 This is Mises Weekends with your host Jeff Deist. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back once again to Mises Weekends, joined today by Patrick Newman, who is a one-time summer fellow here at the Mises Institute. He's back with us this summer and he's actually editing and working on a new book by Murray Rothbard. And one of the interesting things about Murray Rothbard is he's still writing books 20 odd years after his death. And of course that's made possible by the fact that we have these extensive archives here of Murray's stuff, physical stuff that was taken from his apartment in New York and also his place in Las Vegas when he died. So we we literally have volumes of material that Murray wrote, notes from him, stuff that's still coming out last year with the help of Justin Ramonda. We published Murray's book called Never a dull moment on the 60s. So now we are set to publish in 2017 a new book by Murray Rothbard on the Progressive Era and Patrick has the tough but fun task of editing that book. So welcome to Mises Weekends and talk to us a little bit about how this book project came to be. Sure. Well, first of all, thanks for having me on. And this book project, this was booked at Rothbard. The Progressive Era is one of the areas of United States economic history. Rothbard had spent a long time on and he actually started to work on this book while he was involved with the Cato Institute in the late 70s. And he was commissioned to write a book on the Progressive Era. And what happened is it was sort of linked in involved in with his split with the Cato Institute, the book never got formally finished. He wrote about nine chapters of material, but he ended up finishing the book in the 80s really by writing essays on events that he wanted to later talk about such as the welfare state, the Progressive Era and the family, the Federal Reserve, World War I, etc. And so those essays were published, but the actual manuscript really went from about the 1860s to Theodore Roosevelt's administration that never got published. So I was working on, I was involved in the Rothbard archives. I was involved in actually editing an unpublished chapter of man economy and state and sort of linked in with sort of finding things with some chapters on the Progressive Era. And as an economic historian myself, this is a period I was very interested in. I was very interested in Rothbard's work and his lectures on the topic. So really just started to go from there, really collect the chapters, edit them from there, type them up. Yeah. And here we are. Well, an unpublished chapter of man economy and state, that's something I'd be interested in reading for sure. But so what's so interesting to me is looking over just Murray's introduction to this book. The Progressive Era is usually sold to us as this benign period of modernization. And of course, Murray sees it very differently as this as this huge cultural and political leap from the relatively laissez-faire 19th century to this welfare warfare big government 20th century. So it's really a sea change. And it's bound up in things like World War I and the income tax and central bank. Yeah. Yeah. For most intellectuals and really for, you know, most people they learn in high school is that, okay, you had the Gilded Age, you had the Industrial Revolution. Yes, it brought advances, but it brought monopolies, it brought deflation, rampant business cycles, economic inequality, et cetera. And so this was Progressive Era is the time when the federal government said, okay, we have to be more involved, laissez-faire doesn't work. Might have worked for the agrarian economy of the Jeffersonians, et cetera. But now this is when we have to let the intellectuals and planners, we have to have, you know, steer, you know, guide the economy. And Rothbard had a slightly different assessment of the era. And for him, it was really a change, a sea change in ideology among business, government, citizens and the intellectuals away from liberty towards power, towards central planning. Yep. And in his introduction, he's really looking at this as some kind of unholy business intellectual alliance, right, where we're going to have, and a lot of it goes to scientism, right, that we're going to have this new cadre of supposedly scientific public intellectuals guiding us. Yeah. And that's something we didn't enjoy in the 19th century. Yes. So one theme aside from all of his Rothbard's historical work, aside from the theme of, say, liberty versus power, Rothbard always would mention on the idea of the alliance of throne and altar. So in order to get the public really to adhere towards the state's sort of depredations or interventions, you have to have some form of intellectual class to tell them that this is good. So originally it was the altar. It was the priests, the clergymen. They said, you have to listen to the king. The king is divine. He's holy. He'll save you, et cetera. And what happened though is after that, it became, especially in the early 20th century, it became intellectual. So they say the high taxes, the spending, these interventions are good because they're good for the public welfare. So Rothbard calls them the court intellectuals, basically. And they're out for one of their special interests is that, well, they get the prestige of planning and ministering the system. They get power associated with linked with the whole university and research apparatus. But the intellectuals are definitely a big part of the era as well as Rothbard's analysis. Well, there's so many analogies today when you look at what Bill Kristol talks about as this, probably we would call them a pseudo-intellectual, but in terms of the unholy relationship between a lot of the Beltway think tanks and defense contractors would be one obvious example. Now, two things that come out of this progressive era that Murray writes about are, of course, compulsory public schooling, which was viewed as a laudatory advancement. And labor unions, which are also seen as a progressive achievement, but Murray talks about them as a way to sort of corral and mainstream immigrants and he argues that labor unions had racist origins. Yeah, yeah. So one of sort of related this alliance of throwing an altar was you could say this new Rothbard calls it the Quadrupartite Alliance of basically four groups, big business. They wanted to use government to cartelize. You had big government. They wanted to enhance their own power. You had big unions who are there mainly to stifle sort of the radical Marxist, socialist, you know, labor elements. And then you had big intellectuals who are really out to sort of plan the system and get the prestige. So one of, you know, definitely part of Rothbard's analysis and Rothbard talks about this related the National Civic Federation, basically an organization that combined all those elements, getting sort of labor involved and using them one of the ways is big business had no problem with trying to get other businesses to adopt labor unions. But many of those leaders themselves wouldn't want to adopt them for themselves for their own businesses. So that's definitely part of it. Public schooling is another huge issue and Rothbard talks about this. It's really a link because he spends a lot of time in the late 1900s late excuse me late 1800s