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At the root of the dazzling revolutionary implosion and collapse of socialism and central planning in the “socialist bloc” is what everyone concedes to be a disastrous economic failure. The peoples and the intellectuals of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union are crying out not only for free speech, democratic assembly, and glasnost, but also for

[This article appeared in The Review of Austrian Economics in 1992.] Introduction It is generally acknowledged that bureaucrats are obstructing the process, but confusion abounds among free-market proponents themselves. Matters are scarcely helped by the fact that Western economists, to whom the former Eastern bloc is looking for wisdom, have

This article is excerpted from the first 5 chapters of The Ethics of Liberty . Audio versions of these chapters, read by Jeff Riggenbach, are available for  download . 1. Natural Law and Reason ( Listen to MP3 ) Among intellectuals who consider themselves “scientific,” the phrase “the nature of man” is apt to have the effect of a red flag on a

[The Old Curmudgeon was a regular feature of Murray Rothbard’s Libertarian Forum . Here are his New Year’s wishes for the libertarian movement in the December 1975 issue, available in PDF .] From The Old Curmudgeon My New Year’s Wish For The Movement I know it’s a hopeless fantasy, but I can dream, can’t I? My devout wish for the libertarian

In attempting to outline how a “society without a state” — that is, an anarchist society — might function successfully, I would first like to defuse two common but mistaken criticisms of this approach. First, is the argument that in providing for such defense  or protection services as courts, police, or even law itself, I am simply smuggling the

[This article was published in in The Irrepressible Rothbard , available in the Mises Store .] Upon the collapse of centralizing totalitarian Communism in Eastern Europe and even the Soviet Union, long suppressed ethnic and nationality questions and conflicts have come rapidly to the fore. The crack-up of central control has revealed the hidden

One of the most commonly derided constructions of classical economic theory is “Crusoe Economics,” the analysis of an isolated man face-to-face with nature. And yet, this seemingly “unrealistic” model, as I have tried to demonstrate elsewhere, has highly important and even indispensable uses.  It serves to isolate man as against nature, thus

[Keynote Address to the Libertarian Party Convention, 1977] I am honored and delighted to be here, and particularly happy that the theme of this convention is Turning Point, 1777/1977. For one thing, it means that the Libertarian Party is, to my knowledge, the only organization in the country that realizes that the Bicentennial does not merely

The Problem of Land Theft A particularly important application of our theory of property titles is the case of landed property. For one thing, land is a fixed quotal portion of the earth, and therefore the ground land endures virtually permanently. Historical investigation of land titles therefore would have to go back much further than for other

If every man has the absolute right to his justly-held property it then follows that he has the right to keep that property—to defend it by violence against violent invasion. Absolute pacifists who also assert their belief in property rights—such as Mr. Robert LeFevre—are caught in an inescapable inner contradiction: for if a man owns property and