The Essential Rothbard - Ludwig von Mises Institute

26 The Essential Rothbard
MORE ADVANCES IN ECONOMIC THEORY:
THE LOGIC OF ACTION
Rothbard’s masterly work, Man, Economy, and State, was far
from exhausting his contributions to economic theory.
Rothbard’s main papers in this area are available in the
posthumously published two-volume collection The Logic of
Action. 46
A constant theme echoes again and again throughout Rothbard’s
papers. He found it essential to separate the distinctive Austrian
approach to economics from competing views, not least from
movements within Austrian economics that he believed were misguided.
One motive for this essential work of clarification is that
economics is a strict science; as such, it must be purged of all that
does not properly belong to it. In particular, ethical judgments do
not form part of economic analysis: “[E]ven the tritest bits of ethical
judgments in economics are completely illegitimate.” 47 Rothbard
held this view not because he thought ethics a matter of arbitrary
whim. Quite the contrary, in “Praxeology: the Methodology
of Austrian Economics” (1976), 48 he calls himself an Aristotelian
Neo-Thomist, and this school ardently champions natural law. But
whatever the scientific status of ethics, economics is an independent
discipline.
And the issue is more than one of conceptual economy and elegance.
Though ethics need not be capricious, many economists do
46The Logic of Action I: Method, Money, and the Austrian School
(Cheltenham, U.K.: Edward Elgar, 1997). The Logic of Action II:
Applications and Criticism from the Austrian School (Cheltenham, U.K.:
Edward Elgar, 1997. The two volumes are included in Edward Elgar’s
series Economists of the Twentieth Century. A new and expanded edition
will be published by the Ludwig von Mises Institute in 2007.
47Logic of Action I, p. 22.
48 Ibid., pp. 58–99.