MURRAY ROTHBARD

There is one good thing about Marx: he was not a Keynesian.

It is in war that the State really comes into its own: swelling in power, in number, in pride, in absolute dominion over the economy and the society.

Libertarians regard the state as the Supreme, the eternal, the best organized aggressor against the persons and property of the mass of the public. All states everywhere, whether democratic, dictatorial, or monarchical, whether red, white, blue or brown.

If you wish to know how libertarians regard the State and any of its acts, simply think of the State as a criminal band, and all of the libertarian attitudes will logically fall into place.

The State thrives on war - unless, of course, it is defeated and crushed - expands on it, glories in it.

All government wars are unjust.

Early economic theory was rooted in the Italian, French, and Spanish traditions, which were subjectivist oriented. Then it shifted onto the terrible path by Smith and Ricardo and the British classical tradition, which is 'objectivist' - values are in inherent in production.

Positivism eliminates any kind of natural law principle - for example, that there are economic laws which can be transgressed only at your peril. With positivism, there is a tendency to leap into ad hoc economic theory.

After the Volcker Fund collapsed, I got another grant from the Lilly Endowment to do a history of the U.S., which I worked on from 1962-66. The original idea was to take the regular facts and put a libertarian assessment on everything.

Subjectivism is not an absolute principle; it is a necessary but not sufficient condition for sound methodology.

We" are not the government; the government is not "us." The government does not in any accurate sense "represent" the majority of the people

Capitalism is the fullest expression of anarchism, and anarchism is the fullest expression of capitalism.

Rights may be universal, but their enforcement must be local.

It is no crime to be ignorant of economics, which is, after all, a specialized discipline and one that most people consider to be a 'dismal science.' But it is totally irresponsible to have a loud and vociferous opinion on economic subjects while remaining in this state of ignorance.

Regardless of how principled and ideological a political party may be, an essential point of party politics is to find jobs for the faithful of the winning party. If jobs cannot be found, the party system withers and dies, leaving only a self-perpetuating bureaucratic oligarchy behind. A system of minimal government can provide jobs for the winning party by throwing out the jobholders of the losing faction. But if civil service law freezes jobholders in place, the function of providing jobs for the winners can only occur by expanding the number of jobs: that is, at the expense of the taxpayers and of the productive, private sector. The "spoils system" allows all the costs to be imposed upon the losing party, and not at all on the body of the taxpayers. Surely a just and admirable system: who better to bear the costs of political defeat than the losing party?

Those bureaucrats who are shrewd analysts of human nature, then, and who understand the way rulers operate, will, if they see that the cherished policy of their President is in grave error, tend to keep their mouths shut, and let some other sucker be the messenger of bad news and get shot down.

The Iron Law of Oligarchy: every field of human endeavor, every kind of organization, will always be led by a relatively small elite.

By its nature, government is not subject to the profit-and-loss test, to the domination by the consumers, of the free market …. it need serve no one except itself. The only limit on government is the enormously wide one of people rising up to refuse to obey its orders (including taxes); short of such revolution, however, there is little to limit government or to check the entrenchment or burgeoning of its elite.

The free market economy provides an unparalleled example of a continuing healthy circulation of elites. In this dynamic economy, failure to keep up with competitors, failure to satisfy the demands of consumers in the best possible way, will topple elites quickly and establish new ones who do the job better.

The natural tendency of the state is inflation.

All action is an attempt to exchange a less satisfactory state of affairs for a more satisfactory one.

The proper governmental policy in a depression is strict laissez-faire, including stringent budget slashing, and coupled perhaps with positive encouragement for credit contraction.

Philosophically, I believe that libertarianism - and the wider creed of sound individualism of which libertarianism is a part - must rest on absolutism and deny relativism.

Only individuals have ends and can act to attain them. There are no such things as ends of or actions by 'groups,' 'collectives,' or 'States,' which do not take place as actions by various specific individuals.

In order to institute action, it is not sufficient that the individual man have unachieved ends that he would like to fulfill. He must also expect that certain modes of behavior will enable him to attain his ends. A man may have a desire for sunshine, but if he realizes that he can do nothing to achieve it, he does not act on this desire.