Drawing on Rothbard’s deep academic training and early career, Salerno reveals how Rothbard was a thoroughly trained neoclassical economist before his conversion to Austrian economics. The talk highlights Rothbard’s engagement with institutionalism, positivism, and Keynesianism, and how his discovery of Mises and praxeology transformed his outlook, ultimately forging one of the most original and radical economists of the 20th century.

Recorded at the Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama, on Sunday, June 8, 2025.

The "Shaping the Future Libertarian Conference" was sponsored by the Society for Individual Liberty and the New York Libertarian Association. This lecture was recorded by Dan Karlan on reel-to-reel audio tape, and generously shared with the Mises Institute by Joseph Buchman.

According to Dr. Joseph Salerno, "NEP stands for 'New Economic Policy' which was the official name of Nixon's August 15 wage-and-price freeze, tariff surcharge, closing of the gold window, etc. Ironically, NEP also was the name of Lenin's 1921 policy that moved back from totally centralized communism to allowing money, prices, and profit in certain areas of the economy."

The "Shaping the Future Libertarian Conference" was sponsored by the Society for Individual Liberty and the New York Libertarian Association. This lecture was recorded by Dan Karlan on reel-to-reel audio tape, and generously shared with the Mises Institute by Joseph Buchman.

The "Shaping the Future Libertarian Conference" was sponsored by the Society for Individual Liberty and the New York Libertarian Association, and hosted by the Columbia University Freedom Conspiracy. This lecture was recorded by Dan Karlan on reel-to-reel audio tape, and generously shared with the Mises Institute by Joseph Buchman.

The Free Enterprise Society (FES) is sponsored by the Institute for the Study of Free Enterprise at Oklahoma State University.

The Free Enterprise Society (FES) is sponsored by the Institute for the Study of Free Enterprise at Oklahoma State University.

Special thanks to Bettina Bien Greaves for making this important audio recording available.

In September 1980, I extended an invitation to Murray to be among the speakers featured in a nearly week-long “Libertython” sponsored by the NYU chapter of Students for a Libertarian Society—dedicated to exploring the politics, economics, and philosophy of freedom. On September 23, 1980, he gave the second of six scheduled lectures that day. His lecture focused on “The Crisis of American Foreign Policy,” wherein I introduced him to a slightly smaller audience than the event sponsored by the History Department. The size of the audience didn’t matter; for Rothbard, there was nothing more important than the issue of war and peace. As he put it, libertarians were usually quite good in opposing the regulations of OSHA or criticizing the destructive effects of price controls. But when faced with the role of the warfare state as the single most important factor in the expansion of government power: “Blank out”—a turn of phrase he used, giving credit to Ayn Rand—was the typical response he’d witnessed from far too many libertarians. By not focusing enough attention on the role of “war and peace,” all the other issues concerning price control, free will and determinism, and so forth, become “pointless … if we’re all washed away” as a species.

With a bit of gallows humor, he couldn’t resist criticizing the U.S. military’s plan that would whisk away politicians to safety as nuclear warfare becomes imminent such that the “goddamn government” will go on in bomb shelters, while the rest of us perish. As the antidote to war, he cited W. C. Fields, who, when asked by the Saturday Evening Post how to end World War II, remarked: “Take the leaders of both sides or all sides, in the Hollywood Bowl, and let them fight it out with sackfuls of guns.” The Post didn’t publish the comment, Rothbard says, but he yearns for a world that gets back to jousting between the leaders of warring governments, rather than a policy of what Charles Beard once called “perpetual war for perpetual peace,” in which twentieth-century technology had made possible mass murder on an unimaginable scale.

Some will have difficulty accepting Rothbard’s argument that in any clash between “democratic” and “dictatorial” countries, the latter is not necessarily the source of contemporary conflict. In fact, Rothbard argues, the foreign policy of the “democratic” United States has been at the root of many of the global conflicts in the post-World War II era.

