WEBVTT NOTE Rothbard vs. The Philosophers 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:06.000 In the last several years, I have been working on a set of Rothbard's papers. 2 00:00:06.000 --> 00:00:13.000 As a result, thanks to the Mises Institute, they have been published first in Italy, 3 00:00:13.000 --> 00:00:19.000 and now, for the first time, they will be available in English in the volume 4 00:00:19.000 --> 00:00:24.000 Rothbard versus the Philosophers, published by the Mises Institute. 5 00:00:24.000 --> 00:00:45.000 The papers clarify the author's position in relation to intellectuals such as Leo Strauss and Karl Polanyi on topics such as progress, technology, and on what today is termed globalization. 6 00:00:45.000 --> 00:00:54.400 Others, such as the two sets of comments on Hayek's Constitution of Liberty, contain 7 00:00:54.400 --> 00:01:03.320 not only the criticism of the Hayekian concept of coercion later found in the Ethics of Liberty, 8 00:01:03.320 --> 00:01:11.240 but also some very interesting criticism of the rule of law as a guarantee of liberty 9 00:01:11.240 --> 00:01:17.560 and of the absence of references to natural law in Hayek's work. 10 00:01:17.560 --> 00:01:27.920 Rothbard's criticism of Hayek's and Mises' ideas dates back to 1958 and 1960 respectively. 11 00:01:27.920 --> 00:01:36.580 And it is actually here that for the first time Rothbard extensively expresses dissent 12 00:01:36.580 --> 00:01:40.840 on some of the ideas of the two great masters. 13 00:01:40.840 --> 00:01:50.200 The comments on the Symposium on Relativism of 1960 marked the first time that Rothbard 14 00:01:50.200 --> 00:01:54.760 distanced himself from some Misesian positions. 15 00:01:54.760 --> 00:02:02.820 This is a very interesting set of documents showing how the main line of our Bardian thought 16 00:02:02.820 --> 00:02:12.820 were already firmly in place between the late 1950s and the early 1960s as regards subjects 17 00:02:12.820 --> 00:02:24.820 such as the possibility of absolute ethical values based on natural law, the non-aggression action and the criticism of the state. 18 00:02:24.820 --> 00:02:46.820 As early as 1948, we find comments made by the 22 years old Rothbard on Cotton's paper Ragged Individualism in which, as a result of his methodological individualism that was already mature before he met Mises, 19 00:02:46.820 --> 00:03:10.820 The young author was able to demolish the aberrant theories of social Darwinism, allusions to the immorality of the state initiatives for social welfare and criticism of the state were a sign that the development of Rothbard thought already included the idea of the state as aggressor. 20 00:03:10.820 --> 00:03:26.820 One of the basic themes of Rothbard's writings presented here is the possibility of rationally founding ethical value and the constant reference to natural law and natural rights. 21 00:03:26.820 --> 00:03:39.820 Rothbard was always very critical of Leo Strauss, but he agreed with him on the need for a rational basis for ethics and absolute values. 22 00:03:39.820 --> 00:03:51.820 According to Rothbard, the great virtue of Strauss' work is that he wants to restore values and political ethics to the study of politics. 23 00:03:51.820 --> 00:03:59.820 However, Rothbard shows that Strauss' work also contained a great effect. 24 00:03:59.820 --> 00:04:10.820 Quote, the great effect is that Strauss, while favoring what he considers to be the classical and Christian concept of natural law, 25 00:04:10.820 --> 00:04:18.820 is bitterly opposed to the 17th and 18th century conception of luck and the rationalist, 26 00:04:18.820 --> 00:04:29.820 particularly to their absurd deductive championing of the natural rights of individual liberty, liberty, property and so on. 27 00:04:29.820 --> 00:04:37.820 Strauss, in fact, has been the leading champion, along with Russell Kirk and the Catholic scholars in America, 28 00:04:37.820 --> 00:04:47.820 of a recent trend in law historiography to sunder completely the bad individualistic natural rights type of natural law 29 00:04:47.820 --> 00:05:04.820 of the 17th and 18th centuries from the good classical Christian type, good presumably because it was so vague and so prudential that it offered very little chance to defend individual liberty against the state. 