught there. After the 1940s, Austrian economics can be divided into two schools of economic thought and

22356-429: The subjective theory of value and its advocacy for free-market principles. Scholars from the University of Salamanca , such as Francisco de Vitoria and Luis de Molina , argued that the value of goods was determined by individual preferences rather than intrinsic factors, foreshadowing later Austrian ideas. They also emphasized the importance of supply and demand in setting prices and maintaining sound money , laying

22518-430: The system would be necessarily inefficient since the central planners would not know how to allocate the available resources efficiently. This led him to write "that rational economic activity is impossible in a socialist commonwealth". Heterodox The Austrian theory of the business cycle (ABCT) focuses on banks' issuance of credit as the cause of economic fluctuations. Although later elaborated by Hayek and others,

22680-491: The term evenly rotating economy (ERE) can be used to analyze complexity in a world of change. The words ERE had been introduced by Mises as an alternative nomenclature for the mainstream economic method of static equilibrium and general equilibrium analysis. Cowen and Fink found "serious inconsistencies in both the nature of the ERE and its suggested uses". With the sole exception of Rothbard, no other economist adopted Mises' term, and

22842-473: The theory was first set forth by Mises, who posited that fractional reserve banks extend credit at artificially low interest rates, causing businesses to invest in relatively roundabout production processes which leads to an artificial "boom". Mises stated that this artificial "boom" then led to a misallocation of resources which he called " malinvestment " – which eventually must end in a "bust". Mises surmised that government manipulation of money and credit in

23004-458: The topic of Austrian economics from the 1930s to the 1980s. Hazlitt's thinking was influenced by Mises. His book Economics in One Lesson (1946) sold over a million copies and he is also known for The Failure of the "New Economics" (1959), a line-by-line critique of John Maynard Keynes 's General Theory . The reputation of the Austrian school rose in the late 20th century due in part to

23166-416: The underlying assumptions. He wrote that conclusions could not be inferred from empirical observation or statistical analysis and argued against the use of probabilities in economic models. Since Mises' time, some Austrian thinkers have accepted his praxeological approach while others have adopted alternative methodologies. For example, Fritz Machlup , Friedrich Hayek and others did not take Mises' strong

23328-422: The waterfronts of New Orleans , Louisiana during the early 20th century. Although the groups maintained racially separate labour unions, they coordinated efforts to present a united front when making demands of their employers. These pledges included a commitment to the "50-50" or "half-and-half" system wherein a dock crew would consist of 50% black and 50% white workers and agreement on a single wage demand to reduce

23490-489: The website. Rothbard and other Mises Institute scholars criticized libertarian groups funded by the Koch brothers , referring to them as the "Kochtopus". In contrast to some other libertarian groups, the Mises Institute "pushed more politically marginal positions like the virtues of secession, the need for a return to the gold standard, and opposition to racial integration", according to historian Quinn Slobodian . Rothbard split with

23652-463: The work of Carl Menger , Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk , Friedrich von Wieser , and others. It was methodologically opposed to the Historical school , in a dispute known as Methodenstreit , or methodology quarrel. Current-day economists working in this tradition are located in many countries, but their work is still referred to as Austrian economics. Among the theoretical contributions of the early years of

23814-534: The work of Israel Kirzner and Ludwig Lachmann at New York University and to renewed public awareness of the work of Hayek after he won the 1974 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. Hayek's work was influential in the revival of laissez-faire thought in the 20th century. Economist Leland Yeager discussed the late 20th-century rift and referred to a discussion written by Murray Rothbard , Hans-Hermann Hoppe , Joseph Salerno and others in which they attack and disparage Hayek. Yeager stated: "To try to drive

23976-422: The workers began to form the earliest versions of trade unions. The workers on the lowest rungs found it necessary to organise in new ways to protect their wages and other interests such as living standards and working conditions. There is no record of enduring trade unions existing prior to the 18th century. Beginning from 1700 onward there are records of complaints in the United Kingdom, which increase through

24138-466: The working classes of industrial United Kingdom. After the failure of the Minimum Wage Bill displayed the government's commitment to laissez-faire policy, labourers expressed their discontent in the form of the first large scale strikes in the new factory districts. Agitation did not end until it was agreed that weavers would receive a 20% increase in wages. In 1813 and 1814 Parliament would repeal

24300-473: Was "nothing" in it that "could not also be embraced by paleoconservatives or paleolibertarians; lower taxes, dismantling the bureaucracy, slashing the welfare system, attacking affirmative action and racial set-asides, calling for equal rights for all Americans, including whites". He also praised the "racialist science" in Charles Murray's controversial book The Bell Curve . Rothbard co-founded and became

