The Free Market 26, no. 9 (September 2005)
[Originally written as an introduction to For
A New Liberty]
There are many varieties of libertarianism alive in the world today, and
they owe a great debt to the work of Ludwig von Mises. His top American
student was Murray N. Rothbard, and Rothbardianism remains the center of its
intellectual gravity, its primary muse and conscience, its strategic and
moral core, and the focal point of debate even when its name is not
acknowledged. The reason is that Rothbard forged a blend between Austrian
economics and natural-rights political theory of the old liberal school to
create a modern libertarianism, a political-economic-ideological system that
proposes a once-and-for-all escape from the trappings of left and right and
their central plans for how state power should be used. Libertarianism is the
radical alternative that says state power is both unworkable and immoral.
“Mr. Libertarian,” Murray N. Rothbard was called, and “The State’s
Greatest Living Enemy.” He remains so. Yes, he had many predecessors from
which he drew: the whole of the classical-liberal tradition, the Austrian
economists, the American antiwar tradition, and the natural-rights tradition.
But it was he who put all these pieces together into a unified system that
seems inevitable once it has been defined and defended. The individual pieces
of the system are straightforward (self-ownership, strict property rights,
free markets, anti-state in every conceivable respect) but the implications
are earthshaking. 
For a New Liberty Murray N Rothbard Best Price: $12.95
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Once you are exposed to the complete picture—and For
A New Liberty has been the leading means of exposure for more
than a quarter of a century —you cannot forget it. This book has been out of
print but will appear early next year from the Mises Institute. [Editor’s
note: It is available
now in PDF, epub, and as an audiobook in our store.] More than any other of
his works, this book explains why Rothbard seems to grow in stature every
year (his influence has vastly risen since his death) and why Rothbardianism
has so many enemies on the left, right, and center.
Quite simply, the science of liberty that he brought into clear relief is
as brilliant in the hopes it creates for a free world as it is unforgiving of
error. Its logical and moral consistency, together with its
empirical-explanatory muscle, represents a threat to any intellectual vision
that sets out to use the state to refashion the world according to some
pre-programmed plan. And to the same extent it impresses the reader with a
hopeful vision of what might be.
Rothbard set out to write this book soon after he got a call from Tom
Mandel, an editor at Macmillan who had seen an op-ed by Rothbard in the New
York Times in the spring of 1971. It was the only commission
Rothbard ever received from a commercial publishing house. Looking at the
original manuscript, which is so consistent in its typeface and nearly
complete after its first draft, it does seem that it was nearly effortless
joy for him to write. It is seamless, unrelenting, and energetic.
It is also striking how Rothbard chose to pull no punches in his argument.
Other intellectuals on the receiving end of such an invitation might have
tended to water down the argument to make it more palatable. Why, for
example, make a full case for no state when a case for limited government
might bring more people into the movement? Why condemn the US? Why go into
such depth about privatizing courts and roads and water? Why enter into the
sticky area of regulation of consumption and of personal morality? And why go
into such detail about monetary affairs and central banking and the like? 
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Trimming and compromising for the sake of the times or the audience was
just not Rothbard’s way. He knew that he had a once-in-a-lifetime chance to
present the full package of libertarianism in all its glory, and he was not
about to pass it up. And thus do we read here: not just a case for cutting
government but eliminating it altogether, not just an argument for assigning
property rights but for deferring to the market even on questions of contract
enforcement, and not just a case for cutting welfare but for banishing the
entire welfare-warfare state.
Whereas other attempts to make a libertarian case, both before and after
this book, might typically call for transitional or half measures, or be
willing to concede as much as possible to statists, that is not what we get
from Murray. Not for him such schemes as school vouchers or the privatization
of government programs that should not exist at all. Instead, he presents and
follows through with the full-blown and fully bracing vision of what liberty
can be. This is why so many other similar attempts to write the Libertarian
Manifesto have not stood the test of time, and yet this book remains in high
demand.
Similarly,
there have been many books on libertarianism that have appeared in the
intervening years that covered philosophy alone, politics alone, economics
alone, or history alone. Those that have put all these subjects together have
usually been collections by various authors. Rothbard alone had the mastery
of all these areas to be able to write an integrated manifesto—one that has
never been displaced. And yet his approach is typically self-effacing: he constantly
points to other writers and intellectuals of the past and his own generation.
In addition, some introductions of this sort are written to give the
reader an easier passage into a difficult book, but that is not the case
here. He never talks down to his readers but always with clarity. Every page
exudes energy and passion that the logic of his argument is impossibly
compelling, and that the intellectual fire that inspired this work burns as
bright now as it did all those years ago.
The book is still regarded as “dangerous” precisely because, once the
exposure to Rothbardianism takes place, no other book on politics, economics,
or sociology can be read the same way again. What was once a commercial
phenomenon has truly become a classical statement that I predict will be read
for generations to come.
The Best of
Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.
