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NOTE Introduction to "The Ethics of Liberty," continued

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The interest stimulated and the influence exerted by Rothbard's libertarianism and the ethics of liberty was significantly different.

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Slow, intensively growing and lasting, and reaching and affecting academia from outside,

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rather than being picked up by it and from the ivory tower communicated down to the non-academic public.

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Rothbard, as every reader of the following treatise will quickly recognize, was the prototype

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of a coercive philosopher, in the startling Nozickian definition of coercion.

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He demanded and presented proofs and exact and complete answers, rather than tentative

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explanations, conjectures and open questions.

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Regarding Anarchy, State and Utopia, Nozick had written that some may feel that the truth

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Both about ethics and political philosophy is too serious and important to be obtained

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by such flashy tools.

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This was certainly Rothbard's conviction.

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Because man cannot not act as long as he is alive, and he must use scarce means to do

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so, he must also permanently choose between right and wrong conduct.

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The fundamental question of ethics—what am I here and now rightfully allowed to do

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and what not—is thus the most permanent, important and pressing intellectual concern

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confronting man.

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Whenever and wherever one acts, an actor must be able to determine and distinguish unambiguously

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and instantly right from wrong.

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Thus any ethic worth its salt must, praxeologically, be a coercive one, because only proofs and

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knockdown arguments can provide such definite answers as are necessary.

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Man cannot temporarily suspend acting.

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Hence, tentative conjectures and open questions simply are not up to the task of a human ethic.

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Rothbard's coercive philosophizing, his insistence that ethics must be an axiomatic deductive

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system, an ethic more geometrico, was nothing new or unusual, of course.

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As already noted, Rothbard shared this view concerning the nature of ethics with the entire

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tradition of rationalist philosophy.

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His had been the dominant view of Christian rationalism and of the Enlightenment.

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Or did Rothbard claim infallibility regarding his ethics? In accordance with the tradition

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of rationalist philosophy, he merely insisted that axiomatic deductive arguments can be

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attacked and possibly refuted exclusively by other arguments of the same logical status.

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Just as one would insist, without thereby claiming infallibility for logicians and mathematicians,

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But logical or mathematical proofs can be attacked only by other logical or mathematical

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arguments.

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In the age of democratic socialism, however, such old-fashioned claims, certainly if made

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in conjunction with ethics and especially if this ethic turned out to be a libertarian

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one, were generally rejected and dismissed out of hand by academia.

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Unlike the modern Nozick, Rothbard was convinced that he had proved libertarianism, private

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property anarchism, to be morally justified and correct, and that all statists and socialists

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were plain wrong.

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Accordingly, he advocated immediate and ongoing action.

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Libertarianism, wrote Rothbard, is a philosophy seeking a policy.

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The libertarian must be possessed of a passion for justice, an emotion derived from and channeled

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by his rational insight into what natural justice requires.

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Justice, not the weak reed of mere utility, must be the motivating force if liberty is

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to be attained.

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And this means that the libertarian must be an abolitionist, that is, he must wish to

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achieve the goal of liberty as rapidly as possible.

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He should be an abolitionist who would, if he could, abolish instantaneously all invasions

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of liberty.

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To the tax-subsidized intellectual class, and especially the academic establishment,

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Rothbard could not but appear to be an extremist, best to be ignored and excluded from mainstream

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academic discourse.

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An interesting parallel exists between the treatment of Rothbard versus Nozick by the

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by the Philosophy Establishment and that of Mises versus Hayek by the Economics Establishment.

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Even if Mises' conclusions were significantly more radical than Hayek's, both came to largely

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similar, politically incorrect free market conclusions.

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Based on the similarity of their conclusions, both Mises and Hayek were considered Austrian

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School economists.

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But the method by which they derived their conclusions fundamentally differed.

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Mises was a philosophical rationalist, systematic, rigorous, proving and demonstrating, and lucid

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as a writer.

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In comparison, Hayek was a philosophical skeptic, unsystematic, methodologically eclectic,

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tentative and probing, and a less than lucid writer.

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Consequently, Hayek's treatment by academia was significantly more friendly than that

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not accorded to Mises, but also it was the pre-modern extremist Austrian Mises, not the

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modern moderate Austrian Hayek, whose influence proved more intense and enduring, and whose

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work led to the formation of an ideological movement.

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Rothbard's unkind and intolerant libertarianism took first hold among the non-academic public,

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Among Professionals, Businessmen and Educated Laymen of All Backgrounds.

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Whereas Nozick's gentle libertarianism never penetrated outside academia, Rothbard and his extremist libertarianism became the fountainhead and theoretical hardcore of an ideological movement.

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Rothbard became the creator of modern American libertarianism, the radical offspring of classical liberalism,

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in the course of some three decades has grown from a handful of proponents into a genuine

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political and intellectual movement.

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Naturally, in the course of this development and transformation, Rothbard and his libertarianism

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did not remain unchallenged or undisputed, and there were ups and downs in Rothbard's

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institutional career, of institutional alignments and realignments.

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But until his death, Rothbard remained without doubt the single most important and respected

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moral authority within the entire libertarian movement.

