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Rothbard’s The Ethics of Liberty:

What It Is and What It Is Not1

By Candice Jackson

erinjack@aol.com

Ludwig von Mises Institute

and

Pepperdine University School of Law

What It Is

In his Introduction to Murray N. Rothbard’s The Ethics of Liberty, Hans-Hermann Hoppe

correctly observed that this work synthesized the Rothbardian social philosophy and “restored

the concept of property to its rightful position within economics” and political philosophy.2 In

fact, Rothbard not only restored the concept of property; he significantly improved it. The Ethics

of Liberty, Rothbard’s treatise on political ethics, complements Man, Economy, and State,

Rothbard’s economic treatise, thus forming a “unified system of rationalist social philosophy”.3

In this work, Rothbard did what the great philosophers and economists before him failed to do:

he seamlessly integrated economic science with rationalist ethics, answering the “universal and

eternal human dilemma”, as Dr. Hoppe puts it, “[W]hat am I permitted to do right now and here,

given that I cannot not act as long as I am alive and awake and the means or goods which I must

employ in order to do so are always scarce.”4

1 In this paper, all italicized words within quotations appear the same in the original unless otherwise noted.

2 Murray N. Rothbard, The Ethics of Liberty (New York University Press, 1998) p. xii.

3 Ibid, p. xii.

4 Ibid, pp. xxxiii, xiv.

Rothbard’s The Ethics of Liberty…

by Candice Jackson

The chain of reasoning that forms Rothbard’s synthesis of economics and ethics into a

complete social philosophy of liberty begins with natural law and places a carefully defined

concept of property rights at the center. Rothbard first defends the theory of natural law as

developed by the Scholastics, Grotius, Pufendorf, Burlamaqui, Vattel and others. He goes on to

define property in Lockean terms, but he builds upon the improvements made to Locke by

Spencer and Spooner. Rothbard arrives at a theory of property rights that synthesizes the long

history of natural-rights philosophy and removes the internal inconsistencies that had previously

prevented the emergence of a complete libertarian social philosophy.

Rothbard first explains that the justification for “natural law” is no more complicated

than noting that the world “consists of a myriad number of observable things, or entities…Since

the world does not consist of one homogeneous thing or entity alone, it follows that each one of

these different things possesses different attributes, otherwise they would be the same thing…[I]t

follows immediately that they have different natures…If all things have natures, then surely

man’s nature is open to inspection.”5 The appropriate method of inspection, Rothbard expounds,

is man’s reason. “Man’s reason is objective, i.e., it can be employed by all men to yield truths

about the world.”6 Citing Strauss, Rothbard presents the argument that natural law, not

positivism, is the rational doctrine on which to base a political philosophy. For, as Strauss says,

“If rational conduct consists in choosing the right means for the right end, relativism [and

positivism] teaches in effect that rational conduct is impossible.”7

The validity of natural law thus established, Rothbard goes on to explain the purpose of

natural-law ethics: “The natural law, then, elucidates what is best for man—what ends man

5 Ibid, pp. 9, 10.

6 Ibid, p. 10.

7 Quoted in Ibid, p. 8.

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should pursue that are most harmonious with…his nature.”8 In contradistinction to economic

science and utilitarianism, which treat the ends man pursues as purely subjective valuations,

Rothbard notes that “in natural-law ethics, ends are demonstrated to be good or bad for man in

varying degrees; value here is objective—determined by the natural law of man’s being.”9 An

important feature of ethics, Rothbard insists, is that the rules thus objectively derived are just, in

the sense of being universally applicable for all men, in all places, at all times.

To derive a social philosophy from natural law, Rothbard starts by analyzing a “Crusoe

philosophy”. Imagining that Crusoe has landed on a deserted island and has contracted amnesia,

Rothbard deduces the primary “inescapable facts” that confront Crusoe, namely, his own

consciousness and body, and the secondary fact of his environment, the natural world. Faced

with these inescapable facts, Crusoe learns that “he must (a) choose his goals; (b) learn how to

achieve them by using nature-given resources; and then (c) exert his labor energy to transform

these resources into more useful shapes and places.”10

Moving from a Crusoe island to a world of social interaction, Rothbard deduces the

logical possibility of a society in which each person is as free as the shipwrecked Crusoe, yet

each person is better off because of the opportunity to participate in specialization and voluntary

exchange with others. In a particularly eloquent passage, Rothbard says, “Absolute freedom,

then, need not be lost as the price we must pay for the advent of civilization; men are born free,

and need never be in chains. Man may achieve liberty and abundance, freedom and civilization.

