Barb, I used to be a card carrying Libertarian more than two decades ago. I served on the Louisiana State Central Committee, and they tried to talk me into running for Governor, mostly because they'd already run everyone else and it was my turn to take the thankless task. I was in law school so I was too busy, and while I was in law school, Reagan got elected and he brought me into the Republican party.
There really is a lot of overlap between individualist anarchism and libertarianism, just as there is a lot of overlap between libertarianism and objectivism. You shouldn't look at the dictionary. Try a google search on the internet. One interesting character is Murray Rothbard. Murray Rothbard, "Mr. Libertarian," one of the founders of the Libertarian party, was a proponant of free-market anarchism.
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Murray N. Rothbard was one of the founders of the modern libertarian movement and of the Libertarian Party.
Rothbard's Libertarian Manifesto was one of three books defining early libertarian philosophy, the other two being
Nozick's Anarchy, State and Utopia and Hospers' Libertarianism.
Rothbard was S.J. Hall Distinguished Professor of Economics at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and Vice
President for Academic Affairs of the Ludwig von Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama.
Murray Rothbard, R. I. P.
by Roderick T. Long
Murray N. Rothbard, one of the foremost libertarian thinkers of the 20th century and a leading theoretician of free-market
anarchism, died on January 7th, 1995, at the age of 68.
A former student of Ludwig von Mises and associate of Ayn Rand, Murray Rothbard was a prolific and erudite writer
whose twenty-odd books and several hundred articles range over economics (favoring the approach of the Austrian
School), philosophy (expounding an Aristotelean version of Natural Rights theory), and history (especially economic
history).
Dr. Rothbard's influence on the libertarian movement is incalculable. Priding himself on his radicalism, he used to brag that
if there were a button one could push that would sweep away all vestiges of government in an instant, he would break his
thumb pushing it. During the 1960s he played an instrumental role (along with Karl Hess) in waking libertarians to political
self-consciousness and leading them to start their own movement and to break away from the conservative movement
(which had served as an often uncomfortable political home for classical liberals during the first half of the 20th century).
Later, Rothbard helped to draft the Libertarian Party Platform. Rothbard spent his last years teaching economics at the
University of Nevada, serving as head of academic affairs at the Ludwig von Mises Institute, and editing the highly
regarded Journal of Libertarian Studies.
Rothbard's best-known book among libertarians is probably For a New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto. His
works also include, on economics, Man, Economy, and State: A Treatise on Economic Principles and Power and
Market: Government and the Economy; on philosophy, The Ethics of Liberty ; and on history, America's Great
Depression. Two massive works were left unfinished at his death: one on the history of the American Revolution, four
volumes of which have been published under the title Conceived in Liberty; and one on the history of economic thought,
several volumes of which are in the process of being published by the Mises Institute.
Wry, pugnacious, and a bit of a curmudgeon, Murray Rothbard was always at the center of controversy, and his career in
the libertarian movement was frequently marked by feuds and ruptures with other libertarian thinkers and organizations
over principles and personalities. The most radical break came in recent years. Rothbard had always stressed the
differences between libertarianism and conservatism, and urged libertarians not to think of themselves as "right-wing" or to
compromise with conservative agendas:
"Libertarians of the present day are accustomed to think of socialism as the polar opposite of the libertarian creed.
But this is a grave mistake, responsible for a severe ideological disorientation of libertarians in the present world.
[Historically] conservatism was the polar opposite of liberty; and socialism, while to the 'left' of conservatism, was
essentially a confused, middle-of-the-road movement. ... Socialism, like [classical] liberalism and against
conservatism, accepted the industrial system and the liberal goals of freedom, reason, mo-
bility, progress, higher living standards for the masses, and an end to theocracy and war; but it tried to achieve
these ends by the use of incompatible, conservative means: statism, central planning, communitarianism, etc."
(Left and Right: The Prospects for Liberty
(Cato Institute, 1979), pp. 6-7.)
In the late 1980s, however, Rothbard baffled and disappointed many of his admirers, myself included, by breaking
violently with the entire libertarian movement in order to make common cause with some of the more bigoted and
reactionary elements on the "paleoconservative" right, and to launch bitter personal attacks on prominent libertarians in his
newsletter Rothbard-Rockwell Report.
But in the wake of his death, few libertarians can feel anything but gratitude for Murray Rothbard's lifetime of dedicated
service to the cause of liberty, and sorrow at his passing.
It seems appropriate to give Dr. Rothbard the last word:
"My own basic perspective on the history of man ... is to place central importance on the
great conflict which is eternally waged between Liberty and Power .... I see the liberty
of the individual not only as a great moral good in itself ... but also as the necessary
condition for the flowering of all the other goods that mankind cherishes: moral virtue,
civilization, the arts and sciences, economic prosperity. But liberty has always been
threatened by the encroachments of power, power which seeks to suppress, control,
cripple, tax, and exploit the fruits of liberty and production. And power is almost always centered in and focused
on that central repository of power and violence: the state.
... I see history as centrally a race and conflict between "social power" — the productive consequences of voluntary
interactions among men — and state power. In those eras of history when liberty — social power — has managed
to race ahead of state power and control, the country and even mankind have flourished. In those eras when state
power has managed to catch up with or surpass social power, mankind suffers or declines."
(Conceived in Liberty, Volume Two (Arlington House, New Rochelle NY, 1975), pp. 9-10.)
"Strands and remnants of libertarian doctrines are, indeed, all around us, in large parts of our glorious past and in
values and ideas in the confused present. But only libertarianism takes these strands and remnants and integrates
them into a mighty, logical, and consistent system. ... Liberty cannot succeed without [a] systematic theory ... We
now have that systematic
theory; we come, fully armed with our knowledge .... All other theories and systems have clearly failed: socialism is
in retreat everywhere, and notably in Eastern Europe; liberalism has bogged down in a host of insoluble problems;
conservatism has nothing to offer but sterile defense of the status quo. ... libertarians now propose to fulfill the
American dream and the world dream of liberty and prosperity for all mankind."
(For a New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto, Revised Edition (Fox & Wilkes,
San Francisco, 1994), p. 321.)<<
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