The Essential Rothbard - Ludwig von Mises Institute

102 The Essential Rothbard
Rothbard continually alternated between elaborations of principle
and applications to particular issues. In “The Great Women’s
Liberation Issue: Setting It Straight,” 272 Rothbard applies a principle
to which we have already made frequent reference. People
differ in their abilities, a fact that egalitarians neglect at their peril.
But do not men and women also differ in abilities? The unisex
dreams of radical feminists contravene nature and must be
rejected.
Rothbard’s own stance on the women’s movement characteristically
stresses freedom.
I do not go so far as the extreme male “sexists” who contend
that women should confine themselves to the home and children
and that any search for alternative careers is unnatural.
On the other hand, I do not see much more support for the
opposite contention that domestic-type women are violating
their natures. 273
Rothbard, like Nock, could speak of “our enemy, the State.”
But it does not follow that he viewed all anarchists with sympathy.
Quite the contrary, in “Anarcho-Communism,” 274 Rothbard
makes evident his distaste for anarchists who seek to combine
opposition to the State with communism. Often the advocates of
this position straightforwardly embrace irrationalism. Norman O.
Brown, a Freudian classicist much in favor with the New Left,
contended that socialists, in the face of Mises’s proof that a socialist
system cannot calculate, should abandon economic calculation
for a world of polymorphous perversity.
Like his Marxist adversaries, Rothbard stressed the unity of
theory and practice: philosophy is a guide to action. In “Why Be
272
“The Great Women’s Liberation Issue: Setting It Straight,” in
ibid., pp. 157–73.
273
Ibid., pp. 162–63; emphasis in the original.
274
“Anarcho-Communism,” in ibid., pp. 199–204.