Murray Rothbard: Difference between revisions

|occupation = Economist, Author

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==Life==

Rothbard was born into a Jewish family in the Bronx. "I grew up in a Communist culture," he recalled. [Raimondo p 23] He attended Columbia University, where he was awarded a Bachelor of Arts degree (1945), a Master of Arts degree (1946), and a Doctor of Philosophy degree in 1956.

In the course of his life, Rothbard was associated with a number of political thinkers and movements. During the early 1950s, he studied with the Austrian economist [[Ludwig von Mises]] and began working for the [[William Volker Fund]]. During the late 1950s, Rothbard was briefly an intimate of [[Ayn Rand]] and [[Nathaniel Branden]]. In the late 1960s, Rothbard advocated an alliance with the New Left anti-war movement, on the grounds that the conservative movement had been completely subsumed by the statist establishment. However Rothbard later criticized the New Left for not truly being against the draft and supporting a "People's Republic" style draft. It was during this phase that he associated with [[Karl Hess]] and founded [[Journal of Libertarian Though|Left and Right: A Journal of Libertarian Thought]] with [[Leonard Liggio]] and [[George Resch]], which existed from 1965 to 1968. From 1969 to 1984 he edited the [[Libertarian Forum]], also initially with Hess (although Hess' involvement ended in 1971. In 1977, he established the [[Journal of Libertarian Studies]], which he edited until his death in 1995.

During the 1970s and '80s, Rothbard was active in the [[Libertarian Party]]. He was frequently involved in the party's internal politics: from 1978 to 1983, he was associated with the Libertarian Party [[Radical Caucus]], allying himself with [[Justin Raimondo]], and [[Bill Evers]] and opposing the "low tax liberalism" espoused by 1980 presidential candidate [[Ed Clark]] and [[Cato Institute]] President [[Ed Crane|Edward H Crane III]]. He split with the Radical Caucus at the 1983 national convention, and aligned himself with what he called the "rightwing populist" wing of the party, notably [[Ron Paul]], who ran for President on the LP ticket [[1988]]. In 1989, Rothbard left the Libertarian Party and began building bridges to the post-Cold War right. He was the founding president of the conservative-libertarian John Randolph Club and supported the presidential campaign of [[Pat Buchanan]] in 1992. However, prior to his death in Manhattan of a heart attack, Rothbard had become disillusioned with the Buchanan movement.

In addition to his work on economics and political theory, Rothbard also wrote on economic history. He is one of the few economic authors who have studied and presented the pre-Smithian economic schools, such as the scholastics and the physiocrats. These are discussed in his unfinished, multi-volume work, [[An Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought]].