economist historian theoritician
Ethnicity:
His father emigrated to the United States from a Polish shtetl, while his mother came from Russia.
Rothbard was born to David and Rae Rothbard, who raised their Jewish family in the Bronx. His father, a chemist, "emigrated to the United States from a Polish shtetl in 1910, impoverished and knowing not a word of English," while his mother came from Russia.
He attended Columbia University, where he was awarded a Bachelor of Arts degree in mathematics (1945), a Master of Arts degree (1946), and a Doctor of Philosophy degree in economics in 1956.
During the early 1950s, Rothbard studied under the Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises at his seminars at New York University and was greatly influenced by Mises' book Human Action. Rothbard attracted the attention of the William Volker Fund, the main group that supported classical liberal scholars in the 1950s and early 1960s.He began a project to write a textbook to explain Human Action in a fashion suitable for college students; a sample chapter he wrote on money and credit won Mises’s approval. As Rothbard continued his work, he transformed the project. The result, Man, Economy, and State published in 1962, was a central work of Austrian economics.
From 1963 to 1985, Rothbard taught at Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute, in Brooklyn, New York. From 1986 until his death he was a distinguished professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Rothbard founded the Center for Libertarian Studies in 1976 and the Journal of Libertarian Studies in 1977. He was associated with the 1982 creation of the Ludwig von Mises Institute and later was its academic vice president. In 1987, he started the scholarly Review of Austrian Economics, now called the Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics.
He died in 1995 in Manhattan of a heart attack. The New York Times obituary called Rothbard "an economist and social philosopher who fiercely defended individual freedom against government intervention."
Rothbard created the modern libertarian movement.
Specifically, he refined and fused together:
natural law theory, using a basic Aristotelian or Randian approach;
the radical civil libertarianism of nineteenth century individualist-anarchists, especially Lysander Spooner and Benjamin Tucker;
the free market philosophy of Austrian economists, in particular Ludwig von Mises, into which he incorporated sweeping economic histories; and,
the foreign policy of the American Old Right – that is, isolationism.
Rothbard was totally committed to the praxeological method. By consistently taking the praxeological path in economics, Rothbard arrives at the desirability of a pure anarcho-capitalist society. He convincingly argues that a stateless society is the only society totally consonant with natural rights to person and property.
Rothbard advocated abolition of coercive government control of society and the economy, building on the Austrian School's concept of spontaneous order, support for a free market in money production, and condemnation of central planning . He considered the monopoly force of government the greatest danger to liberty and the long-term well-being of the populace, labeling the state as "the organization of robbery systematized and writ large" and the locus of the most immoral, grasping and unscrupulous individuals in any society.
Rothbard produced a system of political and social philosophy based on economics and ethics as its foundations.
Economics and ethics are separate disciplines, complement one another, and are based on the nature of man and the world. Rothbard recognizes the need for an ethic to underpin, accompany, and enhance a value-free economics in order to solidify the argument for a free-market society.
Rothbard made many valuable contributions to economic theory. In a major paper, “Toward a Reconstruction of Utility and Welfare Economics” (1956), he showed that if one takes seriously the fact that utility is ordinal and not cardinal, then the anti-market views of most modern welfare economists must be abandoned.
Rothbard founded the Center for Libertarian Studies in 1976 and the Journal of Libertarian Studies in 1977. He was associated with the 1982 creation of the Ludwig von Mises Institute and later was its academic vice president. In 1987, he started the scholarly Review of Austrian Economics, now called the Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics.
Man, Economy and State: A Treatise on Economic Principles- рус. "Человек, экономика и государство"
America’s Great Depression ("Великая Депрессия Америки")
Left and Right: The Prospects for Liberty ("Левые и правые: перспективы Свободы")
Praxeology: The Methodology of Austrian Economics ("Праксиология: методология австрийской экономики")
Ethics of Liberty ("Этика свободы")
Economic Thought Before Adam Smith and Classical Economics. in 2 volumes. ("Экономическая мысль до Адама Смита и классической экономики". В 2-х томах)
He was one of the founders and prominent Libertarian Party.
Rothbard was one of the founders of the Cato Institute, and "came up with the idea of naming this libertarian think tank after Cato’s Letters, a powerful series of British newspaper essays by John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon which played a decisive influence upon America's Founding Fathers in fomenting the Revolution.
Aristotle, Aquinas, Böhm-Bawerk, Hazlitt, La Boétie, Burke, Chodorov, Hayek, Wilder Lane, Laozi, Locke, Mencken, Menger, Mises, Molinari, Nock, Oppenheimer, Rand, Say, Schumpeter, Spencer, Spooner, Tucker, Turgot, Harpe
Aristotle, Aquinas, Böhm-Bawerk, Hazlitt, La Boétie, Burke, Chodorov, Hayek, Wilder Lane, Laozi, Locke, Mencken, Menger, Mises, Molinari, Nock, Oppenheimer, Rand, Say, Schumpeter, Spencer, Spooner, Tucker, Turgot, Harpe