30 00:05:04.820 --> 00:05:12.820 In this reading, Hobbes and Locke are the great villains in the alleged perversion of natural law. 31 00:05:12.820 --> 00:05:18.820 To my mind, this perversion was a healthy sharpening and development of the concept. 32 00:05:18.820 --> 00:05:31.820 My quarrel with Strauss and Kirk, therefore, is not only valuational, that they are anti-natural rights and liberty, and they are for them, but also factual and historical. 33 00:05:31.820 --> 00:05:46.820 For they think that the Lockeans had an entirely different concept of natural law, whereas I think that the difference was a sharpening development rather than a perversion or a diametric opposite. 34 00:05:46.820 --> 00:05:57.820 This was where Rothbard's criticism of the Strossian concept of modern natural rights first appeared. 35 00:05:57.820 --> 00:06:02.820 a theme he later took up elsewhere. 36 00:06:02.820 --> 00:06:11.820 Strauss argued that modern natural rights were a degeneration of classic natural law 37 00:06:11.820 --> 00:06:14.820 that was an expression of civic virtue. 38 00:06:14.820 --> 00:06:22.820 In Strauss' view, the individualism of the Lockean tradition with its theory of property 39 00:06:22.820 --> 00:06:31.420 broke with the classical and scholastic tradition and represented the decline from the values of the past, 40 00:06:31.420 --> 00:06:37.020 placing the individual and his rights at the center of the universe, 41 00:06:37.020 --> 00:06:46.020 with consequences such as the solution of political problems through economic means, of which he disapproved. 42 00:06:46.020 --> 00:06:57.020 Rothbard saw Strauss as an icon of conservatism, pressing an invitation to return to the ancient and the critique of modernity. 43 00:06:57.020 --> 00:07:14.020 But at the same time, by claiming not only the possibility, but also the right to pass value judgement, Strauss was railing against value-free modern political science and relativism. 44 00:07:14.020 --> 00:07:21.020 In both, what is political philosophy and in thoughts on Machiavelli, 45 00:07:21.020 --> 00:07:29.020 Strauss criticizes modern thinkers and defends classic political philosophy. 46 00:07:29.020 --> 00:07:36.020 And so, for Strauss, Machiavelli became the avial genius of modernity, 47 00:07:36.020 --> 00:07:44.260 having challenged the ancient Christian teachings and having freed political reality from morality. 48 00:07:44.260 --> 00:07:52.980 Rothbard, on his side, doesn't agree with Strauss' attack on Machiavelli not for being unethical, 49 00:07:52.980 --> 00:07:56.180 but for being an atheist and a humanist. 50 00:07:56.180 --> 00:08:04.440 By contrast, Rothbard's appreciation of Machiavelli is based exactly on what Strauss condemns in 51 00:08:04.440 --> 00:08:11.840 in Machiavelli's thought, quote, that Machiavelli is pro-selfishness of the individual against 52 00:08:11.840 --> 00:08:18.880 the older concern of the common good, that he is in favor of competition, material gain 53 00:08:18.880 --> 00:08:26.120 and business activity, that Machiavelli favors worldly gain, worldly comfort, the translation 54 00:08:26.120 --> 00:08:29.120 of thought into action in this world. 55 00:08:29.120 --> 00:08:41.120 Rothbard's conclusion is that the more I read Strauss' attack, the more I concluded that Machiavelli had more good points in his philosophy than I had in Magin. 56 00:08:41.120 --> 00:08:50.120 Rothbard asked himself, must Strauss push me into being a Machiavellian? 57 00:08:50.120 --> 00:08:59.120 Rothbard admires Machiavelli for being a humanist and for having placed the human being at the center of the universe. 58 00:08:59.120 --> 00:09:14.120 Concerning the Strossian conception of natural rights, Rothbard questioned the thesis that identified the modern theory of natural rights as a break with the past. 59 00:09:14.120 --> 00:09:21.120 He plays more emphasis on continuity with the past, rather than a sharp division. 