Murray N. Rothbard vs. the Philosophers - Ludwig von Mises Institute

LAW AND NATURE IN THE WORK OF MURRAY N. ROTHBARD 41
limit this power of the state to instances where it
is required to prevent coercion by private persons.
This is possible only by the state’s protecting
known private spheres of the individuals against
interference by others and delimiting these private
spheres, not by specific assignation, but by
creating conditions under which the individual can
determine his own sphere by relying on rules
which tell him what the government will do in different
types of situations. 77
For Rothbard, however, the point is not to try to reduce
coercion to a minimum by means of acts of coercion, but
rather to eliminate it entirely, in that it is unjust and
immoral. Rothbard’s position is usually of an integral kind,
one that brooks no compromise. Obviously, he rejects the
idea that a free society could grant the state a monopoly on
coercion and that it could thus defend individuals from coercion,
since, in his opinion, the state is itself the principal
aggressor in society:
Therefore, since liberty requires the elimination
of aggressive violence in society . . . the State is
not, and can never be, justified as a defender of
liberty. For the State lives by its very existence on
the two-fold and pervasive employment of aggressive
violence against the very liberty and property
of individuals that it is supposed to be defending.
78
In Rothbard’s second comment on Constitution of Liberty,
he gives a long list of state activities that Hayek considers
justified and that he himself rejects categorically. These are
functions ranging from public health to state provision of
roads, state aid for the poor, government subsidies in the
public interest, obligatory old-age pensions, and also include
77Hayek, Constitution of Liberty, p. 21.
78Rothbard, The Ethics of Liberty, p. 224.