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And his rationalist, axiomatic, deductive, praxeological or Austrian libertarianism provides

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to this day the intellectual benchmark in reference to which every one and everything

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else in libertarianism is defined and positioned.

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What proved to be unacceptable to academia, Rothbard's pre-modern method of axiomatic

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deductive reasoning and system building, still found resonance among many people.

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Even if modern academics, freed of the obligation of having to provide a practical justification

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for their activities, can engage in unsystematic and open-ended conversation, real men, and

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and especially successful men have to act and think systematically and methodically,

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and such planning and future-oriented, low-time preference people also will not likely be

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satisfied with anything but systematic and methodical answers to their own practical

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moral concerns.

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Nor did Rothbard's explicit political radicalism constitute a serious acceptance problem among

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among such successful and independently minded men.

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Even if increasingly marginalized, significant remnants of the original American tradition

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of radical libertarianism still existed among the educated public.

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In fact, the American Revolution had been largely inspired by libertarian, radical,

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Lockean ideas.

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And the Declaration of Independence, and in particular its author, Thomas Jefferson, reflected

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and express the same rationalist spirit of the Enlightenment and the even older natural

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law tradition that also characterized Rothbard and his political philosophy.

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We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed

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by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty

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and the pursuit of happiness, that to secure these rights, governments are instituted

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Among Men, Deriving Their Just Powers from the Consent of the Governed.

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That whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right

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of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation

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on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely

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to effect their safety and happiness.

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Experiences indeed will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for

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light and transient causes, and accordingly all experience has shown that mankind are

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more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the

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forms to which they are accustomed.

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But when a long train of abuses and usurpations pursuing invariably the same object evinces

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Rothbard, apart from his theoretical work as an economist and a political philosopher,

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was also an eminent historian.

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In his four-volume history of colonial America, conceived in liberty, he gives a detailed

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and in many essays on critical episodes in U.S. history, he notes again and again the

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continuing importance of the original libertarian American spirit.

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To be sure, the original radical libertarian impetus, which had led to the American Revolution

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and the Declaration of Independence, had subsequently suffered one setback after another.

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With the victory of the Federalists over the Anti-Federalists, and the transition from

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the original Confederacy to the Union, with the de facto abolition of the Union Constitution

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by Abraham Lincoln in the course and as the result of the destruction of the secessionist

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Southern Confederacy, with the onset of progressivism, with Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal, with

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Lyndon B. Johnson's Great Society, and so on, with Presidents Nixon, Carter, Reagan,

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Bush and Clinton. Even if again and again defeated, however, the tradition of radical

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individualist libertarianism could not be eradicated from the American public consciousness.

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In harking back explicitly to Jefferson and the Jeffersonian tradition, Rothbard tapped

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into a still widespread, if dormant, pool of activists and lay intellectuals. And owing

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According to the clarity, the logical rigor, the systematic and comprehensive character,

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and the passion of his writings, he succeeded almost single-handedly in reinvigorating,

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radicalizing and channeling their sentiments into a unified political-philosophical movement.

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It was only in light of external events, the emergence and advancement of a libertarian

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movement and the central role played by Rothbard in this movement, and with a considerable delay,

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that Rothbard and the ethics of liberty no longer could be overlooked by academia.

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Not surprisingly, even then, the general reaction was cool. To be sure, there were also a fair and

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steadily growing number of highly respectful and appreciative academic treatments of Rothbard's

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and Political Philosophy.

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And around the Journal of Libertarian Studies, an interdisciplinary scholarly review Rothbard

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had founded in 1977, and for which he had served until his death as editor, he had assembled

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a formidable number of disciples.

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But in general, the academic reaction to Rothbard and his libertarianism was one of non or mis-comprehension,

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indignant rejection, or even downright hostility.

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In part, this was certainly due to Rothbard's unapologetic use of the language of natural

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rights.

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This had been the language of the Declaration of Independence.

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The same natural rights language had been preserved to the present within the Christian

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and in particular the Catholic Church, and it also had been adopted by a handful of contemporary

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philosophers.

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However, to most contemporary academics, talk of natural rights was, in Jeremy Bentham's

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In fact, and more to the point, natural rights were incompatible with absolute state power,

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and they did not sit well with either democracy or socialism.

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Hence, in the course of the transformation of the Western world from an aristocratic

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or monarchical system to a modern mass democracy within the last 100 years, natural rights

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Rothbard's teachings had been successively removed from the officially approved philosophical

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curriculum and replaced with modern positivistic doctrines.

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Confronted with a largely unfamiliar language, even many well-intentioned philosophers were

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simply befuddled or irritated by Rothbard's work.

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Moreover, Rothbard may even have overstated his own agreement with classical natural rights

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Theory, and not sufficiently emphasized his own distinct contribution of importing and

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applying the Misesian method of praxeology to ethics, and thus unintentionally have aggravated

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an already existing problem.

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Typical, and at the same time instructive, were reactions like those of Peter D. McClelland,

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for instance, in a chapter in a book on economic justice titled, The Market Defended, Confusions

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of the Right.

