Friedrich August von Hayek, often referred to by his initials F. A. Hayek, was an Austrian-British economist and political philosopher who made contributions to economics, political philosophy, psychology, intellectual history, and other fields. Hayek shared the 1974 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences with Gunnar Myrdal for work on money and economic fluctuations, and the interdependence of economic, social and institutional phenomena. His account of how prices communicate information is widely regarded as an important contribution to economics that led to him receiving the prize.
Murray Newton Rothbard was an American economist of the Austrian School, economic historian, political theorist, and activist. Rothbard was a central figure in the 20th-century American libertarian movement and a founder and leading theoretician of anarcho-capitalism. He wrote over twenty books on political theory, history, economics, and other subjects.
The Cato Institute is an American libertarian think tank headquartered in Washington, D.C. It was founded in 1977 by Ed Crane, Murray Rothbard, and Charles Koch, chairman of the board and chief executive officer of Koch Industries. Cato was established to focus on public advocacy, media exposure and societal influence.
Henry Stuart Hazlitt was an American journalist who wrote about business and economics for such publications as The Wall Street Journal, The Nation, The American Mercury, Newsweek, and The New York Times.
The Institute for Humane Studies (IHS) is a non-profit organization that promotes the teaching and research of classical liberalism in higher education in the United States. IHS offers funding opportunities, programs, and events for faculty and graduate students seeking careers in academia as well as various fellowships.
Tom Gordon Palmer is an American libertarian author and theorist, a Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute and Vice President for International Programs at the Atlas Network.
Isabel Paterson was a Canadian-American libertarian writer and literary critic. Historian Jim Powell has called Paterson one of the three founding mothers of American libertarianism, along with Rose Wilder Lane and Ayn Rand, who both acknowledged an intellectual debt to Paterson. Paterson's best-known work, The God of the Machine (1943), a treatise on political philosophy, economics, and history, reached conclusions and espoused beliefs that many libertarians credit as a foundation of their philosophy. Her biographer Stephen D. Cox (2004) believes Paterson was the "earliest progenitor of libertarianism as we know it today." In a letter of 1943, Rand wrote that "The God of the Machine is a document that could literally save the world ... The God of the Machine does for capitalism what Das Kapital does for the Reds and what the Bible did for Christianity."
Ayn Rand's philosophy of Objectivism has been, and continues to be, a major influence on the right-libertarian movement, particularly libertarianism in the United States. Many right-libertarians justify their political views using aspects of Objectivism.
George Hamilton Smith was an American author, editor, educator, and speaker, known for his writings on atheism and libertarianism.
Donald Joseph Boudreaux is an American economist, author, professor, and co-director of the Program on the American Economy and Globalization at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia.
The Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty is an American research and educational institution, or think tank, in Grand Rapids, Michigan, whose stated mission is "to promote a free and virtuous society characterized by individual liberty and sustained by religious principles". Its work supports free market economic policy framed within Judeo-Christian morality. It has been alternately described as conservative and libertarian. Acton Institute also organizes seminars "to educate religious leaders of all denominations, business executives, entrepreneurs, university professors, and academic researchers in economics principles."
In the United States, libertarianism is a political philosophy promoting individual liberty. According to common meanings of conservatism and liberalism in the United States, libertarianism has been described as conservative on economic issues and liberal on personal freedom, often associated with a foreign policy of non-interventionism. Broadly, there are four principal traditions within libertarianism, namely the libertarianism that developed in the mid-20th century out of the revival tradition of classical liberalism in the United States after liberalism associated with the New Deal; the libertarianism developed in the 1950s by anarcho-capitalist author Murray Rothbard, who based it on the anti-New Deal Old Right and 19th-century libertarianism and American individualist anarchists such as Benjamin Tucker and Lysander Spooner while rejecting the labor theory of value in favor of Austrian School economics and the subjective theory of value; the libertarianism developed in the 1970s by Robert Nozick and founded in American and European classical liberal traditions; and the libertarianism associated with the Libertarian Party, which was founded in 1971, including politicians such as David Nolan and Ron Paul.
William Arthur Niskanen was an American economist. He was one of the architects of President Ronald Reagan's economic program and contributed to public choice theory. He was also a long-time chairman of the Cato Institute, a libertarian think-tank.
Before, during and after his presidential terms and continuing today, there has been much criticism of Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945). Critics have questioned not only his policies and positions, but also charged him with centralizing power in his own hands by controlling both the government and the Democratic Party. Many denounced his breaking of a long-standing tradition by running for a third term in 1940.
David Ramsay Steele is the author of The Mystery of Fascism: David Ramsay Steele's Greatest Hits, Orwell Your Orwell: A Worldview on the Slab, Atheism Explained: From Folly to Philosophy and From Marx to Mises: Post-Capitalist Society and the Challenge of Economic Calculation. Since 1985, he has been Editorial Director of Open Court Publishing Company. In 1997, he co-wrote with Michael R. Edelstein Three Minute Therapy: Change Your Thinking, Change Your Life, a psychological self-help book based on Albert Ellis's rational emotive behavior therapy, re-released in paperback, 2019. In 2013, he co-wrote with Michael R. Edelstein and Richard K. Kujoth Therapy Breakthrough: Why Some Psychotherapies Work Better than Others, a study of cognitive-behavioral therapy arguing for its superiority to psychodynamic therapy. From 1963 to 1973, Steele was a member of the Socialist Party of Great Britain (SPGB). In 1970, he became aware of the historical debate over economic calculation and between 1970 and 1973 underwent an intellectual conversion from SPGB Marxism to libertarianism. He later co-founded the Libertarian Alliance and in 1982 would be identified with one of the two factions that resulted in the split of the group.
This article is a list of major figures in the theory of libertarianism, a philosophy asserting that individuals have a right to be free. Originally coined by French anarchist and libertarian communist Joseph Déjacque as an alternative synonymous to anarchism, American classical liberals appropriated the term in the 1950s for their philosophy which asserts that individuals have a right to acquire, keep and exchange their holdings and that the primary purpose of government is to protect these rights. As a result of this history, libertarians on this list may be either of the American-style free-market variety or of the European-style socialist variety.
David Gordon is an American libertarian philosopher and intellectual historian influenced by Murray Rothbard's views of economics. He is a senior fellow of the Ludwig von Mises Institute, a libertarian think tank, and is editor of The Mises Review.
Ronald Hamowy was a Canadian academic, known primarily for his contributions to political and social academic fields. At the time of his death, he was professor emeritus of intellectual history at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada. Hamowy was closely associated with the political ideology of libertarianism and his writings and scholarship place particular emphasis on individual liberty and the limits of state action in a free society. He is associated with a number of prominent American libertarian organizations.
Alexander Nowrasteh is an American analyst of immigration policy currently working at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank located in Washington D.C. Nowrasteh is an advocate of freer migration to the United States. He previously worked as the immigration policy analyst at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, another libertarian think tank. Nowrasteh is a self-described "radical" advocate for open borders to and from the United States. He has published a number of peer-reviewed studies on immigration and co-authored with Benjamin Powell the book Wretched Refuse?: The Political Economy of Immigration and Institutions.
