Murray N. Rothbard – Page 2

Murray Newton Rothbard: Notes toward a Biography

I may be fairly described as (among other things) road-kill along the way to the definitive biography of Murray Rothbard (1926-1995). In 1997 I sought and gained the cooperation of his widow, Joann, and Lew Rockwell, then president of the Ludwig von Mises Institute, to begin that project.

All I managed to do, however, was fulfill the prediction that this effort would overwhelm me. My enthusiasm for the idea of telling Murray’s story and expounding his ideas blinded me to the fact, obvious to everyone but me (and perhaps my mother), that I was not up to the task. The life of Rothbard, an intellectual giant, awaits its Hülsmann. And if the interval between the death of Ludwig von Mises and the production of Guido Hülsmann’s Mises: Last Knight of Liberalism is any guide, the wait is far from over.

On display below is barely refined ore mined from not only from secondary sources but, more importantly, from interviews conducted with people who knew Murray: in the first place JoAnn Rothbard, but also Leonard Liggio, Ralph Raico, George Resch, John McCarthy, and James Sadowsky. Readers who have profited from Justin Raimondo’s An Enemy of the State: The Life of Murray N. Rothbard and Reclaiming the American Right: The Lost Legacy of the Conservative Movement as well as Murray’s own monograph, The Betrayal of the American Right will discover a fact or two not related in those works, which I highly recommend.

I was pleasantly surprised when, in 2010, Gerard N. Casey, Professor (Emeritus), School of Philosophy, University College, Dublin, and Associate Scholar of the Ludwig von Mises Institute cited my unfinished essay (first published on my old site in 2008) in his fine monograph Murray Rothbard, a sure milestone on the road to the “definitive biography” project.¹

Murray Newton Rothbard was born in the Bronx on March 2, 1926. His father, David Rothbard, a shoemaker’s son, was raised in Vishigorod, Ukraine, 40 miles north of Warsaw on the Vistula. David, who had attended Hebrew school as a child, abandoned Judaism because its scriptures told of a God who had instigated the violent behavior of the Israelites, and that horrified him. Continue reading “Murray Newton Rothbard: Notes toward a Biography”

Murray Rothbard: on my late friend’s lamentable error

“I was sure I was going to predecease him.”

That’s how my friend Father James A. Sadowsky (1923-2012) confirmed the news of the passing of Murray Newton Rothbard (1926–1995) two dozen years ago today.

It was after Sunday Mass at St. Agnes. Finishing breakfast with friends in a 42^nd Street a coffee shop, I excused myself to call (using a 20th-century pay phone) my wife who, enduring a cold, couldn’t join me in Manhattan that wintry day.

“Father Sadowsky called,” she said. “Murray Rothbard died yesterday.”

It’s now been almost 36 years since the first chat that began my friendship with Murray, which continued through his last dozen years. His writings, illuminated by conversations, formed a major part of my education in economics, history, and politics. His personal influence makes it difficult to make a selection among the many memories.

Reading Man, Economy & State , a project I began on March 22, 1983, inspired me to call him one evening. Barely two months into it, I looked up his number (in a 20th-century phone book) and made bold to use it on May 18 (my diary says): “I got six new [libertarian] leads from him, including a Fordham [University] history professor who lives in Jackson Heights [John McCarthy] . . . . Rothbard is so easy to talk to and make laugh. . . . Look forward to meeting him in the Fall [at the Libertarian Party National Convention].” Image result for murray rothbard

Finishing that stout tome on June 19th marked the end of my political wilderness-wandering to which I had sentenced myself after breaking with Marxism six years earlier. By the time my “Jürgen Habermas’s Critique of Marxism” was published in the Winter 1977/1978 issue Science & Society, a Stalinoid academic journal, I was in the free market camp. (Its text with corrections and editorial notes is freely available here.) But I didn’t find National Review conservatism sufficiently inspiring.

Less than a year later I was invited to participate in Murray’s 1984 seminar on the history of economic thought:

Last Rothbard class was a damning critique of Adam Smith. Smith has almost no libertarian credentials. Marx can have him. . . . [T]here’s an essay in the latest Libertarian Vanguard that Rothbard wants me to read, and Mark [Brady] is going to copy for me . . . . Murray Rothbard was very friendly again with me after class. He’s busy packing for his move to Stanford CA, so, he says, he’s sorry he couldn’t have invited Gloria and me to dinner. Discussed my Christian libertarian idea with him on the bus. I’m flattered.” (May 4, 1984; unless otherwise marked, dates refer to diary entries.)