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Murray Rothbard, McClelland noted, is one of the acknowledged intellectual leaders among

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contemporary libertarians, a group which, by American standards, is located on the far

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right.

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His views are interesting for purposes of this discussion for two reasons.

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First, he provides a carefully reasoned defense of the income distribution generated by the

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market that makes no reference to the merits of recipients.

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Secondly, that defense proceeds from a handful of premises to a conclusion presumed to be

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universally applicable in any situation where the justice of the economic system is at stake.

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As such, it provides a classic example of how not to reason about economic justice.

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To put the second point a second way, Rothbard's approach flies in the face of key points made

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in earlier chapters.

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That to problems of economic justice we bring a multitude of values to be honored.

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These values can and do conflict.

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When conflicts arise, trade-offs among competing values must be made.

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General rules for making such trade-offs are difficult to formulate, and thus judgments

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about economic justice are difficult to make independent of the context of the situation

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in which such judgments must be made. Or, more simply put, in reaching decisions about

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economic justice in a concrete situation, we do not generally rely upon universal rules

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to determine the right or just choice. In all, McClellan finds that Rothbard's arguments

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are somewhat strange, Aquinas' viewpoint minus the theology, and he then summarily dismisses

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Several objections and questions arise immediately upon reading this, not least of which is the truly strange fact that our author apparently believes that empirical facts, such as that not many people believe P, have any bearing on the question whether or not P is true, valid or justified.

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Would he also object to mathematical or logical proofs on the ground that most people are incapable of grasping them?

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Moreover, granting that when conflicts arise, trade-offs among competing values must be made.

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The decisive question is, who is to decide what these trade-offs should be?

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Conflicting values invariably involve incompatible, mutually exclusive views of at least two actors concerning the use of some scarce resources.

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Obviously then, not both of these parties can decide what these trade-offs should be.

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After all, their respective values are incompatible, but only one or the other.

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But how can one party be selected and not the other, unless one possesses a theory of property?

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And if one cannot rely upon universal rules to determine the right or just choice, and everything depends on the context of the situation,

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how then does our critic think it possible for anyone to ever know ex ante before taking it, whether or not some action qualifies as just?

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Post? Or does he believe that justice is to be determined only ex post? How can such a

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theory of justice qualify as a human ethic? All of these concerns may be left aside, however,

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because the ultimate error in McClelland's criticism, and, by contrast, the unique Rothbardian

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contribution to ethics, occurs at a logically prior stage, when McClelland claims that Rothbard's

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This reductionist, that is, axiomatic deductive method, flies in the face of the existence

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of a multitude of values to be honored.

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McClelland does not explain why this should be so, nor could he have succeeded even if

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he had tried.

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First off, surely Rothbard could not have been unaware of the fact of a multitude of

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conflicting values.

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Indeed, it is difficult to imagine anyone unaware of this fact.

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But this observation is no more than the starting point of ethics and moral reasoning.

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If no conflicting values existed, then, by definition, all actions would be in perfect

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harmony with each other.

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Everyone would always act in such a way as everyone else thought he should act.

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In this case of a pre-stabilized harmony of all interests, there is no need for an ethic,

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and none would ever come into existence.

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The existence of conflicting values thus poses no problem whatsoever for Rothbard's ethic,

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or any other ethic for that matter.

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Rather, it is from the outset taken for granted, and ethics is the very response to this universal

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and eternal human dilemma.

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Furthermore, if conflicts exist, and if these can be resolved at all, then such a solution

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cannot possibly be found except by means of a reductionist method, that is, the subsumption

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of specific cases or conflict situations under general and abstract rules or principles.

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Rothbard's view in this regard is not essentially different from that of most other political

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and moral philosophers.

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Ethics, if it is possible at all, must and can never be anything else but reductionist.

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Assuming for the sake of argument that no disagreement exists up to this point, McClellan's

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charge can only mean this.

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Even if one were to follow such a reductionist strategy, it will not yield a single principle

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or a single set of internally consistent principles covering and resolving all cases of conflict.

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In other words, even if some disagreements may be resolved by reference to increasingly

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and the more general and abstract rules and principles, many other disagreements will

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remain unresolvable because, as a matter of empirical fact, even on the level of abstract

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rules and principles, disagreement persists and inescapably results in inconsistencies

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and incompatibilities and leads to moral skepticism of some sort.

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This line of reasoning is indeed characteristic of a wide-ranging group of political philosophers,

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including Rawls, who, while they may disagree among themselves on how much conflict can

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or cannot be resolved in this way, all conceive of ethical principles as the result, outcome,

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of agreement or contract.

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It is here that the fundamental error lies, and Rothbard's unique contribution to ethics

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Ethics comes into play. Ethics, the validity of the principle of self-ownership and original

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appropriation, is demonstrably not dependent and contingent upon agreement or contract,

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and the universality claim connected with Rothbard's libertarianism is not affected

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in the slightest by the circumstance that moral discussants may or may not always come

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come to an agreement or contract. Ethics is the logical, praxeological presupposition,

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in Kantian terminology, die Bedingung der Möglichkeit, rather than the result of agreement

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or contract. The principles of self-ownership and original appropriation make agreement

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and contract, including that of not agreeing and contracting, possible. Set in motion and

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and stimulated by the universal experience of conflict, moral discussion and argument

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can discover, reconstruct, explicate, and formulate the principles of self-ownership

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and original appropriation.

