Murray Rothbard

About Murray Rothbard

Murray Newton Rothbard (US: ; March 2, 1926 – January 7, 1995) was an American economist of the Austrian School, economic historian, political theorist, and activist. Rothbard was a central figure in the 20th-century American libertarian movement, particularly its right-wing strands, and was a founder and leading theoretician of anarcho-capitalism. He wrote over twenty books on political theory, history, economics, and other subjects. Rothbard argued that all services provided by the "monopoly system of the corporate state" could be provided more efficiently by the private sector and wrote that the state is "the organization of robbery systematized and writ large". He called fractional-reserve banking a form of fraud and opposed central banking. He categorically opposed all military, political, and economic interventionism in the affairs of other nations. Rothbard rejected mainstream economic methodologies and instead embraced the praxeology of Ludwig von Mises. Along with his writing and libertarian activism, he taught economics part-time at the Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute starting in 1966, and after 1986 in an endowed position at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.