This truth will be obscured if we persist in confusing ‘freedom’ with ‘power’”.11

8 Ibid, p. 12.

9 Ibid, p. 12.

10 Ibid, p. 30.

11 Ibid, pp. 41-42.

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In an unfortunately brief passage, Rothbard clarifies the difference between freedom and

power, thus annihilating the claims of some modern philosophers who argue that freedom is

illusory. This distinction is a powerful response to those who would have us abandon the pursuit

of liberty because, they claim, man can never truly be free due to the constraints of natural laws.

This misunderstanding of freedom leads to the spurious idea that a truly free society is utopian.

Rothbard demolishes this charge by pointing out that these modern critics confuse freedom with

power, implying that restraints on man’s freedom imposed by other people are of the same

quality as restraints imposed by natural laws. Rothbard explains, “[W]hen we say that ‘man is

not ‘free’ to leap the ocean’, we are really discussing not his lack of freedom but his lack of

power to cross the ocean, given the laws of his nature and the laws of the world.” Rothbard says,

“Crusoe is “absolutely free…in the sense of social freedom—of freedom as absence of

molestation by other persons”12 and shows how this same degree of freedom13 is entirely

possible even in a complex society.

Crucial to a free society is Rothbard’s definition of ownership as control over resources,

and legitimate ownership as control over resources that are either (a) inalienable, that is,

inseparable from one’s person, such as one’s body and mind, or (b) homesteaded, that is,

acquired from a state of nature and transformed by one’s own labor. Ownership of a thing thus

acquired can only be transferred by a voluntary transfer of its property title from a previous to a

later owner (the title-transfer theory of contracts). These deceptively simple deductions from the

axiom of self-ownership make possible the systematic derivation of the “rights of man”; that is,

the entire libertarian system of law and justice.

12 Ibid, p. 33.

13 Rothbard prefers the term “liberty” to “freedom”, precisely because of the common confusion of freedom with

power.

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by Candice Jackson

Although his definitions of legitimate property and the homesteading principle are

heavily influenced by Locke, Rothbard improved Locke’s theory of property rights by

invalidating Locke’s “proviso”, which has lead political philosophers such as Nozick to conclude

that no one may appropriate unused land if the remaining population who desire access to land

would be made worse off. Rothbard demonstrates that Locke’s proviso “may lead to the

outlawry of all private ownership of land, since one can always say the reduction of available

land leaves everyone else, who could have appropriated the land, worse off.” Rothbard

concludes, “[E]ven if they are [worse off], I submit that this, too, is their proper assumption of

risk…in this free and uncertain world…Even Locke could nod once in a while.”14

Perhaps the original contribution by Rothbard to the theory of property rights that is most

monumental is his insistence that property rights, as such, are not the central question of the

ethics of liberty. He explains, “In short, we cannot simply talk of defense of ‘property rights’ or

of ‘private property’ per se. For if we do so, we are in grave danger of defending the ‘property

right’ of a criminal aggressor—in fact, we logically must do so. We may therefore only speak of

just property or legitimate property…”15 It is this crucial clarification of the concept of property

as an issue of “legitimate” (or “just”) versus “illegitimate” (or “criminal”) that leads directly to

Rothbard’s classification of the state as illegitimate and criminal by its very nature, as well as his

defense of the free market that is free from the inconsistencies of utilitarian economics.

Rothbard identifies the state by its most important characteristic: “All other persons and

groups in society…obtain their income voluntarily: either by selling goods and services to the

consuming public, or by voluntary gift. Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion…That

14 Ibid, pp. 244-245.

15 Ibid, p. 52.

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coercion is known as ‘taxation’…Taxation is theft, purely and simply.”16 The implication is as

follows: “If, then, taxation is compulsory, and is therefore indistinguishable from theft, it follows

that the State, which subsists on taxation, is a vast criminal organization far more formidable and

successful than any ‘private’ Mafia in history.”17

As for the concept of the state as a “necessary evil”, Rothbard trenchantly argues that

while the state is indeed evil, it is by no means necessary. “If, in fact, we cast a cold and logical

eye on the theory of ‘limited government’, we can see it for the chimera that it really is, for the

unrealistic and inconsistent ‘Utopia’ that it holds forth.”18 Rothbard points out that the state has

many incentives to extend its power and influence, but no incentive to remain “limited” or

“minimal”. Furthermore, Rothbard quotes Barnett on why “the State, qua state, therefore, is an

illegal system”; by its nature (taxation and monopoly of defense services) the state violates its

own laws that it sets down for its subjects. An additional contradiction inherent in the concept of

limited government is the question of “how much” taxation should be levied and “how much”

protection to provide. Rothbard points out that there is no logical stopping point; such

governmental decisions can only be purely arbitrary. Thus, Rothbard’s anarchism follows

directly from his definition of legitimate property rights, combined with a successful critique of

the logic of limited government.