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But their validity in no way depends on whether or not this is the case, and if so, whether

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or not these formulations then find universal ascent.

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Ludwig's distinct contribution to the natural rights tradition is his reconstruction of

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the principles of self-ownership and original appropriation as the praxeological precondition

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— Bedingung der Möglichkeit — of argumentation, and his recognition that whatever must be

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presupposed as valid in order to make argumentation possible in the first place cannot in turn

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can be argumentatively disputed without thereby falling into a practical self-contradiction.

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As Rothbard explains in an unfortunately brief but centrally important passage of the Ethics

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of Liberty, a proposition rises to the status of an axiom when he who denies it may be shown

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to be using it in the very course of the supposed refutation.

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Now any person participating in any sort of discussion, including one on values, is by

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virtue of so participating, alive and affirming life.

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For if he were really opposed to life, he would have no business in such a discussion.

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Indeed, he would have no business continuing to be alive.

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Hence, the supposed opponent of life is really affirming it in the very process of his discussion,

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And hence, the preservation and furtherance of one's life takes on the stature of an

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incontestable axiom.

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As an immediate implication of this insight into the status of the principles of self-ownership

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and original appropriation as ethical axioms, Rothbard rejected as nonsense all notions

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of animal rights.

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Animals are incapable of engaging in propositional exchange with humans.

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Indeed, it is this inability which defines them as non-rational and distinguishes them

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categorically from men as rational animals.

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Unable to communicate and without rationality, animals are, by their very nature, incapable

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of recognizing or possessing any rights.

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Rothbard noted, There is rough justice in the common quip that we will recognize the

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rights of animals whenever they petition for them.

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The fact that animals can obviously not petition for their rights is part of their nature,

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and part of the reason why they are clearly not equivalent to, and do not possess the

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rights of, human beings. Rather than rightful moral agents, animals

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are objects of possible human control and appropriation. Thus Rothbard confirmed the

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As academia had little to do with Rothbard's success in creating and shaping a political

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philosophical mass movement in the first place, its belated, mostly negative reactions did

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little to change Rothbard's growing status as a public philosopher.

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To the contrary, the course of historical events, the spectacular collapse of the great socialist

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experiment in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe from 1989 to 1991, and the increasingly

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obvious crisis of the Western welfare states, provided ever more support for fundamental

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libertarian insights.

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No one but his teacher, Mises, had given a more accurate account of the economic inefficiencies

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of Socialism and Social Democracy than Rothbard, and no one had explained more clearly the

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moral hazards and perversions created by socialism and social democracy.

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Whereas the events in Eastern Europe and the economic and moral crisis of the Western states,

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of stagnating or falling real incomes, staggering public debt, imminently bankrupt social security

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systems, family and social disintegration, rising uncivility, moral degeneration and

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crime were an obvious embarrassment and intellectual debacle for the social-democratic academic

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establishment.

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They provided dramatic empirical confirmation for Rothbard and his theoretical work.

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In this situation, libertarianism and Rothbard's influence in particular could only grow and

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gain prominence.

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By the mid-1990s, Rothbard's role as the spiritus rector of a steadily growing and increasingly

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threatening revolutionary libertarian movement was even acknowledged by the mainstream media.

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Thus, following the right-wing Republican revolution during the 1994 Congressional

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elections, the Washington Post identified Rothbard as the central intellectual figure

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behind this event.

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In what is probably his last publication, Rothbard took this opportunity to denounce

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the newly elected Republican House Speaker, Newt Gingrich, as an anti-libertarian welfare

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statist sellout.

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Nor did the academic rejection make any noticeable impression on Rothbard or the further development

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of libertarian theory.

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The Ethics of Liberty had been published at a low point in Rothbard's career, though one

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One of the founders of the Cato Institute, Rothbard had been forced out by the chief

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financial backer as too extreme and intransigent.

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Despite such unfavorable external circumstances and without any institutional promotion, the

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book established itself quickly as the single most authoritative and comprehensive work

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in libertarian theory.

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Long after the book had gone out of print in the United States, it was being translated

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into French, Spanish, Italian and German, further securing its status as an enduring

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classic of political philosophy.

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Ironically, 1982 was also the year of the founding of the Ludwig von Mises Institute,

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of which he served as academic head until his death.

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Together with a new academic position at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, these would

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prove to be the years of Rothbard's greatest professional success.

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After the original publication of the Ethics of Liberty, and until his death in 1995, Rothbard

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was working on a comprehensive and encompassing history of economic and political thought.

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Two massive volumes of the unfinished three-volume project were published posthumously in 1995,

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under the titles Economic Thought Before Adam Smith and Classical Economics.

