Murray Newton Rothbard (; March 2, 1926 – January 7, 1995) was an
American heterodox economist of the
Austrian School, a
revisionist historian, and a
political theorist whose writings and personal influence played a seminal role in the development of modern
libertarianism. Rothbard was the founder and leading theoretician of
anarcho-capitalism, a staunch advocate of
historical revisionism, and a central figure in the twentieth-century American libertarian movement. He wrote over twenty books on anarchist theory, revisionist history, economics, and other subjects. Rothbard asserted that all services provided by the "monopoly system of the corporate state" could be provided more efficiently by the private sector and wrote that the
state is "the organization of robbery systematized and writ large." He called
fractional reserve banking a form of fraud and opposed
central banking. He categorically opposed all military, political, and
economic interventionism in the affairs of other nations. According to his protégé
Hans-Hermann Hoppe, "There would be no anarcho-capitalist movement to speak of without Rothbard."