MAN, ECONOMY, AND STATE
POWER AND MARKET

Murray N. Rothbard

Ludwig von Mises Institute, Auburn, Alabama, 204, 2009, 1410 pgs., bibliography, index,

Reviewer Comments:

These two major books are obviously going to require a lengthy review and resulting lengthy time to accomplish. Together, these books constitute a textbook for study of "Austrian School" Economics. However, the author extends his thought beyond "Austrian School" into a very 'libertarian" outlook on the nature and proper role of government. His critique of the adverse impact of rulers and their governments is made less effective by his persistant treatment of 'the state' instead.
Meanwhile I place here the detailed Table of Contents to give the reader an idea of the magnitude of Rothbard's work.

Introduction: Joseph Salerno

Preface to revised edition

Man, Economy and State

Chapter 1 - Fundamentals of Human Action
1. The Concept of Action
2. First Implications of the Concept
3. Further Implications: The Means
4. Further Implications: Time
5. Further Implications
A. Ends and Values
B. The Law of Marginal Unility
6. Factors of Production: The Law of Returns
7 Factors of Production: Convertibility and Valuation
8 Factors of Production: Labor versus Leisure
9. TheFormation of Capital
10. Action as an Exchange
Appendix A: Praxeology and Economics
Appendix B: On Means and Ends

Chapter 2 - Direct Exchange
1. Types of Interpersonal Action: Violence
2. Types of Interpersonal Actiom: Voluntary Exchange and the Contractual Society
3. Exchange and the Division of Labor
4. Terms of Exchange
5. Determination of Price: Eqilibrium Price
6. Elasticity of Demand
7. Speculation and Supply and Demand Schedules
8. Stock and the Total Demand to Hold
9. Continuing Markets and Changes in Price
10. Specialization and Production of stock
11. Types of exchangable Goods
12 Property: The Appropriation of Raw Land
13. Enforcement Against Invasion of Property

Chapter 3 - The Patern of Indirect Exchange
1. The Limitations of Direct Exchange
2. The Emergence of Indirect Exchange
3. Some Implications of the Emergence of Money
4. The Monetary Unit
5. Money Income and Money Expenditures
6. Producers' Expenditures
7. Maximizing income and Allocating Resources

Chaper 4 - Prices and Consumption
1. Money Prices
2. Determination of Money Prices
3. Determiniation of Supply and Demand Schedules
4. The Gains of exchange
5. The Marginal Utility of Money
A. The Consumer
B. The Money Regression
C. Utility and Costs
D. Planning and the Range of Choice
6. Interrelations among the Prices of Consumers' Goods
7. The prices of Durable Goods and Their Services
8. Welfare Comparisons and the Ultimate Satisfactions of the Consumer
9. Some Fallacies Relating to Utility
Appendix A: The Dimminishing Marginal utility of Money
Appendix B: On Value

Chapter 5 - Production: The State Structure
1. Some Fundamental Principles of Action
2. The Evenly Rotating Economy
3. The Structure of Production: A World of Specific Factors
4. Joint Ownership of the Product by the Owners of the Factors
5. Cost
6. Ownership of the Product by Capitalists: Amalgananted Statges
7. Persent and Future Goods: The Pure Rate of Interest
8. Money Costs, Prices and Alfred Marshall
9. Pricing and the Theory of Bargaining

Chapter 6 - Production: The Rate of Interest and its Determination
1. Many stages: The Pure Rate of Interest
2. The Determination of the Pure Rate of Interest: The Time Market
3. Time Preference and Individual Value Scales
4. The Time Market and the Production Structure
5. Time Preference, Capitalists, and Individual Money Stock
6. The Post-Income Demanders
7. The Myth of the Importance of the Producers' Loan market
8. The Joint-Stock Company
9. Joint-Stock Companies and the Producers' Loan Market
10. Forces Affecting Time Preferences
11. The Time Structure of Interest Rates
Appendix: Schumpeter and the Zero Rate of Interest

Chapter 7 - Production: General Pricing of the Factors
1. Impuation of the Discounted Marginal Value Product
2. Determination of the Discounted Marginal Value Product
A. Discounting
B. The Marginal Physical Product
(1) The Law of Returns
(2) Marginal Physical Product and Average Physical Product
C. Marginal Value Product
3. The Sources of Factor Product
4. Land and Capital Goods
5. Capitalization and Rent
6. The Depletion of Natural Resources
Appendix A: Marginal Physical and Marginal Value Product
Appendix B: Professor Rolph and the Discounted Marginal Productivity Theory

Chapter 8 - Production: Entrepreneurship and Change
1. Entrepreneurial Profit and Loss
2. The Effect of Net Investment
3. Capital Values and Aggregate Profits in a Changing Economy
4. Capital Accumulation and the Length of the Structure of Production
5. The Adoption of a New Technique: The Entrepreneur and Innovation
6. The Beneficiaries of Saving - Investment
7. The Progressing Economy and the Pure Rate of Interest
8. The Entrepreneurial Component in the Market Interest Rate
9. Risk, Uncertainty, and Insurance

