Murray Newton Rothbard (1926–1995) was an influential American economist and political philosopher who helped define modern libertarianism and founded a form of free-market anarchism he termed "anarcho-capitalism". An individualist anarchist of the Austrian School of economics, Rothbard associated with the Objectivists in his early thirties before allying with the New Left in the 1960s and eventually joining the radical caucus of the Libertarian Party. His books Man, Economy, and State (1962) and For a New Liberty (1973) and The Ethics of Liberty (1982) are classics of anarcho-capitalist literature, providing the foundation for natural rights libertarianism. (read more...)