Murray N. Rothbard, “Why Be Libertarian?” — Summary

This file is a short polemical essay. Its scope is the motivational foundation of libertarian politics: Rothbard asks what can sustain a costly, lifelong alienation from the status quo when victory is distant.

Why be libertarian, anyway? By this we mean: what's the point of the whole thing? Why engage in a deep and lifelong commitment to the principle and the goal of individual liberty?

He first dismisses thin motives. Liberty as an intellectual parlor game leaves conduct untouched; liberty as a route to private profit is grotesque, because agitation for freedom in an unfree society usually sacrifices rather than enhances status. These motives also fail politically, since they do not build a movement. Radical ideas require organized human carriers.

Ideas, and especially radical ideas, do not advance in the world in and by themselves, as it were in a vacuum; they can only be advanced by people and, therefore, the development and advancement of such people—and therefore of a “movement”—becomes a prime task for the Libertarian who is really serious about advancing his goals.

The essay then turns against utilitarianism as the basic ground of libertarianism. Rothbard does not discard economics; he treats it as indispensable to libertarian thought. But he denies that forecasts of higher output can command sacrifice over a lifetime. Welfare arguments may persuade the mind, but they do not create the moral energy necessary for resistance. The missing ground is justice.

It is our view that a flourishing libertarian movement, a lifelong dedication to liberty, can only be grounded on a passion for justice.

Rothbard’s central conceptual move is to distinguish injustice from misfortune or scarcity. Poverty cannot be abolished by will alone, because its reduction depends on capital, savings, and time. Injustice, however, is an action imposed by one group of people on another; it can therefore be stopped if the perpetrators cease acting. His example of English rule in Ireland clarifies the point: withdrawal would not instantly enrich Ireland, but it could immediately end English oppression.

But injustices are deeds that are inflicted by one set of men on another; they are precisely the actions of men, and, hence, they and their elimination are subject to man's instantaneous will.

This distinction leads Rothbard to define the true libertarian as a radical abolitionist. Leonard Read’s imagined button, which would instantly remove wage and price controls, becomes a test of principle: if one could abolish coercive invasions at once, would one do it?

The libertarian must perforce be a “button-pusher” and an “abolitionist.”

The abolitionist analogy also lets Rothbard attack gradualist moderation. Demands to compensate slaveholders, or by extension beneficiaries of State oppression, reverse the moral claim: after exploitation, the oppressor is treated as the injured party. Libertarianism is thus given an antislavery genealogy and State power is framed as an invasion to be abolished, not optimized.

In the final section, Rothbard answers the charge that immediate abolitionism is unrealistic. His reply separates moral principle from tactical forecast. A goal should be judged as an end before one asks how soon it can be reached; otherwise strategy corrupts the statement of justice itself.

In framing principle, it is of the utmost importance not to mix in strategic estimates with the forging of desired goals.

William Lloyd Garrison becomes the model for this distinction. Immediate emancipation was the just demand even if actual victory might come gradually. Rothbard uses Garrison to show that uncompromised principle can coexist with strategic patience, and can even generate the force by which change becomes possible.

Urge immediate abolition as earnestly as we may, it will, alas! be gradual abolition in the end. We have never said that slavery would be overthrown by a single blow; that it ought to be, we shall always contend.

The essay’s relevance lies in its account of political commitment. Rothbard refuses libertarianism as hobby, self-interest, or technocratic efficiency; he recasts it as a justice movement. Its lasting thesis is that liberty requires abolitionists who can state the end without dilution, distinguish ultimate right from likely timetable, and organize with the urgency appropriate to an injustice that ought to cease now.