Chapter 9 - Production: Particular Factor Prices and Productive Incomes
1. Introduction
2. Land, Labor, and Rent
A. Rent
B. The Nature of Labor
C. Supply of Land
D. Supply of Labor
E. Productivity and Marginal Productivity
F. A note on Overt and Total Wage Rates
G. The "Problem" of Unemployment
3. Entrepreneurship and Income
A. Costs to the Firm
B. Business Income
C. Personal Consumer Service
D. Market Callculation and Implicit Earnings
E. Vertical Integration and the Size of the Firm
4. The Economics of Location and Spatial Relations
5. A Note on the Fallacy of "Distribution"
6. A Summary of the Market

Chapter 10 - Monopoly and Competition
1. The Concept of Consumers' Sovereignty
A. Consumers' Sovereignty versus Individual Sovereignty
B. Professor Hutt and Consumers' Sovereignty
2. Cartels and Their Conseqences
A. Cartels and "Monopoly Price"
B. Cartels, Mergers, and Corporations
C. Economics, Technology and the Size of the Firm
D. The Instability of the Cartel
E. Free Competition and Cartels
F. The Problem of One Big Cartel
3. The Illusion of Monopoly Price
A. Definitions of Monopoly
B. The Neoclassical Theory of Monopoly Price
C. Consequences of Monopoly- Price Theory
(1) The Competitive Environment
(2) Monopoly Profit versus Monopoly Gain to a Factor
(3) A World of Monopoly Prices?
(4) "Cutthroat" Competition
D. The Illusion of Monopoly Price on the Unhampered Market
E. Some Problems in the Theory of the Illusion of Monopoly Price
(1) Location Monopoly
(2) Natural Monopoly
4. Labor Unions
A. Restrictionist pricing of Labor
B. Some Arguments for Unions: A Critique
(1)Indeterminacy
(2) Monopsony and Oligopsony
(3) Greater Efficiendcy and the "Ricardo Effect"
5. The Theory of Monopolistic or Imperfect Competition
A. Monopolistic Competitive Price
B. The Paradox of Excess Capacity
C. Chamberlin and Selling Cost
6. Multiform Prices and Monopoly
7. Patents and Copyrights

Chapter 11 - Money and Its Purchasing Power
1. Introduction
2. The Money Relation: The Demand for and the Supply of Money
3. Changes in the Money Relation
4. Utility of the Stock of Money
5. The Demand for Money
A. Money in the ERE and in the Market
B. Speculative Demand
C. Secular Influences on the Demand for Money
D. Demand for Money Unlimited?
E. The PPM and the Rate of Interest
E. Hording and the Keynesian System
(1) Social Income, Expenditures, and Unemployment
(2) "Liquidity Preference"
G. The Purchasing -Power and Terms-of-Trade Components in the Rate of Interest
6. The Supply of Money
A. The Stock of the Money Commodity
B. Claims to Money: The Money Warehouse
C. Money-Sustitutes and the Supply of Money
D. A Note on Some Criticisms of 100-Percent Reserve
7. Gains and Losses During a Change in the Money Relation
8. TheDetemination of Prices: The Goods Side and the Money Side
9. Interlocal Exchange
A. Uniformity of the Geographic Purchasing power of Money
B. Clearing in Interlocal Exchange
10. Balances of Payments
11. Monetary Attributes of Goods
A. Quasi Money
B. Bills of Exchange
12. Exchange Rates of Coexisting Moneys
13. The Fallacy of the Equation of Exchange
14. The Fallacy of Measuring and Stabilizing the PPM
A. Measurement
B. Stabilization
15. Business Fluctuations
16. Schumpeters' Theory of Business Cycles
17. Further Fallacies of the Keynesian System
A. Interest and Investment
B. The Consumption Function"
C. The Multiplier
18. The Fallalcy of the Acceleration Principle

Chapter 12 - The Economnics of Violent Intervention in the Market
1. Introduction
2. A Typology of Intervention
3. Direct Effects of Intervention on Utility
4. Utility Ex Post: Free Market and Government
5. Triangular Intervention: Price Control
6. Triangular Interventon: Product Control
7. Binary Intervention: The Government Budget
8. Binary Intervention: Taxation
A. Income Taxation
B. Attempts at Neutral Taxation
C. Shifting and Incidence: A Tax on an Industry
D. Shifting and Incidence: A General Sales Tax
E. A Tax on Land Values
F. Taxing "Excess Purchasing Power"
9 . Binary Intervention: Government Expenditures
A. The "Productive Contribution" of Government Spending
B. Subsidies and Transfer Payments
C. Resource-Using Activities
D. The Fallacy of Government on a "Business Basis"
E. Centers of Calculational Chaos
F. Conflict and the Command Posts
G. The Fallacies of "Public" Ownership
H. Social Security
I. Socialism and Central Planning
10. Growth, Affluence, and Government
A. The Problem of Growth
B. Professor Galbraith and the Sin of Affluence
11. Binary Intervention: Inflation and Business Cycles
A. Inflation and Credit Expansion
B. Credit Expansion and the Business Cycle
C. Secondary Developments of the Business Cycle
D. The Limits of Credit Expansion
E. The Government as Promoter of Credit Expansion
F. The Ultimate Limit: The Runaway Boom
G. Inflation and Compensatory Fiscal Policy
12. Conclusion: The Free market and Coercion
Appendix A: Government Borrowing
Appendix B: "Collective Goods" and "External Benefits": Two Arguments for Government Activity

