Rothbard's System: Liberty as the Unifying Social Theory

Murray N. Rothbard built a system of social theory in the tradition of Ludwig von Mises, Frank H. Knight, and F. A. Hayek. Social, economic, and political problems are intertwined and complex, he argued, and require a grand theory to address them. For Rothbard, the unifying theme of that theory was liberty.

The Mises Institute, a non-profit organization, promotes teaching and research in the Austrian School of economics, individual freedom, honest history, and international peace, following the work of von Mises and Rothbard. The institute describes itself as non-political, non-partisan, and non-PC, advocating a radical shift in the intellectual climate away from statism and toward a private property order. Its foundational ideas are of permanent value, it states, and it opposes all efforts at compromise, sellout, or amalgamation with fashionable political, cultural, and social doctrines inimical to their spirit.