What It Is Not

By Rothbard’s admission, his system does not attempt to answer the other universal and

eternal human dilemma: “What should I do right now and here, given that I have certain

16 Ibid, p. 162.

17 Ibid, p. 166.

18 Ibid, p. 175.

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inalienable natural rights?” For example, while Rothbardian ethics positively identifies man’s

right to dispose of his own property as he wishes, it says nothing of the morality or immorality

of, e.g., suicide. Or, while Rothbardian ethics insists on a woman’s right to rid her body of an

unwanted fetus, it is silent on the morality of abortion.

Rothbard’s rationalist ethics denote the “rights of man”, but conspicuously defer any and

all discussion of the “oughts of man”. In short, the Rothbardian social philosophy is a synthesis

of economic science and political ethics, but it consciously ignores personal ethics. Rothbard

says explicitly, “It is not the intention of this book to…elaborate a natural-law ethic for the

personal morality of man. The intention is to set forth a social ethic of liberty.”19

The significance of what The Ethics of Liberty accomplishes is difficult to overstate.

With its tightly-reasoned derivation from natural law theory, Rothbard deals a blow to ethical

relativists on the one hand, and to ethical revelationists on the other hand. For utilitarians and

other ethical relativists, Rothbard’s axiomatic-deductive proofs of the right to self-ownership and

the homesteading principle are devastating to their attempt to keep ethics outside the realm of

science. For traditionalists and other ethical revelationists, Rothbard’s explicit reliance on

natural law is devastating to their attempts to link all ethical propositions to supernatural

revelation. In short, Rothbard successfully refutes Dostoyevsky’s claim, If God is dead,

everything is permissible. What becomes relevant for a defense of Rothbard’s system of ethics,

however, is not so much what The Ethics of Liberty does, but what it does not do.

Time and again throughout the text, Rothbard draws the distinction between what the

ethics of liberty says a man can do, and what a moral code might say a man should do. When he

illustrates the principle of double punishment, Rothbard is careful to emphasize that this is an

Rothbard’s The Ethics of Liberty…

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“upper bound to punishment—since it tells us how much punishment a victim may rightfully

impose…If he [the victim] were a Tolstoyan, and was opposed to punishment altogether, he

could simply forgive the criminal, and that would be that.”20

Similarly, he states, “The right to blackmail is deducible from the general property right

in one’s person and knowledge and the right to disseminate or not disseminate that knowledge.

How can the right to blackmail be denied?” Then, in a footnote Rothbard adds, “When I first

briefly adumbrated the right to blackmail…I was met with a storm of abuse by critics who

apparently believed that I was advocating the morality of blackmail. Again—a failure to make

the crucial distinction between the legitimacy of a right and the morality or esthetics of

exercising that right.”21 When countering the libertarian “contextualist” argument involving socalled

“lifeboat situations”, Rothbard acidly repeats the same disclaimer, “For we are

not…concerned with all personal moral principles. We are not herewith concerned whether it is

moral or immoral for someone to lie, to be a good person…or be kind or mean to his neighbors.

We are concerned…solely with such ‘political ethic’ questions as the proper role of violence, the

sphere of rights, or the definitions of criminality and aggression.”22

There are many inferences from Rothbard’s ethics of liberty that cause people to

instinctively recoil in horror. I suggest that failure to distinguish between political ethics and

personal ethics is the root of most disputes with Rothbardian ethics by people who favor liberty

yet fear its moral implications. When analyzed within a framework of political, as opposed to

19 Ibid, p. 25. Interestingly, Rothbard gives no indication as to why he defers discussion of personal ethics; e.g., is it

because it is of no import for a philosophy to integrate both realms of ethics, or that personal ethics cannot be

rationally derived at all, or for some other reason?