24462-730: Was a member of the New York Young Republican Club in his youth. Rothbard described his father as an individualist who embraced minimal government , free enterprise , private property and "a determination to rise by one's own merits ... [A]ll socialism seemed to me monstrously coercive and abhorrent." In 1952, his father was trapped during a labor strike at the Tide Water Oil Refinery in New Jersey, which he managed, confirming their dislike of organized labor . Rothbard attended Columbia University , where he received

24624-480: Was an admirer of Senator Joseph McCarthy —not for McCarthy's Cold War views but for his demagoguery , which Rothbard credited for disrupting the establishment consensus of what Rothbard called "corporate liberalism". Rothbard contributed many articles to Buckley's National Review , but his relations with Buckley and the magazine soured as he criticized the conservative movement for militarism. Specifically, Rothbard opposed how such militarism could justify and expand

24786-609: Was due in part to conflict with his advisor, Joseph Dorfman, and in part to Arthur Burns 's rejecting his dissertation. Burns was a longtime friend of the Rothbards and their neighbor at their Manhattan apartment building. It was only after Burns went on leave from the Columbia faculty to head President Eisenhower 's Council of Economic Advisers that Rothbard's thesis was accepted and he received his doctorate. Rothbard later said that all his fellow students were extreme leftists and that he

24948-444: Was effectively "outside the discipline" of mainstream economics and that his work "fell on deaf ears" outside his ideological circles. Rothbard wrote extensively on Austrian business cycle theory and as part of this approach strongly opposed central banking , fiat money and fractional-reserve banking , advocating a gold standard and a 100% reserve requirement for banks. Rothbard wrote a series of polemics in which he deprecated

25110-406: Was eventually spun off, or self emancipated, for some deviation or another. For this reason, the circle around Rothbard was always small." Although he self-identified as an Austrian economist, Rothbard's methodology was at odds with that of many other Austrians. In 1956, Rothbard deprecated the views of Austrian economist Fritz Machlup , stating that Machlup was no praxeologist and calling him instead

25272-515: Was largely plagiarized, David D. Friedman castigated Rothbard's scholarship and character, saying that he "was [either] deliberately dishonest or never really read the book he was criticizing". Tony Endres called Rothbard's treatment of Smith a "travesty". Rothbard was equally scathing in his criticism of John Maynard Keynes , calling him weak on economic theory and a shallow political opportunist. Rothbard also wrote more generally that Keynesian-style governmental regulation of money and credit created

25434-432: Was mutating into an all-round faith in economic planning and the nation state". Joey Rothbard said in a memoriam that her husband had a happy and bright spirit, and that Rothbard, a night owl , "managed to make a living for 40 years without having to get up before noon. This was important to him." She said Rothbard would begin every day with a phone conversation with his colleague Lew Rockwell: "Gales of laughter would shake

25596-472: Was one of only two Republicans at Columbia at the time. During the 1940s, Rothbard vetted articles for Leonard Read at the Foundation for Economic Education think tank, became acquainted with Frank Chodorov , and read widely in libertarian-oriented works by Albert Jay Nock , Garet Garrett , Isabel Paterson , H. L. Mencken , and Austrian School economist Ludwig von Mises . Rothbard was greatly influenced by reading Mises's book Human Action in 1949. In

25758-515: Was removed from Cato's board in 1981. Wasserman described the split as "the first of many examples of Austrian and libertarian schisms in the United States". In 1982, following his split with the Cato Institute, Rothbard co-founded the Ludwig von Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama , (with Lew Rockwell and Burton Blumert ) and was vice president of academic affairs until 1995. Rothbard also founded

25920-525: Was that of Oliver the Spy who, in 1817, incited and encouraged the Pentrich Rising , which led to the leadership being indicted on treason charges and executed. In spite of government suppression, the labour movement in the United Kingdom continued, and 1818 marked a new round of strikes as well as the first attempt at establishing a single national union that encompassed all trades, led by John Gast and named

26082-548: Was the leader of the "mainstream within Austrian Economics" and contrasted Rothbard with Nobel Laureate Friedrich Hayek, whom he identified as a British empiricist and an opponent of the thought of Mises and Rothbard. Hoppe acknowledged that Hayek was the most prominent Austrian economist within academia, but stated that Hayek was an opponent of the Austrian tradition which led from Carl Menger and Böhm-Bawerk through Mises to Rothbard. Austrian economist Walter Block says that

26244-521: Was usurped in its regulation of wages by parliament in the 16th century with the passage of the Elizabethan Era apprentice laws such as the 1562 Statute of Artificers which placed the power to regulate wages and employment in the hands of local officials in each parish. Parliament had been responding to petitions made by English weavers in 1555 who asserted that the owners were "giving much less wages and hire for weaving of clothes than they did in

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