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Based on his prior theoretical work with Austrian free market economics and libertarian political

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philosophy providing the conceptual framework, Rothbard in these volumes gave a sweeping

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narrative account of the history of economic and political philosophical ideas from the

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ancient Greeks to near the end of the 19th century and the interplay of ideas and economic

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and political reality.

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Poor and abstract Austrian and libertarian theory was illustrated with historical examples

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and illustrations, and at the same time intellectual and political history was presented as a systematically

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comprehensible subject, methodically and thematically unified and integrated.

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Rothbard here opened a panoramic view of the entire history of Western civilization, with

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with new vistas and many surprising or even startling reinterpretations and reevaluations.

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History was unfolded as a permanent struggle between truth and falsehood, and good, justice

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and evil, of intellectual and political heroes great and small, and of economic and political

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breakthroughs and progress, as well as of blunderers and villains, and of errors, perversions

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and Decline, and the civilizational ups and downs of human history were explained as the

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results of true and false ideas and the distribution and strength of ideologies in public consciousness.

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By complementing economic and political theory with history, Rothbard provided the Austro-libertarian

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movement with a grand historical perspective, sociological understanding and strategic vision,

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and thus deepened and broadened libertarianism's popular anchoring and sociological base.

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Besides his main work on the history of economic and political thought, however, Rothbard also

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returned repeatedly to political theory.

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In reaction to a growing environmentalist movement and its transformation into an anti-human

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and pro-animal movement, Rothbard wrote Law, Property Rights and Air Pollution, further

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The Theory of Money and Credit

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In the preface to the French edition of the Ethics of Liberty, he summarily reviewed several current contributions to libertarian theory, apart from Nozick's utilitarian and contractarian libertarianisms and natural rights minarchisms, and rejected all of them as ultimately confused or inconsistent.

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In the monthly Free Market, published by the Mises Institute, he provided political and economic analysis of current events, beginning in 1982 and continuing until 1995.

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In addition, in 1989, he founded the monthly Rothbard-Rockwell Report, which served as the main outlet of Rothbard's political, sociological, cultural and religious commentary.

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He contributed dozens of articles in which he applied libertarian principles to the full range of human events and experiences,

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from war and criminal punishment to the appropriation of airspace and waves, blackmail, affirmative action and adoption, etc.,

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and thus constantly illustrated and reiterated the universal applicability and versatility of libertarian theory.

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None of these later writings, however, brought any systematic changes as compared to the ethics of liberty, whether on principles or remote conclusions.

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Different and new problem aspects were analyzed and emphasized, but the essentials were already contained in his earlier treatise.

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In distinct contrast to Nozick, Rothbard did not change his mind on essential questions.

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Indeed, looking back over his entire career, it can be said that from the late 1950s, when

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he had first arrived at what would later become the Rothbardian system, until the end of his

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life, Rothbard did not waver on fundamental matters of economic or political theory.

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Yet owing to his long and intensive work in the history of economic and political thought,

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a different thematic emphasis became apparent in his later writings, most noticeably in

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and the several hundred articles contributed during the last years of his life.

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Apart from economic and political concerns, Rothbard increasingly focused his attention on and stressed the importance of culture as a sociological prerequisite of libertarianism.

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Libertarianism as developed in the ethics of liberty was no more and no less than a political philosophy.

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It provided an answer to the question of which actions are lawful and hence may not be legitimately threatened with physical violence, and which actions are unlawful and may be so punished.

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It did not say anything with respect to the further question whether or not all lawful actions should be equally tolerated or possibly punished by means other than and below the threshold of a threat of physical violence,

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Silence, such as public disapprobation, ostracism, exclusion and expulsion.

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Even given its explicitly limited scope, the ethics of liberty had a distinctly old-fashioned

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flavor and revealed libertarianism as a fundamentally conservative doctrine.

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The most obvious indicator of this was the already noted emphasis placed on punishment

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as the necessary complement to property.

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More specifically, Rothbard presented a rigorous modern defense of the traditional proportionality

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principle of punishment as contained in the Lex Talionis, of an eye for an eye, or rather,

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as he would correctively explain, two eyes for an eye.

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He rejected the deterrence and rehabilitation theories of punishment as incompatible with

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with Private Property Rights, and championed instead the idea of victim's rights and of

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restitution, compensation, and or retribution as essential to justice.

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He argued in favor of such old-fashioned institutions as compulsory labor and indentured servitude

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for convicted criminals and for debtors' prisons, and his analyses of causation and liability,

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The burden of proof and proper assumption of risk invariably displayed a basic and staunch moral conservatism of strict individual responsibility and accountability.

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This and Rothbard's own lifelong cultural conservatism notwithstanding, however, from its beginnings in the late 1960s and the founding of a libertarian party in 1971,

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The libertarian movement had great appeal to many of the countercultural left that had

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then grown up in the United States in opposition to the war in Vietnam.

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Did not the illegitimacy of the state and the non-aggression axiom imply that everyone

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was at liberty to choose his very own non-aggressive lifestyle, no matter what it was?

