14. Followers and Influence

FOLLOWERS AND INFLUENCE

He taught at Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute from the mid-1960s to the mid-1980s; from 1986 to his death on January 7, 1995, he was S.J. Hall Distinguished Professor of Economics at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

Rothbard was closely associated with the Ludwig von Mises Institute from its founding in 1982 by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr. This organization became the main vehicle for the promotion of his ideas, and he served as its Academic Vice-President. Most of the academics who have endeavored to continue Rothbard’s work have been associated with the Mises Institute. Among economists, Joseph T Salerno has carried out important research on the history of the Austrian School. He has made clear the distinctive nature of the economics of Mises and Rothbard and has also done pioneering work on nineteenth-century bullionist economists. Hans-Hermann Hoppe has extended Rothbard’s work in political philosophy with a much-discussed argument for libertarian rights that Rothbard admired. Peter G. Klein has creatively applied Misesian and Rothbardian insights to industrial organization. Walter Block, the most prolific of Rothbard’s followers, has, among many other contributions, a notable series of articles criticizing the Coase theorem.³²⁰ Jörg Guido Hülsmann has written major papers on error cycles, counterfactuals in economic theory, and the interest rate. Jeffrey Herbener has been (along with Salerno and Hoppe) a major contributor to the debate on the socialist calculation argument. Following Rothbard, these authors contend that Mises’s argument differs from Hayek’s: Mises’s contention that a socialist economy could not calculate is not an argument that the planners lack the means to handle too much information or to handle “tacit knowledge.” Rather, Mises’s point concerns the impossibility of calculation without a system of market prices. Herbener has also done important work on welfare economics, in the tradition of Rothbard’s “Toward a Reconstruction of Utility and Welfare Economics.”

In other disciplines, two of Rothbard’s closest friends merit special mention, the intellectual historians Ralph Raico and Ronald Hamowy. Both were members of the Circle Bastiat, a group of Rothbard’s disciples that met in his apartment in New York during the 1950s.³²¹ Raico has written a history of German classical liberalism, as well as notable essays on World War I and on Winston Churchill.³²² Hamowy has edited a major scholarly edition of Cato’s Letters.³²³ Also worthy of note is Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.’s Speaking of Liberty,³²⁴ a collection of essays which applies the insights of Mises and Rothbard to contemporary issues.

Many besides Rothbard’s acknowledged followers have been influenced by him, but one striking example must here suffice. One of the most influential books of twentieth-century American philosophy has been Robert Nozick’s Anarchy, State, and Utopia. Nozick remarks that it “was a long conversation about six years ago (i.e., in 1968) with Murray Rothbard that stimulated my interest in individualist anarchist theory.” The entire first part of Nozick’s book is an attempt to come to terms with Rothbard’s argument and might have been entitled “Why I Am Not a Rothbardian.”

The “indispensable framework” of life and work of this creative genius and polymath was his beloved wife, JoAnn Rothbard. His combination of scholarly achievement and engaged advocacy on behalf of freedom is unmatched. One can imagine what position in the academic world his immense talents would have secured for him had he been willing to adopt a political position more popular among his fellow economists; but he always stood by his beliefs above all else. He could say of himself, like Browning’s Paracelsus,

But after, they will know me. If I stoop
Into a dark tremendous sea of cloud,
It is but for a time; I press God’s lamp
Close to my breast; its splendour, soon or late,
Will pierce the gloom: I shall emerge one day.³²⁵

³²⁰Rothbard anticipated some of Block’s concerns about Coase. He noted that Coase “reveals grave collectivist distortions in his thinking.” Coase would allow regulation to prevent acts that reduce competition, but “since the State can and has defined almost any act as reducing competition, this opens the gates for tyranny.” Letter to Kenneth Templeton, July 16, 1957; Rothbard Papers.

³²¹The Circle Bastiat consisted of: Murray Rothbard, Ralph Raico, Ronald Hamowy, George Reisman, Leonard Liggio, and Robert Hessen.

³²²Ralph Raico, German Liberalism: Die Partei der Freiheit: Studien zur Geschichte des deutschen Liberalismus (Stuttgart: Lucius & Lucius, 1999) and Classical Liberalism: Historical Essays in Political Economy (London: Routledge, forthcoming). Two notable essays are found in The Costs of War, Denson, ed., “World War I: The Turning Point” and “Rethinking Churchill.”

³²³Ronald Hamowy, ed., Cato’s Letters or Essays on Liberty, Civil and Religious, and Other Important Subjects (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1995).

³²⁴Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr., ed., Speaking of Liberty (Auburn, Ala.: Ludwig von Mises Institute, 2003).

³²⁵Robert Browning, Paracelsus, Part V.