on this. He talks about many of these religious interventionists, these pietists want to do impose public schooling in a sense that the way it was called is Christianizing the Catholics. The Catholics were sort of unruly, they were sinful, they held the Roman potpourri. So you need to have, you know, you need to have a new system of public schools basically to get the kids while they're young. And over time that became more secularized in which it just you need to sort of indoctrinate the students to, you know, adhere to a big government, a big state, et cetera. It's all involved. Yeah. It's all linked. Yeah. Well, no, I really enjoy this theme that Murray has. And it's also mirrored in his four volume history of colonial America, but that there's sort of a status wasp protestant plot that comes out of the New England portion of early America and that you've got these controlling puritanical impulses that are they're ill-libertarian fundamentally. And these contrast with the more freewheeling Catholics who are more willing to drink alcohol. And as a result of this puritanical impulse, we get some progressive things like prohibition. Yeah, exactly. One of the Rothbard and one of his class lectures, he mentioned a quote from H. L. Mankin, he said, puritism is the haunting fear that somewhere someone might be having fun. So it's all linked where from the Puritans in New England, you move to upstate New York or in the Midwest and you get this group of Yankee post millennial pietists who believe that basically you have to create a kingdom of God on earth for a thousand years before Jesus can return. And to do so, you not only have to save yourself, you have to save others. And that leads to correcting sins such as prohibition, Sunday blue laws, restricting immigration, all these sorts of local interventions that in turn led to greater interventions on the state level. Because if you have to have the government to support interventions on the local level, you also have to have them support interventions on the state level. So there is a big drive. Many of these progressive reformers were pietists and over time they became secularized, but they still never lost their burning zeal basically to remake the world, to enhance the world through their own design. So it seems like whether we've got throne or altar or public intellectuals, we've always got statism in the mix somehow. Now talk about whether this book is more of a historical book or is it more commentary on the progressive era? Is it a mixture of both? It's really a mixture of both. I think it combines sort of Rothbard was known. He was involved in many areas, economics, history, economic history, political science. It really combines a lot of those. So it's a history book, but Rothbard is sure to also provide his commentary on it. You have some sections that are very economic such as on the merger movement and how many of those mergers failed. Then you really have three chapters that are very in depth in political science. He's going really into various local elections, state elections, et cetera, and the third party system. And then afterwards he has historical analysis of government during this time. It's really kind of a combination of all of those. Some of Rothbard's critics don't like that he wrote so much outside of economics, per se. And some of Rothbard's fans love that he wrote so much other than economics. Where do you think this book will sit in terms of his other output? Is this a breezy fun book or does it have more of an academic feel to it? Well, I think with a lot of Rothbard's works, depending on how you read it, it can be both. Rothbard has the knack that in many of his writings it can be something that's easily read by a layman, but it can also be something that can be read much more in depth by an academic. I think it does have just partially due to its size and some of its material. It might be some of a more academic book, but at the same time it also has a very read by the layman one because it's on a topic that's interesting. It sort of relates to because it explains the emergence of the modern state and just in terms of Rothbard's language, how he writes things, it's very digestible. So, for example, America's Great Depression can be read by both the layman, but it can also be something that I repeatedly use as a research book in order to, because he has a lot of insights in that book. So I think with a lot of his work, it's both. Does he get into some of the political figures of the era? I'd love to hear him skewering Roosevelt or Taft or Woodrow Wilson or William Jennings Bryan, sort of the babbits of that time. Yeah. So he goes through them many of the political figures during that time period. So he goes through Grover Cleveland, William McKinley, William Jennings Bryan. He goes through Theodore Roosevelt. He's got two chapters on Theodore Roosevelt, at least exclusively on him. So at least with Bryan, he doesn't view Bryan highly because he was, this is the main figure who sort of dismantled the Democratic Party. One of Rothbard's explanations for why you had the progressive era was the, you had the, basically dismantling of sort of the laissez-faire bourbon Democrats, sort of the populist Democrats basically took over the party. And so William Jennings Bryan, and this is a big change for the Democrats, he was sort of a pietist crusader. And so this alienated a lot of the former Democrats who were attracted to the party and then made them sort of switch to the Republicans, conveniently William McKinley sort of moderated his stance around this time period. Theodore Roosevelt is not looked upon highly by Rothbard as well. One thing that Rothbard was known to do and one of his most interesting sort of historical analyses that sort of permeate throughout his work is he engages in the power elite analysis. So he tries to show the various connections of business or government influence sort of familial, you know, family related or otherwise. And so with Rothbard, he spends a lot of time talking about his, excuse me, you have Rothbard spends a lot of time linking Roosevelt with JP Morgan, sort of the Morgan ambit. And so Rothbard considers Roosevelt really one of the first progressives and he brings all these elements. He partially has sort of a, a, a crusading zeal. He also has a, you know, business cartelization zeal, et cetera. So yeah, very various historical figures around the time period are sort of they, they're, they're put in their proper light, I guess. Yeah. Well, it all sounds so much like the way things are today. You know, the more things change, the more they really stay the same. The book is tentatively called roots of the modern state, the progressive era. We're going to have it ready at our 35th anniversary upcoming in New York this October. And Patrick will attend that to talk about the book, perhaps give a presentation on it. We're looking forward to it very much. So stay tuned and get that book for yourself. Patrick Newman joins us. He is our former Mises Institute summer fellow, a PhD economist, graduate of George Mason University and beginning a new career path at Florida Southern College this fall. We're looking forward to keeping up with you. And ladies and gentlemen, have a great weekend. 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