Murray Rothbard: Separating Education and the State Beyond Left and Right

Currie-Knight, Kevin

doi:10.1007/978-3-030-11778-8_5

Kevin Currie-Knight⁴

Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in Classical Liberalism ((PASTCL))

Abstract

Murray (1926–1995) Rothbard was an anarchist economist in the “Austrian School” tradition who believed the market could replace all social functions currently supplied by governments. Rothbard viewed the state as an agency that sought to obtain and retain power over citizens; state education was an instrument toward this goal. (In this, he shared much in common with education critics of the New Left) He argued that markets in educational services were justified because markets avoided coercion against individuals as well as forced standardization of instruction for all. Rothbard believed there was no role the state should play in education.

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Notes

1.
Justin Raimondo, An Enemy of the State: The Life of Murray N. Rothbard (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2000), 1015–72.
2.
Ludwig von Mises and Murray N. Rothbard, “Mises and Rothbard Letters of Ayn Rand,” Journal of Libertarian Studies 21, no. 4 (Winter 2007): 13. Shortly after, Rothbard published a rebuttal to a particularly scathing review of Atlas Shrugged in the magazine Commonweal. Murray Rothbard, “Atlas Shrugged,” Commonweal, December 20, 1957.
3.
Raimondo, An Enemy of the State, 1172–97.
4.
Murray Rothbard, The Betrayal of the American Right (Auburn, AL: Ludwig von Mises Institute, 2007), 74.
5.
Rothbard, The Betrayal of the American Right, 161.
6.
Murray Rothbard, “Kid Lib,” in Egalitarianism as a Revolt Against Nature, 2nd ed. (Auburn, AL: Ludwig von Mises Institute, 2000), 115.
7.
Philip E. Veerman, The Rights of the Child and the Changing Image of Childhood (Boston: Martinus Nijhoff, 1992), chap. 9.
8.
Alexander Sutherland Neill, Summerhill : A Radical Approach to Child Rearing (New York: Hart, 1960).
9.
Paul Goodman, Growing Up Absurd: Problems of Youth in the Organized System (New York: Random House, 1960).
10.
Rothbard’s essay originally appeared in the October 1972 issue of left-libertarian magazine Outlook. Rothbard, “Kid Lib,” 115.
11.
Rothbard, “Kid Lib,” 115.
12.
Rothbard, “Kid Lib,” 117. Rothbard did place a limit, however, on what parents may do with a child in their care. Parents’ power over the child “cannot be absolute, cannot involve the right of the parent to mutilate, maim, or murder the child, for this would be criminal aggression against the body of the child, who, being an independent human entity, cannot come under the absolute jurisdiction of anyone.” Rothbard—an anarchist—left the enforcement of this provision to private actors, who were free to step in, defend, or even remove the child if they believe the child is mistreated. “The role of the parent, then, is to be, not an absolute owner, but a trustee-owner or guardian, with the right to regulate the child but not to aggress against his person,” 118, 119.
13.
Rothbard reiterates this view in his chapter on “Children and Rights” in his book The Ethics of Liberty. Murray Rothbard, The Ethics of Liberty (New York: New York University Press, 2003), chap. 14.
14.
Rothbard, “Kid Lib,” 118.
15.
“Can we say that the law—that outside enforcement agencies—has the right to step in and force the parents to raise their children properly? The answer must be no. For the libertarian, the answer must be no. For the libertarian, the law can only be negative, can only prohibit aggressive and criminal acts by one person upon another. It cannot compel positive acts, regardless of how praiseworthy or even necessary such actions may be. And so a parent may be a moral monster for not caring for his child properly, but the law cannot compel him to do otherwise.” Rothbard, “Kid Lib,” 152–53.
16.
Veerman, The Rights of the Child and the Changing Image of Childhood, 133.
17.
John C. Holt, Escape from Childhood (New York, NY: E. P. Dutton, 1974), 215.
18.
Holt, Escape from Childhood, 221.
19.
Holt, Escape from Childhood, 153.
20.
Holt, Escape from Childhood, 241.
21.
Goodman, Compulsory Mis-Education, 48.
22.
Goodman, Compulsory Mis-Education, 48.
23.
C. Wright Mills, The Power Elite (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1956).
24.
Dwight Eisenhower, “Transcript of President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s Farewell Address (1961),” www.ourdocuments.gov, January 17, 1961, www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash=true&doc=90&page=transcript.
25.
Frank Newport and Joseph Carroll, “Iraq Versus Vietnam: A Comparison of Public Opinion,” www.gallup.com, August 24, 2005, www.gallup.com/poll/18097/Iraq-Versus-Vietnam-Comparison-Public-Opinion.aspx.
26.
Sidney Lens, The Futile Crusade (Chicago: Quadrangle Press, 1964), 143–44.
27.
Gabriel Kolko, The Triumph of Conservatism: A Re-Interpretation of American History, 1900–1916 (New York: Free Press of Glencoe, 1963).
28.
Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society (Boston: Beacon Press, 1964).
29.
Thomas Szasz, Law, Liberty, and Psychiatry: An Inquiry into the Social Uses of Mental Health Practices (New York: Macmillan, 1963).
30.
Goodman, Growing Up Absurd: Problems of Youth in the Organized System; Goodman, Compulsory Mis-Education.
31.
Ivan Illich, Deschooling Society (New York: Harper & Row, 1971).
32.
Joel Spring, Education and the Rise of the Corporate State (Boston: Beacon Press, 1972).
33.
Bill Paxton, “What Did You Learn in School Today?,” Ramblin’ Boy (Elektra Records, 1964).
34.
Murray Rothbard, Education: Free and Compulsory (Auburn, AL: Ludwig von Mises Institute, 1999), 22–23.
