Of all the leading libertarian French economists of the mid- and late nineteenth centuries, the most unusual was the Belgian-born Gustave de Molinari (1819-1912). Born in Liege, the son of a Belgian physician and a baron who had been an officer in the Napoleonic army, Molinari spent most of his life in France, where he became a prolific and
[Chapter 19 of Rothbard’s newly edited and released Conceived in Liberty , vol. 5, The New Republic: 1784–1791 .] The most important battle of the August days of the Constitutional Convention was waged, as had been the battle over the three-fifths clause, between the North and South and had at its heart the institution of slavery. One of the
[ In this chapter from Man, Economy, and State , Murray Rothbard explains how government employees consume productive resources, while both taxes and government spending distort the economy. ] For years, writers on public finance have been searching for the “neutral tax,” i.e., for that system of taxes which would keep the free market intact. The
[ A selection from For a New Liberty .] If, as libertarians believe, every individual has the right to own his person and property, it then follows that he has the right to employ violence to defend himself against the violence of criminal aggressors. But for some odd reason, liberals have systematically tried to deprive innocent persons of the
Our country is beset by a large number of economic myths that distort public thinking on important problems and lead us to accept unsound and dangerous government policies. Here are ten of the most dangerous of these myths and an analysis of what is wrong with them. Myth #1 Deficits are the cause of inflation; deficits have nothing to do with
[Philosopher] Eric Mack [in his article “Permissible Defense”] uses a device employed by all too many libertarians—of holding the ideal free-market anarchist system or a limited government as virtually equivalent to the current State-ridden system. Thus, he points out quite correctly that isolationism makes no sense as a principle for a
[This article is excerpted from a 30,000-word memo to the Volker Fund, 1961. The full memo is available in Strictly Confidential: The Private Volker Fund Memos of Murray N. Rothbard edited by David Gordon.] The Road to Civil War The road to Civil War must be divided into two parts: the causes of the controversy over slavery leading to secession,
Historians have long debated the precise causes of the American Revolution: Were they constitutional, economic, political, or ideological? We now realize that, being libertarians, the revolutionaries saw no conflict between moral and political rights on the one hand and economic freedom on the other. On the contrary, they perceived civil and moral
Money is a crucial command post of any economy, and therefore of any society. Society rests upon a network of voluntary exchanges, also known as the “free-market economy”; these exchanges imply a division of labor in society, in which producers of eggs, nails, horses, lumber, and immaterial services such as teaching, medical care, and concerts,
Everyone will agree that the American tax system is a mess. Taxes are far too high, and the patchwork system is so complicated that even IRS officials don’t understand it. Hence the evident need for some sort of dramatic, even drastic, reform. As often happens, a group of dedicated and determined reformers has arisen to satisfy that need. But
What is the Mises Institute?
The Mises Institute is a non-profit organization that exists to promote teaching and research in the Austrian School of economics, individual freedom, honest history, and international peace, in the tradition of Ludwig von Mises and Murray N. Rothbard.
Non-political, non-partisan, and non-PC, we advocate a radical shift in the intellectual climate, away from statism and toward a private property order. We believe that our foundational ideas are of permanent value, and oppose all efforts at compromise, sellout, and amalgamation of these ideas with fashionable political, cultural, and social doctrines inimical to their spirit.