All of my work has actually revolved around the central question
individual– granted, a giant among guys in Rothbard-adjacent circles, however
one man. And it is for this reason that I ask the concern postured in the title. However to get at this even more, more from Rothbard’s work: For it has been my conviction that, while each discipline has its own autonomy and integrity, in the last analysis all sciences and disciplines of human action are related, and can be incorporated into a”science” or discipline of individual liberty.
Rothbard continues by commenting that his earlier, comprehensive deal with economics was value-free– as economics appropriately theorized need to be. However for liberty, this concentrate on value-free economics alone is inadequate; a positive ethical theory was needed: I atno time at all believed that value-free analysis or economics or utilitarianism(the standard social philosophy of economic experts )can ever be adequate to establish the case for liberty. Rothbard wrote these words
in 1980, however this was no current revelation for him. In 1960, he would compose: What I have actually been attempting to say is that Mises’s practical, relativist technique to ethics is not nearly sufficient to develop a complete case for liberty. To establish this complete case, Rothbard would continue, needs an absolutist ethic” grounded on natural law …”. This would be the focus
of this book by Rothbard. In fact, the very first several chapters are dedicated to natural law; the bulk of the work afterwards is focused on the natural rights to be derived when the theory of natural law is effectively applied to human relationships
. While I disagree with a couple of his applications, on the entire the conclusions are strong. Going back to the book, Rothbard composes: It was in addition clear to me that nobody was engaged in trying to fill this weeping requirement. Which, forty years later on, appears to still be the case. As mentioned, Hoppe composed the introduction to this edition. In it, he raises some crucial and complimentary points: In an age of intellectual hyper-specialization, Murray N.
Rothbard was a grand system home builder. He was not simply a financial expert. Hoppe notes the practice of separating economics from principles– yet these 2 had to be integrated if one was to speak of
liberty: Rothbard’s distinct contribution is the rediscovery of home and home rights as the typical foundation of both economics and political approach, and the organized reconstruction and conceptual integration of contemporary, marginalist economics and natural-law political viewpoint into a combined ethical science: libertarianism. I will go a step further: Rothbard’s combination extended far beyond even that which is discovered in this work(but in much of his other work ). It included revisionist(or practical, sincere)history, an assessment of the contemporary state as providing whatever that is antithetical to liberty, a gratitude of the western civilization in which the idea of
a healthy private liberty blossomed, and a gratitude of the function of the business owner( as opposed to the rent-seeker)in supplying
for the economic growing of man.
All of these were areas of focus for Rothbard, and nowhere do I find anyone doing the work required to more establish and incorporate these into a whole. To put it simply, no place do I see this integration continuing.
And this is to the detriment of liberty and in some ways a repudiation of Rothbard’s accomplishments. Hoppe addressed this shortcoming, a minimum of to a great part, in a talk he gave at the Home and Liberty Society Conference in 2018, The Libertarian Quest for a Grand Historical Story: … the best obstacle for libertarians is to develop a grand historic story that is to counter and remedy the so-called Whig theory of history … While he agrees with one element of this theory– that financial progress has actually been considerable– his primary objection to this theory is that it claims that we live in the freest societies ever to be discovered in the world. Hoppe incorporates Austrian Economics, libertarian political approach, natural law, and historical revisionism into this one discussion. It is, in reality, a summary and extension of the work of Rothbard– not in information, but in its breadth. Going back to the Preface of Rothbard’s book, from Hoppe: Much of Rothbard’s later works, with their increased focus on cultural matters, were developed to correct this development and to discuss the error in the concept of a leftist multi-counter-cultural libertarianism, of libertarianism as a variation of libertinism. In this, Rothbard foresaw the current crisis in the West. While I don’t understand if he ever identified it as such, it is the significance crisis in which western male is drowning. It
works together with our loss of liberty. No function, no goal, no focus; suffering, depression, suicide. His humanity so completely beaten out of him that he would not only comply with but also supporter for(insert all of the abuses just seen because 2020). No liberty and no significance in life. To put it simply,
one can not separate cultural analysis from liberty or from the economic theories needed to approach liberty. Rothbard acknowledged this. It isn’t clear that any subsequent Rothbardians welcome this. Conclusion I am someone, and plainly am not knowledgeable about every endeavor that might fit the lines I have actually detailed above. I would invite any feedback that might complete my gaps. In the meantime, I use a few of my weak efforts at continuing and extending this work, here, here, and here. If anyone has written or spoken more on these matters than I have, I would invite feedback on this too. I will compose a subsequent post attending to any feedback along these lines.