Murray Rothbard Biography

Murray Newton Rothbard was an American economist, historian, and political theorist. With his exceptional academic and scholarly ability, he made major contributions to economics, history, political philosophy and legal theory. His work was broadly influenced by the theories of Austrian School economist Ludwig von Mises. Mises, through Rothbard, impacted the American libertarian movement as Rothbard formed the body of thought called ‘anarcho-capitalism’. Rothbard, like his Austrian influence, supported the concept of spontaneous order, free banking and rejected coercive control of government over the economy and society. He was stringently against all military, political, and economic interventionism in the affairs of other nations. Rothbard’s prominent role in the history is established through his twenty publications on anarchist theory, revisionist history, economics, and other subjects, through which he became the central figure in twentieth century American libertarian movement. For the promotion of his ideologies, Rothbard joined Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr. and Burton Blumert in 1982 to establish the Ludwig von Mises Institute in Alabama. He taught economics to the engineering students at the Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute for over 20 years and then joined the Butt Business School at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas in 1986, where he held the title of S.J. Hall Distinguished Professor of Economics, an endowed chair paid for by an admirer of his work, until his death.