In his seminal essay “Left and Right: The Prospects for Liberty“, Professor Rothbard delineated a libertarian interpretation of history, an interpretation which saw the larger part of humanity’s existence on earth before the 18th Century as dominated by a distinctive “Old Order”. Whether in the form of the primitive tribe, Oriental despotism or feudalism, the Old Order was a “society of status” distinguished by tyranny, fixed class or caste, exploitation, stagnation and hopelessness. It is indeed significant, as we shall see, that this interpretation is at once both a libertarian and, as Karl Popper has put it, a rationalistic one