35.
Rothbard, Education: Free and Compulsory, 28.
36.
Rothbard, Education: Free and Compulsory, 30.
37.
Rothbard, Education: Free and Compulsory, 26. Rothbard also argues that compulsory education, in nations such as England, Ireland, and Canada, has been at least partly motivated by a desire to “dragoon … national minorities into the public schools run by their masters.” Rothbard, For a New Liberty, 46.
38.
Rothbard, Education: Free and Compulsory, 40.
39.
Rothbard, Education: Free and Compulsory, 44.
40.
Murray Rothbard, “Historical Origins,” in The Twelve Year Sentence: Radical Views on Compulsory Schooling, ed. William F. Rickenbacker (San Francisco: Fox & Wilkes, 1974), 17.
41.
Rothbard, Education: Free and Compulsory, 9.
42.
Rothbard, Education: Free and Compulsory, 24.
43.
Murray Rothbard, Power and Market: Government and the Economy (Auburn, AL: Ludwig von Mises Institute, 2004), 233–45, epub edition.
44.
Rothbard, Education: Free and Compulsory, 55.
45.
Rothbard, For a New Liberty, 124–25.
46.
Michael B. Katz, “From Voluntarism to Bureaucracy in American Education,” Sociology of Education 44, no. 3 (July 1, 1971): 297–332.
47.
Rothbard, Education: Free and Compulsory, 49.
48.
Rothbard, For a New Liberty, 133.
49.
Whether Rothbard had Walter Lippman’s arguments in mind, Lippman provided arguments that government officials (more knowledgeable about intricate issues of public policy) should manipulate the media’s flow of information in order to “manufacture consent” of the general population toward their preferred policy outcomes. Walter Lippmann, Public Opinion (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1922).
50.
One could argue that in a private market of news sources (or schools), monopolistic control by a private actor is still possible. Elsewhere, Rothbard argues that in a free and unregulated market, monopolies cannot exist because the possibility of entry by new rivals always exists. As long as new producers are free to enter the market (and government regulations do not make entrance artificially costly), even in instances where one producer currently controls an entire market, the threat of competition will always limit that one producer’s power in that market. Rothbard, Power and Market, chap. 10.
51.
Rothbard, Education: Free and Compulsory, 9.
52.
Ayn Rand, The New Left : The Anti-Industrial Revolution (New York: Plume, 1975).
53.
No Author, “The General Line,” Left and Right 1, no. 1 (1965): 5.
54.
Murray Rothbard and Ronald Radosh, eds., A New History of Leviathan: Essays on the Rise of the American Corporate State (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1972). Rothbard’s contribution, “Herbert Hoover and the Myth of Laissez-Faire,” argued that, far from a laissez-faire president, Herbert Hoover’s interventionist policies gave rise to the corporatist structure of the New Deal.
55.
Murray Rothbard, “Liberty and the New Left,” Left and Right 1, no. 2 (1965): 67.
56.
Rothbard, For a New Liberty, 126.
57.
Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis, Schooling in Capitalist America: Educational Reform and the Contradictions of Economic Life (New York: Basic Books, 1977), 151.
58.
Rothbard, The Ethics of Liberty, 219.
59.
Paul Goodman, “A Touchstone for the Libertarian Program,” in American Radical Thought: The Libertarian Tradition (Lexington, MA: D. C. Heath, 1970), 310.
60.
Peter Marshall, Demanding the Impossible: A History of Anarchism (Oakland, CA: PM Press, 2010), 564.
61.
Ronald Radosh, Commies: A Journey Through the Old Left, the New Left and the Leftover Left (San Francisco: Encounter Books, 2001). Interestingly, Radosh’s autobiography chronicles his gradual ideological shift from the New Left to neoconservatism.
62.
Carl Oglesby, Ravens in the Storm: A Personal History of the 1960s Anti-War Movement (New York: Scribner, 2010), 120.
63.
Joel Spring, Political Agendas for Education: From the Christian Coalition to the Green Party (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 2002), 42. Here, Spring is largely referring to the libertarian CATO institute and its donors, who also parted ways with Rothbard in 1980 owing to ideological differences between Rothbard and CATO president Ed Crane.
64.
Katz, The Irony of Early School Reform, xxvii.
65.
Meyer was concerned that the current public education system does not educate in the ability to properly think or inculcate virtuous behavior into students, and is premised on an egalitarian leveling that reduces the overall quality of education. Frank S. Meyer, “In Defense of Freedom,” in In Defense of Freedom and Related Essays (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1996), 140–46.
66.
Frank S. Meyer, “Libertarianism or Libertinism?” in In Defense of Freedom and Related Essays (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1996), 183.
67.
William Buckley, “Murray Rothbard, RIP,” The National Review, February 6, 1995.

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East Carolina University, Greenville, NC, USA
Kevin Currie-Knight

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Currie-Knight, K. (2019). Murray Rothbard: Separating Education and the State Beyond Left and Right. In: Education in the Marketplace. Palgrave Studies in Classical Liberalism. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-11778-8_5

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-11778-8_5
Published: 13 April 2019
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
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Online ISBN: 978-3-030-11778-8
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