I met him for first time at the 1983 Libertarian National Convention at the Sheraton Hotel in New York. (This pic was taken there.) “He remembered my name,” I recorded, “and when I discussed [Bernard] Lonergan’s economics briefly, he said Lonergan struck him as an ‘institutionalist.’” (September 4, 1983)

Continue reading “Murray Rothbard: on my late friend’s lamentable error”

Lew Rockwell and the Story of the Ludwig von Mises Institute

Soon my autobiographical vignette of Murray Rothbard will join those of Herbert Aptheker, Sidney Hook, Bernard Lonergan, and Eric Voegelin. In preparation for that post I’m sharing, with the author’s permission, a recent letter from Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr. the Founder and Chairman of the Mises Institute. It’s a fundraising letter, one to which I hope you’ll respond. But it’s more than that: it’s his personal story of Mises, Murray, and the Institute, one he must have told a thousand times, but never more vividly and concisely. Let’s listen to Lew. — AGF

November 13, 2018

Dear Friend,

When I met Ludwig von Mises, he was exactly as I had imagined him: kind, brilliant, dignified, beautifully mannered and dressed, a gentleman from what Murray Rothbard called “an older and better world.” Image result for the ludwig von mises institute His wife, Margit, had been an actress, and she had great beauty, intelligence, and presence as well.

Image result for margrit von mises

A genius, Mises was the greatest economist of the 20th century, and a hero in his courageous battles with Marxists, National Socialists, and Keynesians. Never did he put his own career ahead of teaching the truth, which he did in brilliant book after brilliant book. As a result, he never had the professorships and honors that were his due. Forced to flee the Nazi occupiers, he found American Keynesians a hostile bunch as well. So his career was stunted, but not his spirit, and not the legacy and example he left to all who cherish freedom. Image result for last knight of liberalism

Murray Rothbard I had the privilege of knowing well. He was funny, charming, and a genius, too. Like his mentor Mises, Murray suffered in his career for his integrity and truth-telling, which he also displayed in brilliant book after brilliant book. Even billionaire oligarchs couldn’t stop him. A model scholar, teacher, and polymath, he seemed, like Mises, to know everything.

Murray once told me he never heard Mises express any self-pity for his treatment, but only good will and determination. I never heard Murray express such feelings either. He was the happy warrior of Austrian economics and liberty. Continue reading “Lew Rockwell and the Story of the Ludwig von Mises Institute”

Bernard Lonergan’s “Insight”: on becoming an intellectually fulfilled theist

“Well, they’re deductivists. And you know what I think of deductivists.”

That’s how Bernard J. F. Lonergan, S.J. (1904-1984) answered when I asked him about the Austrian school of economics.

Yes, I did know what he thought of them. More on that presently.

On June 22, 1983 I was on the campus of Boston College, engrossed in an afternoon session on Lonergan’s then-unpublished “Essay in Circulation Analysis,” the economics section of that year’s Lonergan Workshop. (An unofficial edition circulated among Lonerganians.) My aunt, the late Anne T. Flood, Sister of Charity, Ph.D. (Catholic University of America; dissertation on Bishop Christopher Butler and Lonergan) beckoned me from the hallway.

Would I like to meet the great man?

I didn’t return to the classroom.

Patricia “Pat” Coonan, who had known Lonergan since 1945, drove us from Chestnut Hill to Weston, where he was convalescing at the Campion Center. When we arrived, it wasn’t certain that Lonergan was up to a visit. We might have to turn around.

But soon he was ready [my diary shows] and greeted us [from his hospital bed] with a smile. Pat introduced me to the master, and I managed to comport myself properly. I did not interview him, but I did tell him about myself, what his work has meant to me, and even raised the question [of] macroeconomics with him when Pat brought up her difficulties with the “Circulation Analysis.” Lonergan stressed his own macroeconomic approach, not seeming to be aware that [Ludwig von] Mises’ and [Murray N.] Rothbard’s “microeconomic” approach has addressed the “Depression” argument against the free market.

In the aftermath of the Great Depression, immersed in theological studies and spiritual formation between his profession of vows in 1924 and ordination in 1936, Lonergan produced that manuscript. In the ‘70s, after his methodological work was done, he returned to it.

Continue reading “Bernard Lonergan’s “Insight”: on becoming an intellectually fulfilled theist”

Sidney Hook: a halfway house for a recovering Stalinist

“That monster!”

Such was Herbert Aptheker’s reaction when I mentioned my having enrolled in “The Philosophy of History and Culture,” a course to be taught by his nemesis, Sidney Hook (1902-1989). That was in 1972. I was a New York University (NYU) philosophy undergraduate. The class would be Hook’s last in an NYU teaching career that began in 1926 (including chairing its philosophy department from 1948 to 1969).

I was checking in with Aptheker, the Communist historian, literary executor of W. E. B. Du Bois and, at the time, my “boss,” at his AIMS office to see if he had research tasks for me. The casual announcement was my idea of chit-chat.

Herbert Aptheker Earlier that year I had dropped into Hook’s office at 25 Waverly Place to ask about the class. As a young Red, I couldn’t pass up the chance to meet this infamous anti-communist in the flesh.

A letter of mine in support of Angela Davis, then on trial for aggravated kidnapping and first degree murder, appeared recently in the student newspaper. I had forgotten about it.

After a few minutes of chit-chat I rose and turned to leave. But before reaching the door . . .

“What did you say your name was?”

Busted. I complied.

“This should be very interesting.”

“Yes,” I muttered.

Continue reading “Sidney Hook: a halfway house for a recovering Stalinist”