20 Ibid, p. 86.

21 Ibid, p. 124.

22 Ibid, p. 152.

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personal, ethics, even Rothbard’s seemingly stringent or harsh implications become much less

abrasive.

One aspect of The Ethics of Liberty at which even the staunchest libertarians often flinch

is its treatment of fetal and children’s rights. Yet an important footnote near the beginning of

this chapter lucidly explains the importance of distinguishing the difference between political

ethics and personal ethics in the ensuing discussion:

What we are trying to establish here is not the morality of abortion

(which may or may not be moral on other grounds), but its legality,

i.e., the absolute right of the mother to have an abortion. What we

are concerned with in this book is people’s rights to do or not to do

various things, not whether they should or should not exercise such

rights. Thus, we would argue that every person has the right to

purchase and consume Coca-Cola from a willing seller, not that

any person should or should not make such a purchase.23

Rothbard here reminds his readers to be aware of the terms of debate on such controversial

issues. It matters greatly whether one is trying to establish the permissibility of a behavior or the

goodness of it, and The Ethics of Liberty is concerned solely with establishing what is

permissible within the framework of political ethics.

With this in mind, Rothbard’s ostensibly bloodless identification of an unborn child as a

“parasitic ‘invader’ of [the mother’s] body” and his conclusion that “should the mother decide

that she does not want the fetus there any longer, then…the mother has the perfect right to expel

this invader from her domain”24 becomes less shocking to the sensibilities. Rothbard argues that

the term “right to life” is ambiguous and empty, since any proper rights implied by so-called prolife

advocates are included in the concept of the right to self-ownership. Rothbard concludes, “In

short, it is impermissible to interpret the term “right to life” to give one an enforceable claim to

23 Ibid, p. 98n.

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the action of someone else to sustain that life.”25 The legality of abortion turns on the definitions

of aggression and property; any appeals to the horror or immorality of abortion must be deferred

to a separate discussion.

Likewise, Rothbard’s seemingly blithe assertion of the right of a parent to neglect his

child is much more palatable: “[A] parent does not have the right to aggress against his children,

but also…the parent should not have a legal obligation to feed, clothe, or educate his

children…The parent therefore may not murder or mutilate his child…But the parent should

have the legal right not to feed the child, i.e., to allow it to die.”26 In a parenthetical statement

Rothbard repeats, “Again, whether or not a parent has a moral rather than a legally enforceable

obligation to keep his child alive is a completely separate question.”

Are these propositions difficult to accept when viewed as extensions of the definition of

“rights”? In light of the following elucidation of the concept of rights, its application to abortion

and children’s rights seems merely straightforward and logically consistent. Rothbard explains,

“[T]he very concept of ‘rights’ is a ‘negative’ one, demarcating the areas of a person’s action

that no man may properly interfere with. No man can therefore have a ‘right’ to compel

someone to do a positive act, for in that case the compulsion violates the right of persona or

property of the individual being coerced.”27

As Rothbard points out, the political ethics of liberty, defined and applied in this manner,

actually enhances the opportunity for morality and goodness to flourish. For example, instead of

seeing a desperate “shortage” of babies going to adoptive homes as we do in today’s society,

libertarian laws would allow a “free market in children” that would “eliminate this imbalance,

24 Ibid, p. 99.

25 Ibid, p. 99.

26 Ibid, pp. 100-101.

27 Ibid, p. 100.

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and would allow for an allocation of babies and children away from parents who dislike or do

not care for their children, and toward foster parents who deeply desire such children. Everyone

involved…would be better off in this sort of society.”28 Along similar lines Rothbard makes the

case for the legality of many other actions that most people’s personal ethics deem reprehensible

or immoral.

It is his rigorous logic and consistency that allows Rothbard to “solve” what seem like

paradoxes in the realm of political ethics, such as “lifeboat situations” and the famous “fire in a

crowded theater”, often used as justifications for the mitigation of absolute rights.

As for lifeboat situations, Rothbard first emphasizes that such situations, by definition,

are not central to a system of ethics, since the goal is to form an ethic for the way men generally

behave in this world. However, Rothbard successfully refutes the implication that since lifeboat

situations (i.e., extreme circumstances that force a man to choose among perceived absolute

ethical rules) exist, they prove that ethical rules cannot be absolute at all. The lifeboat situation

paints the picture of a sinking ship with more passengers than the lifeboat can hold. But

Rothbard shows that the theory of self-ownership and property rights is easily applied even to

this dramatic “war of all against all” by asking insightfully, “Who owns the lifeboat?” From

there, the rules of legitimate ownership (or the principle of homesteading, if indeed the lifeboat is

unowned) apply in a straightforward manner.