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Much of Rothbard's later writings, with their increased emphasis on cultural matters, were

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were designed to correct this development and to explain the error in the idea of a leftist

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multi-counter-cultural libertarianism, of libertarianism as a variant of libertinism.

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It was false, empirically as well as normatively, that libertarianism could or should be combined

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with egalitarian multiculturalism.

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Both were in fact sociologically incompatible, and libertarianism could and should be combined

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and exclusively with traditional Western bourgeois culture, that is, the old-fashioned ideal

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of a family-based and hierarchically structured society of voluntarily acknowledged rank orders

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of social authority.

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Empirically, Rothbard did not tire to explain, the left libertarians failed to recognize

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that the restoration of private property rights and laissez-faire economics implied a sharp

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and drastic increase in social discrimination. Private property means the right to exclude.

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The modern social democratic welfare state has increasingly stripped private property owners of

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their right to exclude. In distinct contrast, a libertarian society where the right to exclude

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was fully restored to owners of private property would be profoundly unegalitarian. To be sure,

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Private property also implies the owner's right to include and to open and facilitate

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access to one's property, and every private property owner also faces an economic incentive

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00:40:32.360 --> 00:40:39.320
of including rather than excluding, so long as he expects this to increase the value of his property.

401
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The Ethics of Liberty's chapter most difficult to accept for conservatives on children and rights

402
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In this chapter, Rothbard argued in favor of a mother's absolute right to her own body,

403
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and therefore to perform an abortion.

404
00:41:00.240 --> 00:41:06.200
He rejected the right-to-life argument, not on the ground that a fetus was not life.

405
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In fact, from the moment of conception, he agreed with the Catholic position, it was

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human life.

407
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But rather on the fundamental ground that no such thing as a universal right to life,

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but exclusively a universal right to live an independent and separate life, can properly

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and possibly exist, and that a fetus, while certainly human life, is just as certainly

410
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up to the moment of birth not an independent, but biologically speaking a parasitic life,

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and thus has no rightful claim against the mother.

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Further, upon childbirth, a mother, and with her consent, parents jointly, would have the

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trustee ownership of her children, an ownership limited only by the illegality of aggressing

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against their persons and by their absolute right to run away or to leave home at any

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time.

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Parents would be able to sell their trustee rights in children to anyone who wished to

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to buy them at any mutually agreed price.

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So long as children have not left home, a parent does not have the right to aggress

419
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against his children, but also the parent should not have a legal obligation to feed,

420
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clothe or educate his children, since such obligations would entail positive acts coerced

421
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upon the parent and depriving the parent of his rights.

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The parent therefore may not murder or mutilate his child, but the parent should have the

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legal right not to feed his child, that is, to allow it to die.

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So as to avoid any misunderstanding, in the next sentence Rothbard reminded his reader

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of the strictly delineated scope of his treatise on political philosophy, and noted that, whether

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Whether or not a parent has a moral rather than a legally enforceable obligation to keep

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his child alive is a completely separate question.

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However, this explicit qualification and the general thrust of the ethics of liberty not

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withstanding, these pronouncements were used in conservative circles in the attempt to

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prevent a libertarian infiltration and radicalization of contemporary American conservatism.

431
00:43:27.620 --> 00:43:33.140
Of course, conservative political theory was a contradiction in terms.

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Conservatism essentially meant not to have and even reject any abstract theory and rigorous

433
00:43:38.660 --> 00:43:41.020
logical argument.

434
00:43:41.020 --> 00:43:46.140
Not surprisingly, Rothbard was singularly unimpressed by conservative critics such as

435
00:43:46.140 --> 00:43:53.380
Russell Kirk, whose theoretical work he considered devoid of analytical and argumentative rigor.

436
00:43:53.380 --> 00:43:59.340
Consequently, Rothbard did not see any reason to abandon his original conclusions. Until

437
00:43:59.340 --> 00:44:04.580
the end of his life, he would not budge on the problem of abortion and child neglect,

438
00:44:04.580 --> 00:44:10.380
and insisted on a mother's absolute legal, lawful right to an abortion and of letting

439
00:44:10.380 --> 00:44:16.860
her children die. In fact, if women did not have such rights and had committed instead

440
00:44:16.860 --> 00:44:22.940
a punishable crime, it would seem that their crime then must be equivalent to murder. Should

441
00:44:22.940 --> 00:44:27.620
Should abortion accordingly be threatened with capital punishment, and convicted abortionist

442
00:44:27.620 --> 00:44:29.960
mothers be executed?

443
00:44:29.960 --> 00:44:36.280
But who, except its mother, can possibly claim a right to her fetus and child, and thus be

444
00:44:36.280 --> 00:44:40.220
considered as the rightful victim of her actions?

445
00:44:40.220 --> 00:44:43.220
Who could bring a wrongful death suit against her?

446
00:44:43.220 --> 00:44:44.980
Surely not the state.

447
00:44:44.980 --> 00:44:49.960
For a conservative in particular, any state interference in the autonomy of families should

448
00:44:49.960 --> 00:44:51.720
be anathema.

449
00:44:51.720 --> 00:44:55.760
And who else, if indeed anyone?

