One of the most successful strategies of the Left’s social democrats and socialists has been their takeover of academia. Over decades, this has gradually transformed the nation’s colleges and universities into hotbeds of anticapitalist and proregime sentiment. From the schools, left-wing ideology has been able to infiltrate nearly all of America’s other institutions as well. There’s a reason why most of America’s media professionals, corporate C-suite managers, and medical personnel generally share a similar antifreedom ideology. Most of them spent years being told what to think at American colleges.
At the Mises Institute, we’ve long been offering an antidote to the Left’s indoctrination through our academic programs, where dissenters can actually learn, teach, and complete research on topics that are often verboten in the nation’s alleged places of higher learning.
This antidote has always depended on the work of great scholars to create an intellectual foundation from which we can fight the battle of ideas.
For example, after Ludwig von Mises’s death in 1973, the Austrian School—and therefore the undiluted cause of liberty and prosperity—was in the doldrums. There were great Austrian economists teaching, preeminently Murray N. Rothbard, but they were isolated. The great books were difficult to come by, and young people had almost no place to go to learn about the real free market, sound money, and their intellectual foundations.
You can understand why Margit von Mises was so thrilled to learn of Lew Rockwell’s plans for a Mises Institute a few years after her husband’s death and gave Lew her blessing. When Lew told Rothbard, he literally clapped his hands in glee. Since then, the Austrian School has blossomed, and not only in the United States but around the world. We have numerous brilliant professors and scholars, and masses of brilliant students and alumni. Top journalists and businessmen, as well as financiers and professionals swell our ranks too.
At the core of the Austrian revival—which continues to this day—was Murray Rothbard himself. Rothbard took the inimitable work of Mises, as set down in his groundbreaking treatise Human Action, and expanded it further.
In this issue of The Misesian, we continue our Year of Rothbard with a new essay from Academic Vice President Joseph Salerno, who takes a close look at what made Rothbard’s work in Austrian economics so notable. He explains how in the late 1950s Rothbard began to write an economics textbook that became his “pathbreaking two-volume treatise Man, Economy, and State (MES), in which the entire corpus of economic principles was deduced using Mises’s step-by-step praxeological method. This was a feat which even Mises himself had not accomplished.” Moreover, Rothbard carried Mises’s work even further: “When Rothbard began to write MES, his use of the praxeological method quickly led him to realize that Mises’s treatise had left large gaps, particularly in price theory and production theory, and that these areas required significant elaboration. Rothbard made the momentous decision to expand his project from a college-level textbook into a full-blown treatise.”
In addition to Salerno’s essay, you’ll find in these pages a new book review from David Gordon, as well as new lectures by Chris Calton and Connor O’Keeffe from our recent event California’s Decline: A Warning to America. You’ll also find updates about the Institute’s publications, events, and scholars.
Today the Mises Institute’s scholars continue to build on the Austrian School’s foundations, just as Rothbard built on Mises. Needless to say, this is a much-needed counterattack against the antiproperty and antifreedom Left, which continues to use its position in academia to push its agenda.
From the Editor—May/June 2026
At the core of the Austrian revival—which continues to this day—was Murray Rothbard. Rothbard took the inimitable work of Mises, as set down in his groundbreaking treatise Human Action, and expanded it further, and in so doing developed his Science of Liberty.
Murray N. Rothbard: Toward a “Science of Liberty”
Murray N. Rothbard was a system builder in the mode of Ludwig von Mises, Frank H. Knight, and F. A. Hayek. Social, economic, and political problems are intertwined and complex and require a grand theory to address them. For Rothbard, the unifying theme of social theory was liberty.
How the State Makes Wildfires Bigger and Deadlier
Humans have a tremendous amount of agency in how dangerous natural disasters end up being. Unfortunately, most politicians and government officials have become a major part of the problem.
How Democratic Socialism Created California’s Housing Crisis
The democratization of urban planning, the politicization of the environmental movement, and the no-growth movement came together to erect enormous barriers to housing construction in California.
A Sledgehammer Attack on War
Reading this book confirms Charles Tansill’s emendation of a familiar saying: “The paths of military glory lead but to the grave.” When one considers the horrors of war for the combatants, Rothbard’s argument that the costs of war are virtually never worth paying is strengthened.
Mises Spotlight: Associated Scholars
The Mises Institute announces 11 new Associated Scholars rooted in the Misesian tradition. They are a vital part of our network, growing the Austrian intellectual tradition through writing, teaching, and speaking in their professional careers and at their academic institutions.
California’s Decline: A Warning to America
For much of its history, California stood out, not only as a land of remarkable natural beauty and extensive natural resources, but as a place with institutions that fueled extraordinary wealth creation. What happened?
Rothbard University 2026
The Mises Institute held a brand-new program developed in honor of Murray Rothbard’s 100th birthday: Rothbard University. The objective was simple: to recreate the magic of our summer student program Mises University in a format specifically for professionals.