POWER AND MARKET

Chapter I - Defense Services on the Free Market

Chapter 2 - "Fundamentals of Intervention
1. Types of Intervention
2. Direct Effects of Intervention on Utility
A. Intervention and Conflict
B. Democracy and the Volunary
C. Utility and Resistance to Invasion
D. TheArgument from Envy
E. Utility Ex Post

Chapter 3 - Triangular Intervention
1. Price Control
2. Product Control: Prohibition
3. Product Control: Grant of Monopolistic Privilege
A. Compulsory Cartels
B. Licenses
C. Standards of Quality and Safety
D. Tariffs
E. Immigration Restrictions
F. Child Labor LAws
G. Conscripton
H. Minimum Wage Laws and Compulsory Unionism
I. Susidies to Unemployment
J. Penalties on Market Forms
K. Antitrust Laws
L. Outlawing Basing-Point Pricing
M. Conservation Laws
N. Patents
O. Franchises and "Public Utilities"
P. The Right of Eminent Domain
Q. Bribery of Government Officials
R. Policy toward Monopoly
Appendix A: On Private Coinage
Appendix B: Coercion and Lebensram

Chapter 4 - Binary Intervention: Taxation

1. Introduction: Government Revenues and Expenditures
2. The Burdens and Benefits of Taxation
3. The Incidence and Effects of Taxation

Part I: Taxes on Incomes
A. The General Sales Tax and the Laws of Incidence
B. Partial Excise Taxes; other Production Taxes
C. General Effects of Income Taxation
D. Particular Forms of Income Taxation
(1) Taxes on Wages
(2) Corporate Income Taxation
(3) "Excess" Profit Taxation
(4) The Capital Gains Problem
(5) Is a Tax on Consumption Possible?
4. The Incidence and Effects of Taxation

Part II: Taxation Accumulaed Capital
(A) Taxation on Gratuitous Transfers: Bequests and Gifts
(B) Property Taxation
C. A Tax on Individual Wealth
5. The Incidence and Effects of Taxation

Part III: The Progressive Tax
6. The Incidence and Effects of Taxation

Part IV: The "Single Tax" on Ground Rent
7 Canons of "Justice" in Taxation
A. The Just Tax and the Just Price
B. Costs of Collection, Convenience, and Certainty
C. Distribution of the Tax Burden
(1) Uniformity of Treatment
a. Equality Before the Law: Tax Exemption
b. The Impossibility of Uniformity
(2) The"Ability-to-Pay" Principle
a. The Ambiguity of the Concept
b. The Justice of the Standard
(3) Sacrifice Theory
(4) The Benefit Principle
(5) The Equal tax and the Cost Principle
(6) Taxation "For Revenue Only"
(7) The Neutral Tax: A Summary
D. Voluntary Contributions to Government

Chapter 5 - Binary Interventions: Government Expenditures
1. Government Susidies: Transfer payments
2. Resource-Using Activities: Government Ownership versus Private Ownership
3. Resources-Using Activities: Socialism
4. The Myth of "Public"Ownership
5. Democracy
Appendix: The Role of Government Expenditures in National Product Statistics

Chapter 6 - Antimarket Etics; A Praxeological Critique
1. Introduction: Praxeological Criticism of Ethics
2. Knowledge of Self-Interest: An Alleged Critical Assumption
3. The Problem of Immoral Choices
4. The Morality of Human Nature
5. The Impossibility of Equality
6. The Problem of Security
7. Alleged Joys of the Society of Status
8. Charity and Poverty
9. The Charge of "Selfish Materialism"
10. Back to the Jungle"
11. Power and Coercion
A. "Other Forms of Coercion": Economic Power
B. Power over Nature and Power Over Man
12.The Problem of Luck
13. TheTraffic-Manager Analogy
14. Over-and Underdevelopment
15. The State and the Nature of Man
16. Human Rights and Property Rights
Appendix: Professor Oliver on Socioeconomic Goals
A. The Attack on Natural Liberty
B. The Atack on Freedom of Contract
C. The Attack on Income According to Earnings

Chapter 7 - Conclusion: Economics and Public Policy
1. Economics: Its Nature and its Uses
2. Implicit Moralizing: The Failures of Welfare Economics
3. Economics and Social Ethics
4. The Market Principle and the Hegemonic Principle

Bibliography

Index of Names

Index of Subjects