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MISES DAILYThe Rothbardian Analysis of the State

SEPTEMBER 14, 2012 Thomas J. DiLorenzo

(http://mises.org/profile/thomas-j-dilorenzo)TAGS Education (/topics/education), History of the Austrian School of Economics (/austrian-school/history-austrian-school-economics)

"Taxation is theft, purely and simply, even though it is theft on a grand and colossal scale which no

acknowledged criminals could hope to match. It is a compulsory seizure of the property of the State's

inhabitants, or subjects."Murray Rothbard, The Ethics of Liberty (http://mises.org/resources/1179/The-Ethics-

of-Liberty)

The recent explosion of interest in the writings of Murray Rothbard (and of Austrian economics in general)

has focused on Rothbard's work on money, banking, and business-cycle theory. The reason for this is the

increasingly widespread understanding that it was the Greenspan Fed and other government policies

that created the housing bubble and, subsequently, the Great Recession. Only the Austrians recognized the

bubble and predicted its bursting. Mainstream economists such as Paul Krugman were totally in the dark

about it, and remain so.

But Murray Rothbard was much more than a student of money, banking, and business-cycle theory. He was

deeply educated in history and political philosophy (among other disciplines) as well as economics, and he

developed a body of literature that Hans-Hermann Hoppe calls "Austrian social theory." Austrian social theory

is an indispensable tool for understanding the nature of the state and all of its activities, a subject that

occupied Murray Rothbard's mind for his entire adult life. That is why I am offering an eight-week online

course called The State: The Rothbardian Analysis under the auspices of the Mises Academy, beginning on

Monday, September 17.

Rothbard's work challenges the notion of the Public Choice School that the state is somehow a voluntary

organization (the main theme of the work of Nobel laureates James M. Buchanan and George Stigler). His

work also demolishes the theory held by mainstream economists that taxation, too, is somehow voluntary.

Relying on more than just narrow economic theory, Rothbard's work explains such phenomena as the role of

the state's "ideological minions" (i.e., the Paul Krugmans and Doris Kearns-Goodwins of the world), the role of

ideology, the role of intellectuals, the nature of state coercion, and much more.

We will study libertarian class theory as it has developed over the past several hundred years, which was an

important element of Rothbard's analysis of the state. Rothbard also had a much richer understanding of the

role of government bureaucracy than the Public Choice School (or any other school of thought), and that will

be another subject of study.

Murray Rothbard was a top-flight economist and one of the few Austrians to contribute a substantial body of

literature to the subdiscipline of public finance. Consequently, several classes will be devoted to the

Rothbardian analysis of government taxing and spending, and all of its consequences. The political economy

of interventionism, socialism, central banking, and war are other topics that will be studied, utilizing the

writings of Rothbard and various Rothbardians (such as Robert Higgs on war, for instance). The week-by-

week topical outline will be as follows.

Weekly Topics

1. Rothbard's "Anatomy of the State"

2. John C. Calhoun and Libertarian Class Theory

3. Rothbardian Analysis of Bureaucracy

(/print/7250)7 7

0

4. Rothbardian Analysis of Government Spending

5. Rothbardian Analysis of Taxation

6. Interventionism and Socialism

7. Central Banking and the State

8. War and the State

What I hope students will get out of this class is a solid understanding of how to analyze the behavior of the

state, based on sound principles of Austrian economics, supplemented by some aspects of Murray

Rothbard's lifelong study of history and political philosophy.

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