Anarcho-Capitalism: Rothbard and Market Anarchism

Murray Rothbard (1926–1995), an economist trained under Ludwig von Mises at New York University, synthesized Austrian economic theory with a strict natural-rights libertarianism to argue that the state is not merely too large but inherently and irredeemably illegitimate — a coercive territorial monopoly that should be dissolved entirely and replaced by competing private markets for law, security, and national defense, a position he named "anarcho-capitalism." His two most influential statements of the doctrine are For a New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto (1973) and the more systematically philosophical The Ethics of Liberty (1982).