450
00:44:55.760 --> 00:45:01.000
Yet while Rothbard unchangingly held to his conclusions concerning the rights of children

451
00:45:01.000 --> 00:45:07.220
and parents, his later writings, with an increased emphasis on moral cultural matters and the

452
00:45:07.220 --> 00:45:14.260
exclusionary aspect of private property rights, placed these conclusions in a wider and characteristically

453
00:45:14.260 --> 00:45:16.840
conservative social context.

454
00:45:16.840 --> 00:45:22.440
Thus, while in favor of a woman's right to have an abortion, Rothbard was nonetheless

455
00:45:22.440 --> 00:45:28.580
strictly opposed to the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Roe v. Wade, which recognized

456
00:45:28.580 --> 00:45:34.520
such a right. This was not because he believed the Court's finding concerning the legality

457
00:45:34.520 --> 00:45:40.400
of abortion wrong, but on the more fundamental ground that the U.S. Supreme Court had no

458
00:45:40.400 --> 00:45:46.320
jurisdiction in the matter, and that by assuming it, the Court had engendered a systematic

459
00:45:46.320 --> 00:45:49.760
Centralization of State Power.

460
00:45:49.760 --> 00:45:55.320
The right to have an abortion does not imply that one may have an abortion anywhere.

461
00:45:55.320 --> 00:46:00.960
In fact, there is nothing impermissible about private owners and associations discriminating

462
00:46:00.960 --> 00:46:07.160
against and punishing abortionists by every means other than physical punishment.

463
00:46:07.160 --> 00:46:12.560
Every household and property owner is free to prohibit an abortion on his own territory

464
00:46:12.560 --> 00:46:17.760
and may enter into a restrictive covenant with other owners for the same purpose.

465
00:46:17.760 --> 00:46:24.200
Moreover, every owner and every association of owners is free to fire or not to hire and

466
00:46:24.200 --> 00:46:30.000
to refuse to engage in any transaction whatsoever with an abortionist.

467
00:46:30.000 --> 00:46:35.800
It may indeed be the case that no civilized place can be found anywhere and that one must

468
00:46:35.800 --> 00:46:40.240
retire to the infamous back alley to have an abortion.

469
00:46:40.240 --> 00:46:45.080
Not only would there be nothing wrong with such a situation, it would be positively moral

470
00:46:45.080 --> 00:46:50.340
in raising the cost of irresponsible sexual conduct, and helping to reduce the number

471
00:46:50.340 --> 00:46:52.400
of abortions.

472
00:46:52.400 --> 00:46:58.100
In distinct contrast, the Supreme Court's decision was not only unlawful by expanding

473
00:46:58.100 --> 00:47:04.620
its, that is, the central state's, jurisdiction at the expense of state and local governments,

474
00:47:04.620 --> 00:47:11.220
and ultimately of every private property owner's rightful jurisdiction regarding his own property.

475
00:47:11.220 --> 00:47:18.820
It was also positively immoral in facilitating the availability and accessibility of abortion.

476
00:47:18.820 --> 00:47:27.100
Libertarians, Rothbard stressed in this connection, must be opposed as are traditional conservatives.

477
00:47:27.100 --> 00:47:33.500
But unlike social democrats, neoconservatives and left libertarians, on principled grounds

478
00:47:33.500 --> 00:47:40.460
to any and all centralization of state power, even and especially if such centralization

479
00:47:40.460 --> 00:47:46.300
involves a correct judgment, such as that abortion should be legal, or that taxes should

480
00:47:46.300 --> 00:47:48.180
be abolished.

481
00:47:48.180 --> 00:47:53.060
It would be anti-libertarian, for instance, to appeal to the United Nations to order the

482
00:47:53.060 --> 00:47:59.440
breakup of a taxi monopoly in Houston, or to the U.S. government to order Utah to abolish

483
00:47:59.440 --> 00:48:06.040
It's state certification requirement for teachers, because in doing so, one would have illegitimately

484
00:48:06.040 --> 00:48:12.360
granted these state agencies jurisdiction over property that they plainly do not own,

485
00:48:12.360 --> 00:48:14.200
but others do.

486
00:48:14.200 --> 00:48:21.040
Not only Houston or Utah, but every city in the world and every state in the United States.

487
00:48:21.040 --> 00:48:27.000
And while every state, small or large, violates the rights of private property owners and

488
00:48:27.000 --> 00:48:30.040
must be feared and combated.

489
00:48:30.040 --> 00:48:36.040
Large central states violate more people's rights and must be feared even more.

490
00:48:36.040 --> 00:48:42.200
They do not come into existence ab ovo, but are the outgrowth of a process of eliminative

491
00:48:42.200 --> 00:48:48.520
competition among originally numerous independent small local states.

492
00:48:48.520 --> 00:48:53.780
Central states, and ultimately a single world state, represent the successful expansion

493
00:48:53.780 --> 00:48:59.560
Concentration and Concentration of State Power, that is, of evil, and must accordingly be

494
00:48:59.560 --> 00:49:02.260
regarded as especially dangerous.

