There has been a radical change in the social and political landscape in this country, and any person who desires the victory of liberty and the defeat of Leviathan must adjust his strategy accordingly. New times require a rethinking of old and possibly obsolete strategies.
–Murray N. Rothbard
Murray Rothbard wasn’t only a brilliant economist, historian, and political philosopher; he was a man driven to defend the cause of liberty against the authoritarian threats of his age. He frequently wrote on strategy, applying his keen intellect to unraveling the greatest dangers of the time.
In The Progressive Road to Socialism, Joseph Salerno builds upon Rothbard’s work to expose the threat of modern progressivism, which seeks “to combine socialism with the appealing virtues of ‘democracy’ and freedom of inquiry.” You can get your copy today with a donation to the Mises Institute.
After it was presented at the Mises Institute’s 40th anniversary celebration, Dr. Salerno’s address was quickly identified as one of the most important in recent memory. Dr. Salerno describes the neoconservative capture of the American conservative movement, addresses the terrifying reality of the existing technocratic-therapeutic state, and identifies the necessary solution to restore liberty in the West: a radical reactionary response to modern statism.
In doing so, Salerno updates Rothbardian political strategy for modern times, explaining the popular rise of figures like Donald Trump, Viktor Orban, and Jair Bolsonaro and exposes “the myth that democracy is the guarantor of inevitable social progress toward an egalitarian socialist state.”
As Salerno concludes, “the lesson for libertarians is that there are only two sides in the current political struggle. There is no middle ground. You are either a progressive or a reactionary. You either join, or acquiesce in, the forced march into socialism or you join the reaction—the fight to turn back the progressive clock or, better yet, to smash it to smithereens.”
