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

LAW AND NATURE IN THE WORK OF MURRAY N. ROTHBARD 45
without maintaining government schools, by giving
the parents vouchers covering the costs of
education for each child which they could hand
over to schools of their choice. It may still be
desirable that government directly provide schools
in a few isolated communities where the number
of children is too small. . . . But with respect to
the great majority of the population, it would
undoubtedly be possible to leave the organization
and management of education entirely to private
efforts, with the government providing merely the
basic finance and ensuring a minimum standard
for all schools where the vouchers could be
spent. 84
These ideas are included on Rothbard’s list of Hayek’s
partisan biases at the end of Rothbard’s review, “Letter on
The Constitution of Liberty by F.A. von Hayek.” For this
anarcho-capitalist, these are positions he cannot share,
since, in his opinion, any public funding—and indeed anything
pertaining to the state—should simply cease to exist.
Thus, for Rothbard, Hayek has not reached the target of
establishing and defending liberty. The principle of the rule
of law is itself too vague a concept and in any case insufficient
as a principle on which to base the defense of liberty.
For Hayek, the rule of law is the principal instrument with
which to defend individual liberty. He explains that, “the
rule of law constitutes a limitation on the powers of all government,
including the powers of the legislature.” 85 For the
rule of law to prevail in a society, each law must meet certain
basic requirements: it has to be general and abstract,
known and certain and, lastly, it has to be the same for all.
The function of the rule of law is to create the conditions
within which individuals can act freely and follow their own
goals on the basis of their own knowledge. Hayek feels that,
“the task of the lawgiver is not to set up a particular order
84Ibid., pp. 378, 381.
85Ibid., p. 205.