[NB: I quote a lot from Professor Peter Klein‘s comment on this thread regarding Murray Rothbard. I want to make quite clear that my comments about Rothbard are about Rothbard and not about Professor Klein. I thank him for raising Rothbard’s name in this context because he spurred me to write up my thoughts about Rothbard and racism. In no way do I want to impute Rothbard’s beliefs to Professor Klein. Just so we are clear on that.]
Murray N. Rothbard (1926-1995), has been called “
the most gifted libertarian writer of his generation” (p. 251). Rothbard prided himself as, in
Nancy MacLean‘s words, libertarianism’s “most scathing guardian of libertarian orthodoxy” (p. 147). He was an “anarcho-capitalist” who believed that
all governmental functions should be privatized, including national defense and police forces. Unlike someone like
James Buchanan, or indeed, most academics, who often work within institutional structures with other like-minded researchers, Rothbard worked alone for the vast majority of his career. Nonetheless he produced a
staggering number of publications. His first writings, published when he was still a graduate student in economics in New York, were in
Frank Chodorov’s analysis, by the end of his career he was championing libertarian politicians such as
Ron Paul, paleo-conservatives such as
Patrick J. Buchanan, and racist provocateurs such as ex-Klansman David Duke. Of this last’s run for the governorship of Louisiana,
the Jewish Rothbard wrote of the most famous antisemite in the US:
It is fascinating that there was nothing in Duke’s current program or campaign that could not also be embraced by paleoconservatives or paleo-libertarians; lower taxes, dismantling the bureaucracy, slashing the welfare system, attacking affirmative action and racial set-asides, calling for equal rights for all Americans, including whites: what’s wrong with any of that?
Rothbard’s extremely rigid views, combined with these worrisome choices of allies, mean that many libertarians try to distance Rothbard from more respectable figures. For example, in our recent
libertarian kerfuffle Phil Magness, properly distances James Buchanan from Rothbard’s radicalism. On that same thread I point out what I believe is the case: that there were no libertarians who spoke out against the discrimination or segregation of African Americans during the 1950s and 1960s (at this point, notably, Magness goes silent). At this point
Professor Peter Klein brought Rothbard back from exile:
Libertarians such as Rothbard were keenly interested in the civil rights movement and had a quite a lot to say about it. Rothbard contributed a 5,000+ word article to New Individualist Review in 1961 on “The Negro Revolution,” describing the civil rights movement, with all its diversity, in great detail (
http://oll.libertyfund.org/pages/rothbard-on-the-black-revolution). The article is mostly descriptive and analytical but Rothbard concludes by describing the libertarian position as “oppos[ing] compulsory segregation and police brutality, but also oppos[ing] compulsory integration and such absurdities as ethnic quota systems in jobs.” (BTW on the question of racism and unions, referred to above in the context of W. H. Hutt, Rothbard adds: “some Negroes are beginning to see that the heavy incidence of unemployment among Negro workers is partially caused by union restrictionism keeping Negroes (as well as numerous whites) out of many fields of employment. If the Negro Revolution shall have as one of its consequences the destruction of the restrictive union movement in this country, this, at least, will be a welcome boon.”)
I promised Professor Klein a post on Rothbard’s embrace of Black Nationalism and here we are. The place to begin is with what Rothbard called it in his last public speech: the
War for Southern Independence. Those of us who aren’t interested in
defending the Confederacy tend to call it the American Civil War.
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