What would sociology look like if its practitioners took Mises, Hayek, and Rothbard seriously?
In “Toward an Austro-Libertarian Sociology”—recently published in the American Journal of Economics and Sociology (March 2025)—I lay the groundwork for an alternative to the prevailing sociological orthodoxy—one that rejects collectivist assumptions and re-centers human action, voluntary cooperation, and spontaneous order.
In today’s world, state intervention is not just a policy choice—it’s the default setting of modern life. From subsidies and regulations to welfare programs and censorship, government interference shapes everything from our economic activity to our daily behavior. Yet, despite this omnipresence, one discipline has been oddly silent on the matter: sociology.
Mainstream sociology has long embraced collectivist assumptions, often portraying the state as a benevolent force and capitalism as a problem to solve. While this may have once seemed harmless, today it hinders our ability to understand—and challenge—the coercive systems that dominate our lives. In response, I propose a new framework: Austro-Libertarian Sociology.
Rooted in the Austrian School of economics and classical liberal thought, this sociological approach focuses on individual action, voluntary cooperation, and the spontaneous order that emerges when people are free. It draws inspiration from thinkers like Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich Hayek, Murray Rothbard, and Hans-Hermann Hoppe—but also from sociologists like Max Weber, Alexis de Tocqueville, and Raymond Boudon, who emphasized the importance of personal responsibility, civil society, and methodological individualism.
This article outlines the core of this emerging field: its principles, methods, and why it matters today more than ever.
The Blind Spot of Contemporary Sociology
Sociology—once a powerful tool for understanding the human experience—has been hijacked by statist and collectivist narratives. From the spread of “woke” ideologies to the normalization of bureaucracy and victimhood culture, the discipline has largely abandoned its critical function. In many academic institutions, challenging the role of the state is taboo.
But as public frustration with government overreach grows—from lockdown protests and tax revolts to the rise of outsider political figures like Javier Milei—it becomes clear that we need a better way to analyze how societies react to state coercion.
Where is the sociological framework that explains how people resist, adapt, or bypass state power? Where are the sociologists studying spontaneous cooperation, civil disobedience, or the rise of parallel institutions? This is where Austro-Libertarian Sociology steps in.
Human Action as the Foundation
At its core, Austro-Libertarian Sociology is built on one powerful idea: individuals act. This may sound obvious, but in mainstream sociology, it’s a radical claim. Many prevailing theories view people as passive products of structures—race, class, gender, ideology—rather than as purposeful agents capable of choice, creativity, and resistance.
Drawing from Mises’s praxeology, this approach sees human beings, not as puppets of the system, but as actors who make choices based on subjective values. These choices, when aggregated, form institutions, norms, and social orders—not the other way around. Rather than treating “society” as a giant machine or moral organism, Austro-Libertarian Sociology views it as the sum of countless individual interactions, evolving over time through trial, error, and adaptation.
Five Fields of Inquiry
To make this approach operational, I propose focusing on five key domains—each corresponding to a core Austrian/libertarian value:
- Sociology of Human Action: How do individuals navigate coercive environments? How do they innovate, resist, or cooperate when faced with bureaucratic or ideological constraints?
- Sociology of Free-Market Capitalism: How is capitalism represented in education, media, and law? Is it seen as a source of empowerment—or as a scapegoat for all social problems?
- Sociology of Property Rights: How do different societies frame ownership, entrepreneurship, and wealth creation? What happens when property rights are ignored or politicized?
- Sociology of Freedom of Contract: To what extent are individuals free to form agreements without state interference? How are contracts protected—or undermined—by current institutions?
- Sociology of Natural Competition: How do people perceive competition? Is it demonized as ruthless or understood as a driver of innovation, decentralization, and prosperity?
These five domains provide a roadmap for understanding the social impact of interventionism—and the hidden strength of decentralized orders.
Twelve New Concepts for the 21st Century
To help analyze how people adapt to or resist coercion, I developed twelve concepts that capture key patterns in modern life:
- State Dependency Syndrome (SDS): A mindset where people reflexively look to the government for solutions, losing faith in their own initiative or in market solutions.
- Adaptive Agency: The creative ways individuals adjust to coercive systems—such as moving abroad, switching to homeschooling, or using crypto to bypass financial controls.
- Coercive Equilibrium: A societal status quo where everyone accepts state control as normal—even desirable.
- Spontaneous Resistance Networks: Informal groups and parallel institutions that emerge in response to state overreach (e.g., black markets, alternative schools, mutual aid networks).
- Regulatory Fatigue: The exhaustion caused by constant regulation, leading to disengagement or apathy.
- Cooperative Subversion: When people join forces to subvert or bypass rules peacefully and productively (e.g., DeFi, open-source projects).
- Interventionist Surveillance Capitalism: The fusion of state power and digital monopolies to control, predict, and manipulate individual behavior.
- State Linguistic Engineering: The manipulation of language by the state to reshape reality (e.g., inclusive speech mandates, anti-disinformation units).
- Educationally-Programmed Demand: Artificial demand for state-sponsored ideas, services, or professions created by public education.
- Dangerous Public Association Strategy: A tactic where dissenters are labeled as dangerous to delegitimize them (e.g., “anti-science,” “extremist,” “conspiracy theorist”).
- Slow-Motion Collectivism: The creeping expansion of the state through crises, regulations, and cultural engineering—without ever calling it “collectivism.”
- Engineered Divisions: The political use of identity and group conflict to divide the population and prevent unified resistance.
These concepts help explain not just what the state does—but how people respond.
Empirical Methods for Real-World Research
Austro-Libertarian Sociology is not just theoretical—it’s also empirical. It encourages researchers to use qualitative methods (interviews, ethnographies, case studies) to understand how people build alternatives to state power. For instance:
- How do families cope with mandatory schooling they find inadequate?
- Why do entrepreneurs flee high-tax countries—and how do they rebuild abroad?
- What motivates people to join underground economies or crypto communities?
It also supports quantitative methods where appropriate: tracking the rise of homeschooling, the spread of black markets, or shifts in public trust in government institutions. The point is not to copy mainstream sociology’s obsession with data, but to use real-world evidence to enrich our understanding of how liberty survives—and sometimes thrives—in spite of state control.
Toward a Sociology of Liberty
Why does this matter?
Today, our societies are undergoing a silent transformation. Crises like covid have normalized extraordinary government powers; surveillance has become routine; the language of freedom has been replaced by the language of “safety,” “inclusion,” and “equity”—terms often co-opted by the state to justify its expansion. Meanwhile, mainstream sociology offers little resistance. On the contrary, it often acts as the state’s cheerleader—repackaging central planning as “justice” and bureaucratic control as “care.”
Austro-Libertarian Sociology seeks to change that. It calls for a new generation of scholars, researchers, and thinkers willing to revisit old assumptions, challenge ideological groupthink, and restore the individual—acting, adapting, and cooperating freely—to the center of social science.
But it’s not just about research. It’s about culture. Sociology remains one of the most popular, controversial, and culturally influential disciplines in the humanities and social sciences. It shapes how generations think about power, freedom, justice, and society. If we abandon it to collectivist dogmas, we lose the narrative. If we reclaim it, we open a new front in the battle of ideas. It’s not just about understanding society. It’s about reclaiming it.