60 00:09:21.120 --> 00:09:29.120 According to the continuity thesis, individual natural rights derive from natural law. 61 00:09:29.120 --> 00:09:38.120 Rothbard underlines the scholastic, Thomist and Christian roots of the Lockean doctrine of modern rights. 62 00:09:38.120 --> 00:09:46.120 But within this continuity he found in the individualism of the modern natural rights 63 00:09:46.120 --> 00:09:52.940 a development and an enrichment in respect of the past, the beginning of a new way of 64 00:09:52.940 --> 00:09:57.160 understanding the human being and the ends of politics. 65 00:09:57.160 --> 00:10:05.960 Thus, while Rothbard appreciated the social idea of natural law as a battle against the 66 00:10:05.960 --> 00:10:27.960 and Prevailing Relativism of Values. On the other hand, he was unable to accept it at the point where Strauss invited his readers to reclaim the classic natural right doctrine in its original form, that if fully developed is identical with the doctrine of the best regime. 67 00:10:27.960 --> 00:10:37.080 In supporting the theory that there was a link between Thomism and the Grotian development in the doctrine of natural law, 68 00:10:37.080 --> 00:10:43.360 Rothbard disclosed, among others, to the Italian philosopher, Pazarendo Trev. 69 00:10:43.360 --> 00:10:53.160 Within this vision, the Rombardian idea of a link between the laws of nature and natural rights became less distinct, 70 00:10:53.160 --> 00:11:02.560 at the point where the author emphasized the enrichment brought by the Levellers and Locke in terms of individualism. 71 00:11:02.560 --> 00:11:13.960 Rothbard said that while a versatile vision of man led to the state being seen as the place of the good and virtuous action, 72 00:11:13.960 --> 00:11:29.960 Quote, it was in contrast the Levellers and John Locke in 17th century England who transformed classical natural law into a theory grounded on methodological and hence political individualism. 73 00:11:29.960 --> 00:11:36.960 The continuity thesis has recently been corroborated by the study of Brian Tierney, 74 00:11:36.960 --> 00:11:50.960 who clearly questioned the ideas of Strauss and Villet on the contrast between an ancient Aristotelian doctrine of natural law and the modern theory of subjective individual rights. 75 00:11:50.960 --> 00:12:04.960 Rothbard can be counted among those who, like Pasalendon Trev and Henry Vich, founded natural rights on the Aristotelian Thomist theory of natural law. 76 00:12:04.960 --> 00:12:09.960 However, Rothbard's position is original for two reasons. 77 00:12:09.960 --> 00:12:16.960 First, because from self-ownership he deduced the action of non-aggression, 78 00:12:16.960 --> 00:12:20.960 the true cornerstone of the Rothbardian system, 79 00:12:20.960 --> 00:12:29.960 which he viewed as a clarification of the classic triad of the natural rights to life, liberty and property. 80 00:12:29.960 --> 00:12:39.960 Second, because of the extreme consequences that Rothbard arrives at regarding natural law and the role of the state. 81 00:12:39.960 --> 00:12:52.960 In fact, Rothbard wanted to establish an objective ethics which affirms the overriding value of liberty and morally condemns all forms of status. 82 00:12:52.960 --> 00:13:06.460 While the starting points for Ratber and Passerain d'Entrevres were very similar, the two authors differed profoundly as regards the concept of the common good and the role of the state. 83 00:13:06.460 --> 00:13:19.460 Passerain d'Entrevres thought that the state should be an instrument, the institutional framework by means of which all the rights to life, freedom and ownership could be guaranteed. 84 00:13:19.460 --> 00:13:32.460 The theme of the Rational Foundation of Ethics and Absolute Values became preponderant in the comments on the Symposium on Relativism organized by the Volcker Fund. 85 00:13:32.460 --> 00:13:47.460 The conference, held in 1960, witnessed a contrast between Mises and Bruno Leone on one side and Leo Strauss on the other, in this case Rothbard sided with Strauss. 