Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market (Scholars Edition) (Hardcover)

~ (Author) "THE DISTINCTIVE AND CRUCIAL FEATURE in the study of man is the concept of action..." (more)
Key Phrases: discounted marginal value product, binary intervention, psychic revenue, New York, United States, Ludwig von Mises (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

Murray N. Rothbard's great treatise Man, Economy, and State and its complementary text Power and Market provides a sweeping presentation of Austrian economic theory, a reconstruction of many aspects of that theory, a rigorous criticism of alternative schools, and an inspiring look at a science of liberty that concerns nearly everything and should concern everyone.

The Mises Institute's new edition of Man Economy, and State, united for the first time with its formerly sundered companion volume Power and Market, is a landmark in the history of the Institute. It takes this book out of the category of underground classic and raises it up to its proper status as one of the great economic treatises of all time, a book that is essential for anyone seeking a robust economic education. The revealing new introduction by Joseph Stromberg uses material from the Rothbard Archives, including his personal notes during the research and writing phases, to reconstruct the intellectual setting in which the book was written, and its initial and widening impact.

For years, the Mises Institute has kept it in print and sold thousands of copies in a nice paperback version. Now in our twentieth year, we decided to take a big step and put out an edition worthy of this great treatise. It is the Scholar's Edition of Man, Economy, and State—-an edition that will immediately become definitive and used throughout the world. The footnotes (which are so brilliant and informative!) are at the bottom of every page. The index is huge and comprehensive. The binding is impeccable and its beauty unmatched.

Students have used this book for decades as the intellectual foil for what they have been required to learning from conventional economics classes. In many ways, it has built the Austrian school in the generation that followed Mises. It was Rothbard who polished the Austrian contribution to theory and wove it together with a full-scale philosophy of political ethics that inspired the generation of the Austrian revival, and continues to fuel its growth and development today.

From Rothbard, we learn that economics is the science that deals with the rise and fall of civilization, the advancement and retrenchment of human development, the feeding and healing of the multitudes, and the question of whether human affairs are dominated by cooperation or violence.

Economics in Rothbard's wonderful book emerges as the beautiful logic of that underlies human action in a world of scarcity, the lens on how exchange makes it possible for people to cooperate toward their mutual betterment. We see how money facilitates this, and allows for calculation over time that permits capital to expand and investment to take place. We see how entrepreneurship, based on real judgments and risk taking, is the driving force of the market.

What's striking is how this remarkable book has lived in the shadows for so long. It began as a guide to Human Action, and it swelled into a treatise in its own right. Rothbard worked many years on the book, even as he was completing his PhD at Columbia University. He realized better than anyone else that Mises's economic theories were so important that they needed restatement and interpretation. But he also knew that Misesian theory needed elaboration, expansion, and application in a variety of areas. The result was much more: a rigorous but accessible defense of the whole theory of the market economy, from its very foundations.

But the publisher decided to cut the last part of the book, a part that appeared years later as Power and Market. This is the section that applies the theory presented in the first 1,000 pages to matters of government intervention. Issue by issue, the book refutes the case for taxation, the welfare state, regulation, economic planning, and all forms of socialism, large and small. It remains an incredibly fruitful assembly of vigorous argumentation an

About the Author

Murray N. Rothbard (1926-1995) distinguished himself as an economist, writing a major treatise on theory, several important economic histories, and a highly praised history of economic thought. But he was also known as the pioneer thinker of libertarianism, the political philosophy that roots freedom in private property ownership and decries the state as inherently contrary to the ethics of a free society. Writing from this perspective, he gained a reputation as the most provocative and influential contributor to the anarchist tradition in our century.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 1544 pages
• Publisher: Ludwig von Mises Institute (February 2004)
• ISBN-10: 0945466307
• ISBN-13: 978-0945466307
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 2.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #704,618 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Economics as 'human action': Rothbard builds on Mises's work, September 2, 2004

By	John S. Ryan "Scott Ryan" (Silver Lake, OH) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

[This is a reposting, very slightly edited, of my review from six years ago of an earlier and now unavailable edition of this book.]

