Murray Rothbard Essay, Research Paper

There are ever a few, better endowed than others, who feel the weightof the yoke and can non keep themselves from trying to agitate itoff & # 8230 ; . These are in fact the work forces who, possessed of clear heads andfar-sighted spirit, are non satisfied, like the beastly mass, to seeonly what is at their pess, but instead expression about them, behind andbefore, and even remember the things of the yesteryear in order to judge thoseof the hereafter, and compare both with their present status. These arethe 1s who, holding good heads of their ain, have further trained themby survey and acquisition. Even if autonomy had wholly perished from theearth, such work forces would reinvent it. For them bondage has nosatisfactions, no affair how good disguised. & # 8211 ; Etienne de la Boetie _The Discourse of Voluntary Servitude_I can believe of no words more appropriate to tag the loss of MurrayRothbard than this transition. The resurgence of involvement in la Boetie & # 8217 ; sthought is but one bantam piece of Rothbard & # 8217 ; s part to the

theory of libertari

anism. Much as I disagreed with some of his recentpositions on current events, in all honesty I owe him a profoundintellectual debt which I can never truly repay. In the end, I think that Rothbard will be most remembered for hisringing defense of the free-market anarchist position. Manylibertarians came to this view via the writings of David Friedman;but the earliest realization of the economic feasibility and moralnecessity of the abolition of even the nightwatchman state must beattributed to Rothbard. (And if I understand matters correctly,it was only after developing the anarcho-capitalist position thatRothbard uncovered such proto-anarcho-capitalists as Gustave deMolinari and Benjamin Tucker.)Rothbard’s early death is a loss to all libertarians. A great voicefor liberty has been quelled. It is my deepest hope that his workwill now be studied on its own merits, and that the lingering bitternessthat Rothbard’s strong personality often provoked will be forgotten whenseen in the full context of his immense intellectual contribution tohuman freedom.