86 00:13:47.460 --> 00:13:56.460 From the time of his prefatory note, Rothbard made it clear he was in favor of absolute values. 87 00:13:56.460 --> 00:14:06.460 He wrote that the absolutist believes that man's mind employing reason is capable of discovering and knowing truth, 88 00:14:06.460 --> 00:14:15.460 including the truth about reality and the truth about what is best for himself as an individual. 89 00:14:15.460 --> 00:14:31.460 The relativist denies this, denies that man's reason is capable of knowing truth, and does so by claiming that rather than being absolute, truth is relative to something else. 90 00:14:31.460 --> 00:14:38.420 Philosophically, I believe that libertarianism and the wider creed of sound individualism, 91 00:14:38.420 --> 00:14:45.380 of which libertarianism is a part, must rest on absolutism and deny relativism. 92 00:14:45.380 --> 00:14:54.340 This is the position of Rothbard, and this represented a clear and apparently definitive 93 00:14:54.340 --> 00:15:03.340 Division within the Austrian School of Economics, with Hayek and the Hayekians on one side, 94 00:15:03.340 --> 00:15:09.340 and many of the American disciples of the school led by Rothbard on the other. 95 00:15:09.340 --> 00:15:18.340 The concept of natural law was in some ways extraneous to the origin of the Austrian School of Economics, 96 00:15:18.340 --> 00:15:28.340 which favoured an evolutionary conception of institutions and law following the approach of Menger and later Hayek. 97 00:15:28.340 --> 00:15:41.340 In this sense, we can say that the concept of natural law has been an enrichment introduced in the Austrian School by the American libertarian tradition of thought. 98 00:15:41.340 --> 00:15:46.340 The criticism of Mises was paradigmatic of this division. 99 00:15:46.340 --> 00:16:04.340 Rothbard distanced himself from the praxeological and value-free defense of the free market Mises proposed, in support of the opportunity and need for political philosophy to find universally valid basic values. 100 00:16:04.340 --> 00:16:17.340 Mises based his own liberalism on the subjectivity of values and ends, but for Rothbard this made Mises an ethical relativist. 101 00:16:17.340 --> 00:16:26.340 Quote, Mises utilitarian relativist approach to ethics is not nearly enough to establish a full case for liberty. 102 00:16:26.340 --> 00:16:40.340 It must be supplemented by an absolutist ethics, an ethics of liberty. Failure to recognize this is the greatest flaw in Mises political worldview. 103 00:16:40.340 --> 00:16:50.340 The subjectivity of values and ends was the nodal point of Misesian thought and the basis of an open society. 104 00:16:50.340 --> 00:16:57.340 Mises followed Hume's assumptions that it was impossible to derive values from facts. 105 00:16:57.340 --> 00:17:07.340 For Mises, value judgments merely express preferences of a subjective nature that can't be considered neither true nor false. 106 00:17:07.340 --> 00:17:11.340 Rothbard disagrees with this view of ethics. 107 00:17:11.340 --> 00:17:17.940 A problem with it is how to convince others that the best social system is the market, 108 00:17:17.940 --> 00:17:20.940 appealing only to subjective values. 109 00:17:22.340 --> 00:17:32.940 Besides this, in Rothbard's opinion, there are self-evident truths, able to provide a basis for an objective ethic. 110 00:17:32.940 --> 00:17:39.940 The ownership of oneself, of one's own body, would be an example of such a truth. 111 00:17:39.940 --> 00:17:51.940 Mises rejects this position, and according to his way of thinking, criteria for objectively evaluating value judgement did not exist. 112 00:17:51.940 --> 00:18:00.940 According to Mises, no man is qualified to declare what would make another man happier or less discontented. 113 00:18:00.940 --> 00:18:08.940 Given his ethical subjectivism, Mises rejects the entire notion of natural law. 114 00:18:08.940 --> 00:18:17.940 Quote, the teachings of utilitarian philosophy and classical economics have nothing at all to do with the doctrine of natural rights. 115 00:18:17.940 --> 00:18:28.940 They recommend popular government, private property, tolerance and freedom, not because they are natural or just, but because they are beneficial. 