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[Excerpted from An Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought , vol. 1, Economic Thought Before Adam Smith (1995). An MP3 audio file of this article, read by Jeff Riggenbach, is available for download .] Although the physiocrats had useful insights into political economy and the importance of the free market, their distinctive

[Excerpted from An Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought , vol. 1, Economic Thought Before Adam Smith (1995).] One problem that any laissez-faire liberal thinker must face is: Granted that government interference should be minimal, what form should that government take? Who shall govern? To French liberals of the later 17th or

[Excerpted from An Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought , vol. 1, Economic Thought Before Adam Smith (1995). An MP3 audio file of this article, read by Jeff Riggenbach, is available for download .]   We should not leave the Tableau without mentioning a French-Swiss contemporary of Cantillon who prefigured the Tableau in one and

[Excerpted from An Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought , vol. 1, Economic Thought Before Adam Smith (1995). An MP3 audio file of this article, read by Jeff Riggenbach, is available for download .]   Carmichael’s most prominent student and follower was his successor at the chair of moral philosophy at Glasgow, Francis Hutcheson

[Excerpted from An Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought , vol. 2, Classical Economics (1995). An MP3 audio file of this article, read by Jeff Riggenbach, is available for download .]   One of the great puzzles in the history of economic thought, as we have indicated in Volume 1, is why Adam Smith was able to sweep the field and

[Letter dated July 16, 1961, from Murray Rothbard to Dr. F.A. “Baldy” Harper, William Volker Fund]   Dear Baldy: I have been considering with a great deal of interest the ideas that you mentioned to me a few months ago of an institute for libertarian research and scholarly activity. For the past 15 years, I have believed that a scholarly

[ A New History of Leviathan (1972)] More than any other single period, World War I was the critical watershed for the American business system. It was a “war collectivism,” a totally planned economy run largely by big-business interests through the instrumentality of the central government, which served as the model, the precedent, and the

[ Crisis and Leviathan • By Robert Higgs • Oxford University Press, 1987 • 350 pages. This review was originally published in Liberty , 1987.]   Crisis and Leviathan is a blockbuster of a book, one of the most important of the last decade. It is that rare and wondrous combination: scholarly and hard-hitting, lucidly written and libertarian as

[First published in Inquiry , 3, 13 (July 7 & 21, 1980), pp. 16–20.]   A curious thing is happening in this extraordinary election year. The liberals are beginning to adjust to Ronald Reagan. After all, they claim, he’s getting more moderate, he’ll have to shift to the center to win the election, and he was a moderate and “flexible” governor of

[ Free Life: The Journal of the Libertarian Alliance , Vol. 4, No. 1 (1984)]   The presidency of Ronald Wilson Reagan has been a disaster for libertarianism in the United States, and might yet prove to be catastrophic for the human race. Reagan came to power in 1981 as the chief political spokesman for the Conservative Movement, a movement which