War, Peace, and the State

Tags: Politics, Strategy, War and Foreign Policy

06/19/2025 Murray N. Rothbard

In this classic 1963 essay, Murray Rothbard argues that the state is inherently hostile to peace because war enhances its power, prestige, and control. While individuals benefit from peace and voluntary exchange, governments thrive on conflict, using war as a tool to centralize authority and suppress liberty. Rothbard challenges the moral legitimacy of state warfare and calls for a truly libertarian stance—non-intervention and individualism.

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.