In this unpublished memo to the Volcker Fund in May 1960, Rothbard discusses some of the enormous differences among Catholics on political and economic questions: Catholics can be found who are left-wing anarchists, socialists, middle-of-the-roaders, fascists, and ardent free-enterprisers and individualists. Furthermore, even on such strict dogmatic matters as the immorality of birth control, for example, Catholics agreeing on that point differ as to whether birth control should or should not be illegal.

A huge listing of all published works, from 1949 to the present.

The Freeman September and October 1995.

The modern American Right began, in the 1930’s and 1940’s, as a reaction against the New Deal and the Roosevelt Revolution, and specifically as an opposition to the critical increase of statism and state intervention at home, and to war and state intervention abroad. The guiding motif of what we might call the “old American Right” was a deep and passionate commitment to individual liberty, and to the belief that this liberty, in the personal and the economic spheres, was gravely menaced by the growth and power of the Leviathan state, at home and abroad.

Conceived in Liberty, Volume 1 (Mises Institute, 1999 [1975], pp. 174-181.

(Originally published as chapter 16 in An Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought, Vol. I, Edward Elgar Press, 1995; Mises Institute, 2006)

The mystery of Adam Smith

Adam Smith (1723-90) is a mystery in a puzzle wrapped in an enigma. The mystery is the enormous and unprecedented gap between Smith’s exalted reputation and the reality of his dubious contribution to economic thought.

Originally published in Rampart Journal of Individualist Thought, Summer 1966, pp. 65-76.

An observer for the past decade and more of the embattled “left and right,” and of official actions touted as mighty blows in the struggle to “defeat communism,” Dr. Murray N. Rothbard originally wrote the following article before overt military involvement of the United States in Viet Nam. Thus, it offers a vantage point of unheated analysis of the War-Hawk mentality which has led to political violence and war-induced emotions.

The Libertarian Forum, Preview Issue. March 1, 1969.

Review of Austrian Economics 3 (1989): 45–59

In recent years, economists have invaded other intellectual disciplines and, in the dubious name of “science,” have employed staggeringly oversimplified assumptions in order to make sweeping and provocative conclusions about fields they know very little about. This is a modern form of “economic imperialism” in the realm of the intellect.