The Essential Rothbard - Ludwig von Mises Institute

The Essential Rothbard 113
Here he saw a prime danger of Nafta, a vital step to a New
World Order. Politically, it suggests that the United States is
“totally committed” to a form of global government. Economically,
it means not free trade but a “managed, cartelized trade and
production, the economy to be governed by an oligarchic ruling
coalition of Big Government, Big Business, and Big Intellectuals/Big
Media.” 298
ROTHBARD’S LAST SCHOLARLY TRIUMPH
One last academic triumph remained for Rothbard, though
sadly it appeared only after his death. In two massive volumes,
Economic Thought Before Adam Smith and Classical
Economics299 he presented a minutely detailed and erudite account
of the history of economic theory. For Rothbard, the history of
economics has an unusually broad scope. To him it includes not
only economic theory but virtually all of intellectual history as
well. He advances definite and well thought out interpretations of
major historical controversies.
As an example, Machiavelli was in his view a “preacher of
evil”—not for him the fashionable portrayal of the Florentine as
the founder of value-free political science. With characteristic acuity,
Rothbard asks:
Who in the history of the world, after all, and outside a Dr.
Fu Manchu novel, has actually lauded evil per se and counselled
evil and vice at every step of life’s way? Preaching evil
is to counsel precisely as Machiavelli has done: be good so
long as goodness doesn’t get in the way of something you
298 Ibid., p. 377.
299 An Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought, vol. 1:
Economic Thought Before Adam Smith, and vol. 2: Classical Economics
(Cheltenham, U.K.: Edward Elgar, 1995).