Murray Newton Rothbard's development of economic theory from the axiom of human action is brilliant from start to finish.

Building on Ludwig von Mises's masterwork _Human Action_, Rothbard in effect removes Mises's work from its neo-Kantian setting and places it on a foundation of Aristotelian realism (though this fact will not be obvious without study of Rothbard's later work, notably _The Ethics of Liberty_).

Rothbard systematically and rigorously develops all of economic theory from the axiom that human beings act to achieve ends in a world in which specific and delimitable causes have specific and delimitable effects. In so doing, he has written a work that, over three decades after its publication, still serves as a comprehensive introduction to Austrian School economics.

And no wonder: Rothbard viewed Austrian economics particularly and the 'science of liberty' generally as systematic philosophy, not as the mere collection of statistical facts and 'model-building'. The result is a highly readable volume that reads more like a philosophical treatise than a standard 'economics' textbook.

Anyone who loves liberty and thinks _ideas_ are important will love this volume. Keynesians and econometricians need not apply.

[Later note: _Human Action_, this book (this edition of which includes the portion originally shaved off and published separately as _Power and Market_), and George Reisman's _Capitalism_ are the twentieth century's Three Great Treatises on free-market economics. They don't always agree with each other, so if this subject is of interest to you, be sure to read all three.]

17 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Austrian Economics., March 10, 2005

By	Lord Chimp (Monkey World) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)

Murray Rothbard's contribution to economic science cannot be overstated. Following the footsteps of Mises' _Human Action_, Rothbard's own treatise leaves no economic question untouched. _Man, Economy and State_ presents the entire corpus of economic law, deduced logically from the undeniable fact of human choice. Because of the Austrian methodology, Rothbard was a system-building rationalist, and so this book has little resemblance to mainstream economics. As a praxeologist, Rothbard builds economics not on models or mathematics, but using primordial logical principles to explore the formal implications of purposeful human behavior. Rothbard not only presented Austrian economics in a systematic, complete way -- he also advanced it considerably. Some examples of his contributions to the hardcore of Austrian economics: he refined the theory of utility, he greatly elaborated and developed theories of production, (although I believe his theory of interest was incorrect), reconstructed the approach to welfare-economics, demolished the illusory free-market monopoly problem, etc. Also crucial to his economic theory was his indepth exploration of violent intervention in the free market. That volume, _Power and Market_, is included here (as it was originally intended). Here, Rothbard drives the final nail in the coffin for virtually any argument that the government do anything positive for the economy. He also recognized that economic and ethical problems have the same, fundamental root: scarcity, without which neither discipline would be at all meaningful. This connection was critical for Rothbard as he developed his political philosophy, which was systematically presented later in _The Ethics of Liberty_ (1982). Considering Rothbard completed this treatise when he was only 36, his level of scholarship is nothing short of incredible. His footnotes are full of treasures.

This is truly one of the most important works of economic theory ever written. Indeed, it covers _everything_, and Rothbard's clear, tempered prose is unrivaled in either philosophy or economics. Anyone who is alive should read this book. If you're dead and you can read, well...that's amazing, but still the book won't be much used to you.

14 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Triumph, March 13, 2004

By	Steve Jackson "stevejackson100atyahoocom" (New England) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)

In 1962, Murray Rothbard published his epic MAN, ECONOMY, AND STATE (MES). In 1970, Rothbard's powerful critique of government intervention in the economy, POWER AND MARKET (P&M) was published. However, P&M was originally part of MES. For reasons of length and content (P&M was seen as too radical) MES' original publisher decided not to publish the work as a unified whole.

Over 40 years later, the Ludwig von Mises Institute has remedied this sad situation by publishing these works as a whole. Even if you own MES and P&M, you need to get this "scholar's edition." First, the new version is in hardcover. Second, the endnotes have been converted to footnotes. Third, the new edition contains an excellent introduction by Joseph Stromberg describing in detail the writing of the book, based on documents in Rothbard's papers.

I've reviewed MES and P&M on Amazon, so I won't repeat my comments here. Suffice it to say, this is one of the great works of economic scholarship of the twentieth century. No student of liberty will want to be without it.