116 00:18:28.940 --> 00:18:40.940 In brief, Mises' reasoning did not satisfy the Rothbardian requirement of establishing an objective and rational basis for liberty. 117 00:18:40.940 --> 00:18:56.940 Rothbard also reproached Bruno Leone regarding ethical relativism because the latter is scoreful of the very idea that ethical values should be rationally demonstrated. 118 00:18:56.940 --> 00:19:12.940 Again, when reviewing Freedom and Law by Leone, Rothbard criticized Leone's theory because it lacked a standard on which to judge the content of laws that had evolved over time. 119 00:19:12.940 --> 00:19:22.940 It was not enough to affirm the existence of a spontaneous process from which customs and institutions develop. 120 00:19:22.940 --> 00:19:36.940 It was necessary to subject them to the strictest of reasons in order to judge their conformity with individual freedom on the basis of an objective ethical standard. 121 00:19:36.940 --> 00:19:44.660 Rothbard's criticism of Hayek's formulation, both evolutionist and fallibilist, is closely 122 00:19:44.660 --> 00:19:48.500 connect to the discussion of natural law. 123 00:19:48.500 --> 00:19:56.820 The fact that Hayekian and Rothbardian premises were irreconcilable emerged in the two reviews 124 00:19:56.820 --> 00:20:00.540 of the Constitution of Liberty. 125 00:20:00.540 --> 00:20:18.540 To explain the reasons for liberty, Hayek starts from evolutionary and for liberalist positions that were in contrast with the doctrine of natural law and rationalism, the latter being the premises for Rothbard's anarcho-capitalist theory. 126 00:20:18.540 --> 00:20:28.540 In Rothbard's opinion, one of the shortcomings of Hayek's work was that he totally ignored the tradition of natural law. 127 00:20:28.540 --> 00:20:38.540 Even when discussing theorists who were actually great supporters of the doctrine of natural law, as in case of John Locke, 128 00:20:38.540 --> 00:20:44.380 Hayek seemed not to have been aware of a great tradition of thought, natural law, 129 00:20:44.380 --> 00:20:53.420 that had played a very important role in the growth of liberal ideas and in limiting the powers of the state. 130 00:20:53.420 --> 00:20:57.660 This subject is more complex than first appears. 131 00:20:57.660 --> 00:21:03.900 We have to bear in mind that Hayek used evolutionary premises as a starting point 132 00:21:03.900 --> 00:21:09.100 for his thinking about the rule of law and the law in general. 133 00:21:09.100 --> 00:21:12.500 He represented one of the greatest expressions 134 00:21:12.500 --> 00:21:15.420 of the tradition of spontaneous order, 135 00:21:15.420 --> 00:21:18.460 developed by Adam Smith and Adam Ferguson 136 00:21:18.460 --> 00:21:21.820 in the Scottish Enlightenment, and which continued 137 00:21:21.820 --> 00:21:25.660 by Edmund Burke led to Von Savigny, Menger, 138 00:21:25.660 --> 00:21:28.380 and to the Austrian School of Economics. 139 00:21:28.380 --> 00:21:31.660 In Hayek's work, the fundamental concept 140 00:21:31.660 --> 00:21:38.900 was that of cultural evolution, which had to do with the origin and development of institutions 141 00:21:38.900 --> 00:21:43.940 such as, among others, religion, law, the market, and so on. 142 00:21:43.940 --> 00:21:50.900 But following the ideas of Charles Covell and of the Italian philosopher Nicola Matteucci, 143 00:21:50.900 --> 00:21:58.020 it is possible to conceive an Hayekian position not in direct contrast with the concept of 144 00:21:58.020 --> 00:22:03.060 of Natural Law, understood in terms of cultural evolution. 145 00:22:03.060 --> 00:22:09.860 Matteucci underlined the fact that for Edward Coke and the other English jurists, there 146 00:22:09.860 --> 00:22:18.140 was no contrast between natural law and common law, because the latter was simply the implementation 147 00:22:18.140 --> 00:22:25.100 of the natural law principles from which it had developed historically over the centuries. 