In a deep sense, wrote Murray Rothbard, getting rid of the socialist state requires that state to perform one final, swift, glorious act of self-immolation, after which it vanishes from the scene. In 1992, everyone in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union seemed anxious to desocialize, to institute free markets and privatization. But how? Confusion abounded among free-market proponents themselves. Matters were scarcely helped by the fact that Western economists, to whom the former Eastern bloc was looking for wisdom, had themselves done virtually nothing to study, let alone solve, this problem during the sixty years since Stalin had established socialism in the Soviet Union and the half-century since the Soviets imposed it on Eastern Europe. Rothbard, who had been focused for decades on how to desocialize Western economies, was able to provide a step-by-step list of dos and don’ts. FULL ARTICLE

Land monopoly, wrote Murray Rothbard, is far more widespread in the modern world than most people — especially most Americans — believe. Largely escaping feudalism itself, it is difficult for Americans to take the entire problem seriously. This is particularly true of American laissez-faire economists, who tend to confine their recommendations for the backward countries to preachments about the virtues of the free market. But these preachments naturally fall on deaf ears, because “free market” for American conservatives obviously does not encompass an end to feudalism and land monopoly and the transfer of title to these lands, without compensation, to the peasantry. And yet a truly free market can only be established by ending unjust feudal claims to property. This ignoring of the land problem means that Americans and citizens of undeveloped countries talk in two different languages and that neither can begin to understand the other’s position. FULL ARTICLE