During the Q&A session, folks who are familiar with the voice of Don Lavoie will recognize him instantly. Included here as well are several self-acknowledged “digs” that Rothbard takes at the Libertarian Party’s 1980 Presidential candidate, Ed Clark, with some surprising comments on subjects such as immigration policy.

Special thanks to Chris Sciabarra for making this important recording available.

The central theme of Rothbard’s lecture was the conflict between “Liberty” and “Power” throughout history. He did not deny the complexities of historical events and did not disapprove of alternative approaches to the understanding of history. Drawing from Albert Jay Nock, however, he believed that the contest between “social power” (embodied in voluntary institutions and trade) and “state power” (in which certain interests used the coercive instruments of government to expropriate others for their own benefit) was central to understanding the ebb and flow of historical events. Social power, which reached its apex in the eighteenth and nineteenth century, breeds prosperity, civilization, and culture; state power, which came to dominate the twentieth century, produced the most regressive period in human history—as government expanded its powers through warfare and a maze of regulatory agencies, central banking, and welfare-state bureaucracies. Throughout his talk, he drew on the pioneering scholarship of Bernard Bailyn on the ideological origins of the American Revolution; Jackson Turner Main on the role of the antifederalists in restraining, through the Bill of Rights, the “nationalist” forces that forged the counter-revolutionary Constitution; Paul Kleppner, who provides an enlightening take on the struggle between “liturgical” and “pietist” cultural forces, the latter viewed as a key element in the emergence of the Progressive Era and the growth of government intervention; and Gabriel Kolko, whose revisionist work on the role of big business in the move toward the regulatory state explains much about the rise of corporatist statism in the twentieth century and beyond.

The entire 90-minute talk, which included a brief question-and-answer session, is peppered with that edgy Rothbardian wit, which entertained as much as it informed. By the end of the lecture, Rothbard was given a standing ovation.

Special thanks to Chris Sciabarra for making this important recording available.

Recorded at the Auburn University Economics Club on March 21, 2019.

Professor Gill argues that tipping remains an economically efficient means of providing quality service wherein restaurant owners, wait staff, and customers all benefit in a win-win-win situation. Furthermore, the norm of tipping also provides an excellent example to teach basic economic principles and foster classroom discussion.

Presented at the Mises Institute on 22 June 2017. Includes a Question-and-Answer period.

This lecture was presented to the Economics Club of Auburn University at the Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama, on 8 September 2015.

The PowerPoint presentation used in the lecture is available here.

This lecture was presented to the Auburn University Economics Club at the Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama, on 18 February 2015.

LeFevre then goes through the Declaration of Independence in careful detail.

Bob LeFevre presented this lecture to the Free Marin Supper Club in Marin County, California, on 4 July 1984. Special thanks to Dena Cornett for making this recording available.

Presented as part of the Mises Institute's Brown Bag Seminar series on May 19, 2005 in Auburn, Alabama.

The movement from communism to freedom started in Yugoslavia. Former Soviet areas like Estonia are now free market. People in Poland are reading Mises and Rothbard. How can there be any support for a cold war any longer?  The communist leadership is quitting. There are no instructions about how to give up power.

Bipartisan commissions just mean your wallet will be picked from both sides. Keynesians are still in power, dreaming of a one world central bank giving us one world inflation.

Rothbard’s favorite president was Martin Van Buren who was pretty good even when he was in power (1837-1841). But no one after that.

Recorded at the 1989 Texas State Libertarian Conference. Includes a Question and Answer session following the lecture.

David Stockman talks about his important new book, 'The Great Deformation', which has outraged the establishment. Recorded at the beautiful and historic Metropolitan Club in New York, NY, on 21 May 2013.  Includes a Question and Answer period.

In this 1981 lecture, Walter Block discusses the importance of allowing private markets — and not government planners — to decide how land and housing is used by those who buy, sell, and rent it.

Presented at the School of Law, Dalhousie University (Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada) on 29 January 1981. [1:30:56]

Presented as part of the Mises Institute's Summer Seminar Series on July 20, 2005 in Auburn, Alabama.