148 00:22:25.100 --> 00:22:31.180 It was in this sense that Edward Koch was able to write that the common law expressed the 149 00:22:31.180 --> 00:22:40.020 perfection reason. In a customary constitution, reason was imminent, but not the absurd reason 150 00:22:40.020 --> 00:22:47.580 of the rationalist, rather an historically developed reason. That's why in the English 151 00:22:47.580 --> 00:22:54.860 Legal and Political Tradition, there was less of a rigid contrast between nature and history. 152 00:22:54.860 --> 00:23:02.340 In this view, even John Locke's great work on natural law essentially spoke of a tradition 153 00:23:02.340 --> 00:23:09.700 that became rationalized and universal. 154 00:23:09.700 --> 00:23:16.300 The truly irreconcilable points between the evolutionist theory of law and Rothbard concept 155 00:23:16.300 --> 00:23:24.500 of Natural Law were rationalism and fallibilism. One of Rothbard's criticisms was in fact Hayek's 156 00:23:24.500 --> 00:23:33.460 continuous and all-pervasive attack on reason. The faith in the rational capacities of man 157 00:23:33.460 --> 00:23:40.420 to discover and correctly to interpret the laws of nature and absolute ethical values 158 00:23:40.420 --> 00:23:45.420 was not really compatible with the evolutionist and fallibilist position. 159 00:23:45.420 --> 00:23:51.420 The foundations of liberty were completely different for Hayek and Rothbard. 160 00:23:51.420 --> 00:23:57.420 Hayek based reason for liberty on our ignorance and fallibility. 161 00:23:57.420 --> 00:24:05.420 For Rothbard, on the other hand, human ignorance was too uncertain a basis for liberty. 162 00:24:05.420 --> 00:24:22.420 According to the authentic rationalist theory, we should be able to know what is best for man and to found absolute values on human nature. Rothbard dismissed the Hayekian premises as an attack on man's reason. 163 00:24:22.420 --> 00:24:31.420 It seems to me that on this point, Rothbard's position is going to originate an interesting debate. 164 00:24:31.420 --> 00:24:42.420 The proposed anchoring of absolute values on an eternal and unchanging kind of human nature can be object of discussion, of course. 165 00:24:42.420 --> 00:24:57.420 Thus, the attempt to establish what is absolutely good for man by appealing to human nature demonstrated the great distance between Rothbard and Hayek's evolutionary argument. 166 00:24:57.420 --> 00:25:06.340 In this sense, Rothbard's criticism of Hayek is paradigmatic of the split we find today 167 00:25:06.340 --> 00:25:12.620 within the horizons of the Austrian School of Economics between the libertarians, who 168 00:25:12.620 --> 00:25:19.700 refer back to Locke's version of the idea of right reason that enables an understanding 169 00:25:19.700 --> 00:25:27.000 of natural law, and the heirs of the theory typical of the origins of the Austrian School 170 00:25:27.000 --> 00:25:32.120 of a limited, fallible and evolutionist kind of knowledge. 171 00:25:32.120 --> 00:25:39.720 This contrast, already evident in the writings under consideration here, was made explicit 172 00:25:39.720 --> 00:25:47.440 by Rothbard in 1992 in the article The Present State of the Austrian School of Economics, 173 00:25:47.440 --> 00:25:53.160 from which the profound differences between the various paradigms within the Austrian 174 00:25:53.160 --> 00:25:55.580 School emerge. 175 00:25:55.580 --> 00:26:05.580 In this paper, Rothbard took his distance from Hayek's entire work in that it was devoted to a denigration of human reason. 176 00:26:05.580 --> 00:26:12.580 Moreover, Rothbard did highlight one of the more problematic areas of Hayek's work. 177 00:26:12.580 --> 00:26:22.580 He rightly pointed out that not all that had evolved spontaneously was consistent with a system of liberty. 178 00:26:22.580 --> 00:26:32.580 It would therefore be a mistake to accept all conventions and customs for the simple reason that they had already been established. 179 00:26:32.580 --> 00:26:38.580 To finish, I'm going to say something about Rothbard and Carl Polanyi. 