With similar ease and consistency, Rothbard dismisses the argument that the “fire in a

crowded theater” illustration somehow places a “check” on the absolute right to free speech.

Rothbard explains cogently, “[C]ouching the analysis in terms of a ‘right to free speech’ instead

of property rights leads to confusion and a weakening of the very concept of rights. The most

famous example is Justice Holmes’s contention that no one has the right to shout ‘Fire’ falsely in

28 Ibid, p. 104.

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a crowded theater, and therefore that the right to freedom of speech must be tempered by

considerations of ‘public policy’. And yet, if we analyze the problem in terms of property rights

we will see that no weakening of the absoluteness of rights is necessary.”29 In this line of

reasoning Rothbard follows Justice Hugo Black, whom he quotes as saying, “We have a system

of property, which means that a man does not have the right to do anything he wants anywhere

he wants to do it…That is a wonderful aphorism about shouting ‘fire’ in a crowded theater,” but

as Justice Black continues, the point is not “what he shouted but [that] he shouted.”30 For as

Rothbard points out, either the shouting is being done on someone else’s property (if the shouter

is a patron) and thus violates the condition of his being there; or, the shouting is being done by

the theater owner, and thus violates the terms of quiet enjoyment of the show for which the

owner took his patrons’ money. Seen in this framework, no mitigation of the concept of rights is

necessary or justified.

This kind of consistent application of the theory of self-ownership and property rights,

derived from natural law, is what gives Rothbard’s exposition a clear advantage over prior

attempts to defend liberty. As Hans-Hermann Hoppe points out, Rothbard never claimed

infallibility for his system of political ethics. “In accordance with the tradition of rationalist

philosophy he merely insisted that axiomatic-deductive arguments can be attacked, and possibly

refuted, exclusively by other arguments of the same logical status.”31 Yet this “logical status” is

precisely what political ethics had previously been lacking. Given its axiomatic base, attacks on

Rothbard’s ethics of liberty are logically confined to addressing the deductions and processes of

reasoning therein; charges against the personal morality of his system are invalid because it

applies (and aims to apply) solely to political ethics.

29 Ibid, p. 114.

30 Ibid, p. 115.

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In addition to the sensitivity of the issues to which Rothbard explicitly applies his

political ethics, one other factor may contribute to the confusion between political and personal

ethics by those who take issue with The Ethics of Liberty; namely, the chapter entitled “The

Moral Status of Relations to the State.” Here and here alone, Rothbard uses the phrases “morally

licit” and “morally legitimate” to describe certain actions that fall within the bounds of what

political ethics deems permissible for man. For example: “Lying to the State, then, also

becomes…morally legitimate.”32 (Emphasis added.) And: “[I]t would be morally licit to leave

the State’s army at any time, regardless of the terms of enlistment.”33 (Emphasis added.) The

change in phrasing may open the door to confusion. It could be that Rothbard is making an

exception to his refusal hitherto to pronounce judgment on the personal morality of an action,

since until now he has reserved the term “morality” to denote the personal ethicalness of the

action involved (see above for examples). It seems that either (a) Rothbard is making no

judgment of personal morality but simply using “morally legitimate” as a synonym for “legally

permissible”; or (b) Rothbard uses the phrase “morally legitimate” to confer a judgment about

the personal morality as well as the legal permissibility of the action. Either explanation leads to

ambiguities that may confuse the crucial distinction he has elsewhere worked to establish

between political and personal ethics. For if explanation (a) is correct, why the switch in

terminology? Or if explanation (b) is correct, why does Rothbard concede to judge the personal

morality of, say, lying to the State while overtly refusing to judge the personal morality of

abortion or child neglect? This instance of possible ambiguity notwithstanding, Rothbard

elsewhere expressly seeks to defend his system of political ethics from attack by those who

would level personal ethical judgments against its implications.

31 Ibid, p. xxvii.

32 Ibid, p. 183.

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Seen for what it is not, The Ethics of Liberty leaves the arena of personal ethics open for

elaboration by libertarian philosophers. Seen for what it is, The Ethics of Liberty shines as a

monumental achievement, meeting Rothbard’s goal of setting forth “a positive ethical

system…to establish the case for individual liberty.”34

33 Ibid, p. 184.

34 Ibid, p. xlvii.