The Mises Institute monthly, free with membership
March 1995
Volume 13, Number 3
Murray N. Rothbard, R.I.P.
Hans-Hermann Hoppe
The intellectual achievements of Murray Newton Rothbard
(1926-1995)--eminent scholar and
friend--are monumental. He is the author of 25 books and
thousands of article in scholarly and
popular journals. His work covers the entire spectrum of the
social sciences: pure economic
theory, history, sociology, philosophy, religion, languages, and
politics.
His main work in economics, Man, Economy, and State,
appeared in 1962, when Murray was
only 36. It elucidated the entire body of economic theory, in a
step-by-step fashion, beginning
with incontestable axioms and proceeding to the most intricate
problems of business cycle theory
and monopoly theory. It ranks alongside Ludwig von Mises's
Human Action as a towering
achievement within the Austrian School tradition.
Power and Market analyzed the economic consequences
of government interference. Several
books, among them What Has Government Done to Our
Money?, deal with the theory and
history of money and banking. America's Great Depression
applied business-cycle theory to
show that the downturn resulted from the failures of central
banking. His four-volume history of
colonial America, Conceived in Liberty, was an ambitious
attempt to restore narrative history to
the economic literature. In philosophy and methodology, Rothbard
dealt with logical problems in
the social sciences, the theory of measurement, and the
foundations of probability theory.
His last years were his most productive. In addition to
teaching economics at the University of
Nevada, Las Vegas, and serving as head of academic affairs for
the Mises Institute, he wrote
articles for the Free Market, the Rothbard-Rockwell
Report, Chronicles, and notes, articles, and
reviews in academic journals, including the Mises Institute's
Review of Austrian Economics. And
he completed two volumes of a full-scale history of economic
thought, published by Edward
Elgar. It is the biggest event in the field in more than 40
years.
Despite these mind-boggling achievements, Murray, like his
revered mentor Ludwig von Mises,
remained an outsider in academia, and died before he received the
Nobel Prize he deserved. A
brilliant stylist, equipped with razor-sharp logic and unrivaled
polemical talent, he fought against
the statism that defines this century's economic and political
order. He opposed the politics of
welfarism, empire, inflationism, taxation, regulation, ethical
and epistemological relativism, and
never sought power, prestige, or media approval for himself.
I was a Rothbardian long before I met the joyous
warrior-scholar, and it was the grace of my life
to work with him for the last ten years. His infectious, cackling
laughter is unforgettable. He was
a night person, working until four or five in the morning, and
decidedly low-tech. He never used
a computer, and possessed enormous mental quickness and an
encyclopedic breadth of
knowledge. His interests and hobbies were just as vast: from
movies to early jazz, from Baroque
church architecture to basketball, from ancient music to soap
operas.
His classes were always packed, partly because students took
them a second and third time
without credit, and adults visited as well. And at seminars and
conferences around the world, he
touched the intellectual and personal lives of thousands. I loved
him as a son loves his father, a
father whose name and work will never be forgotten as long as man
seeks liberty.
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Hans-Hermann Hoppe teaches Economics at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas
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