180 00:26:38.580 --> 00:26:47.580 Reviewing Polanyi's great transformation, Rothbard points out that the philosophic flow in Polanyi 181 00:26:47.580 --> 00:26:54.580 Rothbard recalls to Polanyi that the progress of man and his victory over famines and disease is due to his capacity to alter the end of the world. 182 00:27:17.580 --> 00:27:23.580 and the environment by the use of reason, by capitalism and by the market. 183 00:27:23.580 --> 00:27:31.580 He remarks that the life of the savage, as Hobbes put it, is nasty, brutish and short. 184 00:27:31.580 --> 00:27:42.580 According to Polanyi, the Great Transformation was the degeneration in the sense of authoritarianism of the liberal institutions. 185 00:27:42.580 --> 00:27:50.580 He denied the liberal idea according to which a market society was a natural historical outcome. 186 00:27:50.580 --> 00:27:57.580 And therefore he tried to demonstrate the pathological nature of the liberal market. 187 00:27:57.580 --> 00:28:03.580 As a result, Polanyi criticized the classical economic school and the free market. 188 00:28:03.580 --> 00:28:12.580 The free market, in Polanyi's opinion, could only produce a dangerous individualism and social disaggregation. 189 00:28:12.580 --> 00:28:19.580 On the contrary, society, in order to defend itself, has to regulate the market. 190 00:28:19.580 --> 00:28:31.580 As Rothbard notes, in all of his complaining about the free market, Polanyi doesn't mention perhaps the most important aspect of the system, freedom. 191 00:28:31.580 --> 00:28:37.580 In a free society, no one compels Polanyi or anyone else to enter the free market. 192 00:28:37.580 --> 00:28:49.580 But one thing, and one thing alone, the free society would not permit Polanyi to do, to use coercion over the rest of us. 193 00:28:49.580 --> 00:29:07.580 Rothbard observes that there is no better way of refuting Polanyi's weeping about the lost glories of society than to observe the numberless millions who have chosen the way of the market when they had the free of choice. 194 00:29:07.580 --> 00:29:12.580 No, it's not mine. 195 00:29:12.580 --> 00:29:24.580 In fact, it is precisely such left-wing intellectuals as Polanyi who are always weeping about the coca-colalization of the rest of the world. 196 00:29:24.580 --> 00:29:39.580 But given a choice, almost everyone chooses the market economy and its advanced civilization, even, curiously enough, Professor Polanyi himself, who did not rush off to some tribe or commune. 197 00:29:39.580 --> 00:29:45.580 In all the papers I have discussed, a constant theme has emerged. 198 00:29:45.580 --> 00:29:53.580 Rothbard always defends individual freedom, understood in a libertarian way, 199 00:29:53.580 --> 00:29:57.580 as including the right to own property. 200 00:29:57.580 --> 00:30:02.580 The individual rights that form the basis of anarcho-capitalism 201 00:30:02.580 --> 00:30:09.580 can, he holds, be rationally defended as requirements of human nature. 202 00:30:09.580 --> 00:30:14.580 Leo Strauss is thus correct to defend the idea of natural law, 203 00:30:14.580 --> 00:30:21.580 but in error in thinking that Locke's defense of liberty and property broke with natural law. 204 00:30:21.580 --> 00:30:30.580 Mises rightly defends the free market, but mistakenly does so with the subjectivist and relativist ethics. 205 00:30:30.580 --> 00:30:48.580 Hayek wrongly substitutes cultural evolution for a rationally deduced natural law, and Polanyi, an enemy of the free market, fails to see that the market is a natural result of human action, not an imposition by government. 206 00:30:48.580 --> 00:31:04.580 Rothbard's defense of freedom represents an important option in political philosophy, and we can safely predict that future political philosophy will have to come to terms with Rothbard, 207 00:31:04.580 --> 00:31:17.580 since he touches some vital points within the political-philosophical debate, such as the possibility of a rational foundation of ethical absolute values, 208 00:31:17.580 --> 00:31:26.860 A controversial point on which political philosophers, and philosophers in general, are still divided 209 00:31:26.860 --> 00:31:32.540 and are still discussing, and I'm sure they will discuss for a long, long time.