Murray Newton Rothbard (March 2, 1926 – January 7, 1995) was an American economist and writer.  He helped make the Austrian School of economics popular in the United States.

Rothbard helped to create modern libertarianism, a political belief in less government and more personal freedom. He founded a form of free-market anarchism which he called "anarcho-capitalism". Rothbard believed society should organise itself, and he didn't like central planning.

Rothbard wrote over twenty books and was an important central figure in the American libertarian movement.

His ideas 
Rothbard advocated the abolition of government control of society and the economy. He considered the monopoly force of government the greatest danger to liberty and the long-term well-being of the people. He called the state a "gang of thieves writ large — the most immoral, grasping and unscrupulous individuals in any society".

Rothbard thought that all services provided by monopoly governments could be provided more efficiently by the private sector. According to him, many regulations and laws passed "for the public interest" were self-interested power grabs by scheming government bureaucrats to make themselves look important. These schemes were not subject to market disciplines.

Government services were not efficient, and would get eliminated, if the services could be provided by competition in the private sector.

Rothbard was equally condemning of big business working with government. Business elites, he thought, used government's monopoly power so as to influence laws and regulatory policy to help themselves at the expense of their competitive rivals.

He argued that taxation was theft on a grand scale, backed by law. It was "a compulsory monopoly of force" which prevented the more efficient voluntary procurement of defense and judicial services from competing suppliers. He also argued against central banking and fractional reserve banking. A monopoly system where the government decides how much money to print is, to him, a form of state-sponsored, legalized financial fraud. It is against libertarian principles and ethics. Rothbard opposed military, political, and economic interferences in the affairs of other nations.

Books 
 Man, economy, and state Full text;  (1962)
 The panic of 1819. 1962, 2006 edition: 
 America's great depression. Full text . (1963, 1972, 1975, 1983, 2000)
 What has government done to our money? Full text / Audio Book  (1963)
 Economic depressions: causes and cures (1969)
 Power and market. . (1970) restored to Man, economy, and state , 2004
 Education: free and compulsory.  (1972)
 Left and Right, selected essays 1954-65 (1972)
 For a new liberty: the libertarian manifesto Full text / Audio book  (1973, 1978)
 The essential von Mises (1973)
 The case for the 100 percent gold dollar.  Full text / Audio Book (1974)
 Egalitarianism as a revolt against nature and other essays  (1974)
 Conceived in liberty 4 vols  (1975-79)
 Individualism and the Philosophy of the Social Sciences.  (1979)
 The ethics of liberty Full text / Audio Book  (1982)
 The mystery of banking   (1983)
 Ludwig von Mises: scholar, creator, hero.  (1988)
 Freedom, inequality, primitivism, and the division of labor. Full text included as Chapter 16 in Egalitarianism above (1991)
 The case against the Fed.  (1994)
 An Austrian perspective on the history of economic thought 2 vols  (1995)
 Wall Street, banks, and American foreign policy. Full text with an introduction by Justin Raimondo. (1995)
 Making economic sense.  (1995, 2006)
 Logic of action 2 vols  and  (1997)
 The Austrian theory of the trade cycle and other essays.  (also by Mises, Hayek, & Haberler)
 Irrepressible Rothbard: the Rothbard-Rockwell report: essays of Murray N. Rothbard. Full Text  (2000)
 A history of money and banking in the United States.  (2005)
 The complete Libertarian Forum 2 vols Full text  (2006)
 The betrayal of the American Right.  (2007)

Related pages
 List of anarchists
 anarcho-capitalism

Notes

Other websites

 Murray N. Rothbard Library and Resources 
 Murray N. Rothbard Media Archive at Mises.org
 BlackCrayon.com: People: Murray Rothbard
 Chronological Bibliography of Murray Rothbard 
 The Complete Archives of The Libertarian Forum, written about twice a month between 1969 and 1984.
 Sociology of the Ayn Rand Cult (pamphlet published by the Center for Libertarian Studies)
 A 1972 New Banner interview with Murray Rothbard
 A 1990 interview with Murray Rothbard
 Murray Rothbard Institute , Belgium

1926 births
1995 deaths
American agnostics
American anarchists
American economists
Anarcho-capitalists
Jewish American scientists
Libertarians
Scientists from New York City