495
00:49:02.260 --> 00:49:09.500
Hence, a libertarian, as his second-best solution, must always discriminate in favor of local

496
00:49:09.500 --> 00:49:15.500
and against central government, and he must always try to correct injustices at the level

497
00:49:15.500 --> 00:49:21.860
and location where they occur, rather than empowering some higher, more centralized level

498
00:49:21.860 --> 00:49:29.860
of Government to Rectify a Local Injustice. In fact, as a result of his increasing emphasis

499
00:49:29.860 --> 00:49:35.900
on cultural conservatism as a sociological presupposition of libertarianism, Rothbard

500
00:49:35.900 --> 00:49:41.060
succeeded in bringing about a fundamental reorientation of the libertarian movement

501
00:49:41.060 --> 00:49:47.340
during the last decade of his life. Symbolic of this change in direction was Rothbard's

502
00:49:47.340 --> 00:49:54.900
Dissociation in 1989 from the Libertarian Party. Rothbard's action did not, as some

503
00:49:54.900 --> 00:50:00.740
prominent left libertarians vainly proclaimed at the time, mark the end of his association

504
00:50:00.740 --> 00:50:07.580
with libertarianism or his role as the libertarian movement's guiding star. Rather, it marked

505
00:50:07.580 --> 00:50:13.620
the beginning of a systematic ideological realignment to open libertarian access to

506
00:50:13.620 --> 00:50:20.140
to the American Heartland, and foment there a rapidly growing and increasingly radicalized

507
00:50:20.140 --> 00:50:26.660
populist movement among middle Americans disgusted with the welfare-warfare statism and social

508
00:50:26.660 --> 00:50:31.960
disintegration produced and promoted by Federal policies.

509
00:50:31.960 --> 00:50:38.020
The anti-central state shift in American politics at the decisive end of the Cold War was the

510
00:50:38.020 --> 00:50:47.020
The first unmistakable sign of the burgeoning strength of the conservative libertarian grassroots movement envisioned and shaped by Rothbard.

511
00:50:47.020 --> 00:50:58.020
The historical moment for Rothbardian scholarly tradition may at last have arrived, and his political movement is surely not too far in the distance.

512
00:50:58.020 --> 00:51:04.020
Rothbard had always been an optimist, grounded in the fact of human rationality

513
00:51:04.020 --> 00:51:13.020
and further strengthened by the Misesian-Rothbardian insight that one cannot violate moral and economic laws without having to pay a price,

514
00:51:13.020 --> 00:51:24.020
and that one violation will, according to the logic of state action, lead to more violations, until the price that must be paid becomes intolerable.

515
00:51:24.020 --> 00:51:31.020
Thus the ethical and economic depredations of socialism finally ended in a spectacular collapse.

516
00:51:31.020 --> 00:51:38.020
Likewise, in the United States and the Western world, after nearly 100 years of social democratic welfare statism,

517
00:51:38.020 --> 00:51:44.020
the moral and economic reserve fund inherited from the past has become visibly exhausted,

518
00:51:44.020 --> 00:51:53.020
and has led to a manifest economic and moral crisis of stagnating or falling standards of living and societal breakdown,

519
00:51:53.020 --> 00:52:00.020
as well as a widespread loss of faith and trust in the central state as the organizing agent of society.

520
00:52:00.020 --> 00:52:22.020
In this situation of the obvious moral and economic bankruptcy of socialism and social democracy and an ever more strongly felt need for an explanation and a principal alternative, it can be safely predicted that Rothbard's Ethics of Liberty not only will endure as a classic, but steadily gain in prominence.

521
00:52:22.020 --> 00:52:24.400
Alliance.

522
00:52:24.400 --> 00:52:29.180
At the academic level, Rothbard's lifelong work for the scholarship of liberty has at

523
00:52:29.180 --> 00:52:35.140
long last come to serve as the foundational theoretical edifice for the modern successors

524
00:52:35.140 --> 00:52:40.600
of the old classical liberal movement, the movement that originally influenced the development

525
00:52:40.600 --> 00:52:43.020
of the basic libertarian position.

526
00:52:43.020 --> 00:52:49.740
Today, this movement is truly international in scope, and includes thousands of lay intellectuals

527
00:52:49.740 --> 00:52:55.460
and Professional Scholars the World Over, many of whom view Rothbard's voluminous writings

528
00:52:55.460 --> 00:53:01.100
over the entire course of his lifetime as the model and ideal of principled political

529
00:53:01.100 --> 00:53:03.900
and economic thinking.

530
00:53:03.900 --> 00:53:08.920
After his death, his reputation as leader in libertarian political theory and Austrian

531
00:53:08.920 --> 00:53:15.180
school economics is increasingly obvious, even undeniable, to enthusiasts and critics

532
00:53:15.180 --> 00:53:16.640
alike.

533
00:53:16.640 --> 00:53:24.400
For his seminal Ethics of Liberty to be available once again should further solidify this status.

534
00:53:24.400 --> 00:53:28.800
University of Nevada, Las Vegas, January 1998