“So he just never called himself that or consider the notion ? He reminds me of how Ron Paul tends not to come out and say it. It makes sense. Mises seems to at least come as close as you can to being anarchist.”
Well back then “anarchist” was closely related to all things socialist.. Rothbard hadn’t written all that he later did [although he had the ideas & conception). He himself wrote a paper "Are Libertarians 'Anarchists’, under a pseudonym in the 50’s.. which was unpublished, I gather because he later changed his mind and decided to essentially take over the label / accept it, as opposed to reject it. Adding the qualifer of anarcho-capitalism to make it clearer. Elaborated at length in this discussion.
David Gordon:
“In the 1951 article, he says that anarchist movements of the past tended to be collectivist; further, there isn’t a fixed meaning for the term. For these reasons, he at that time preferred to find a different word for his own political doctrine. On this point, he later changed his mind and didn’t have problems in calling himself an anarchist.”
"Didn’t Mises talk to Rothbard when he was theorizing market anarchy? I mean Rothbard was advocating it in the 50s, and wrote about it in the 60’s. Mises died in 1973. Wouldn’t they be talking to each other about it? "
In the 50’s it didn’t have that label, 1973 - For A New Liberty, 1982 - Ethics of Liberty. Around 1972 + you have Rothbard making the case.
AEN: What were your thoughts on Mises’s review of MES when it appeared in the New Individualist Review?
MNR: I liked it, but he didn’t say much about the book. I would have preferred him to go into more depth.
AEN: Was he bothered by some of your corrections and of his theories?
MNR: I don’t know because he never said. Mises and I had only two friendly arguments. One was on monopoly theory where he wound up calling me a Schmollerite. Although nobody else in the seminar realized it, that was the ultimate insult for an Austrian. The other argument was on his utilitarian refutation of government intervention. I argued that government officials can maximize their own well-being through economic interventionism, if not those of the public. He in turn argued that those kind of politicians wouldn’t survive popular vote, thus changing the terms of debate.
AEN: Mrs. Mises seems to think you had foreign-policy differences with Mises.
MNR: In all the years I attended his seminar and was with him, he never talked about foreign policy. If he was an interventionist on foreign affairs, I never knew it. This is a violation of Rothbard’s law, which is that people tend to specialize in what they are worst at. Henry George, for example, is great on everything but land, so therefore he writes about land 90% of the time. Friedman is great except on money, so he concentrates on money. Mises, however, and Kirzner too, always did what they were best at.
“This is the first time I’ve heard that term, philosophical anarchist.” “This does not really make sense to me. Listing Ghandi and Thoreau?”
Of similarity to Nock, that’s what he called himself. I wasn’t referring to the wiki which lists them. Anyway, it’s not too clear, because Nock uses the word anarchist etc to describe himself:
“Likewise, also, when occasion required that I should label myself with reference to particular social theories or doctrines, the same decent respect for accuracy led me to describe myself as an anarchist, an individualist, and a single-taxer.”
…
"The single tax impressed me as the most equitable and convenient way of paying the cost of such matters as can be done better collectively than individually. As a matter of natural right it seemed to me that as individually created values should belong to the individual, so socially created values should belong to society, and that the single tax was the best method of securing both the individual and society in the full enjoyment of their respective rights. To the best of my knowledge these two propositions have never been successfully controverted. There were other considerations, too, which made the single tax seem the best of all fiscal systems, but it is unnecessary to recount them here.
Probably I ought to add that I never entered on any crusade for these beliefs or sought to persuade anyone into accepting them. Education is as much a matter of time as of anything else, perhaps more, and I was well aware that anything like a general realization of this philosophy is a matter of very long time indeed."
But again, didn’t quite get there - i.e single tax.. and his opinion of no need to crusade etc, is probably similar to Herbert Spencers conception and that of Walter Block’s about society slowly advancing socially [probably haven’t charachterised that right]. In any case, Mises was probably much closer - but this is where the radicalness and worth part comes in, Mises didn’t violate Rothbard’s law… and neither did Nock. All you hear from Nock is how evil the state is.. it’s one of the first books I read, real radical - and I never really got the impression he wasn’t fully there.