The following story is part of Walter Block's Autobiography Archive.

How I Became a Libertarian

The first one to influence my thinking in a libertarian way must have been my life-long friend (since we were each about 4 years old) Steven Schwartzman. Steve is the libertarian son of Jack Schwartzman who is the author of Rebels of Individualism and Editor-in-Chief of Fragments, a libertarian/Georgist publication that Jack produced from 1963 until his death in 2001. The Schwartzman family lived right around the corner from my family in Franklin Square on Long Island.

During our high-school years (1960–1963), Steve and I and several other interested students from our school attended meetings at Jack Schwartzman's law office with Jack and other luminaries from the Fragments group. We listened to these elders discuss topics such as individualism, Henry David Thoreau, Ayn Rand, and Henry George. These sessions firmed up my belief in individualism, but the Georgist idea of taxing land never made sense to me and stood in sharp contrast to the otherwise libertarian philosophy of the Fragments group.

The first writers to influence me in a libertarian direction were Henry David Thoreau and H. L. Mencken, whose works I began reading in high school. Then in my senior year of high school, our English teacher required us to read Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. I enjoyed it so much that I ran out and bought and read all her other books, and I even subscribed to The Objectivist, which was the official organ of her cult. I liked Rand's economics and her strong support for individual rights, but I thought she was off the mark in her attack on altruism and her glorification of business tycoons. The love-life of the characters in her novels also struck me as out of touch with reality from the male perspective.

At Grove City College (GCC) I was influenced by two classmates: John Peters and Walter Grinder. John had come to GCC after corresponding with Ludwig von Mises and Murray Rothbard, who both recommended GCC as the best college for studying Austrian Economics. By the time John arrived at GCC he had already read most of Mises' and Rothbard's works, as well works by others of the Austrian School. He brought a bookcase full of these books with him. When I met John, I had never heard of Rothbard, I had never read any of Mises' books, and the thought of reading economic literature struck me as too tedious to pursue.

GCC is a liberal arts college affiliated with the Presbyterian church. When I attended GCC (1963–1967), the school required all students to take courses in history, English, the Bible, philosophy, a foreign language, mathematics, and science, regardless of the subject that the student chose to major in. Each department established its own attendance requirements. Most departments allowed students to skip from zero to three class sessions per semester, but the English department allowed students to cut as many classes as we wanted to. I thought the English courses were a waste of time, so I asked a friend in my class to keep me informed about upcoming exams, and I attended English classes only when there was a test. On the days when my English class had no test, which was usually the case, I audited Hans Sennholz's classes in economics instead. I began to realize that economics is not as dull as I thought. I ended up auditing two or three economics classes and actually taking three or four others.

John started feeding me essays by Rothbard on political and historical topics. Each Rothbard essay caused me to have an epiphany. I adopted new attitudes on the cold war, American imperialism, disarmament, and collusion between business leaders and government. And I became an anarcho-capitalist. I had been a near anarchist before when I was under the influence of Thoreau, but I back-slid a bit when I read Ayn Rand's books and Barry Goldwater's Conscience of a Conservative. Conversations with John Peters (who became my roommate in my junior and senior years at college) and reading Rothbard's essays convinced me that anarchism logically follows from the non-aggression principle, which I was already committed to.

Observing the fascination with which John read Austrian economic literature got me curious enough to try it. I started with the best. I read von Mises' Human Action on my summer vacation between my junior and senior years. I now believe that no one is well educated unless they have read Human Action. I spent more time in college reading books that had nothing to do with the courses I was taking than I did studying for my courses – and my grades reflected this. The books that influenced me during this period include: Theory and History, Socialism, and Epistemological Problems of Economics by Mises; Studies in Philosophy, Politics and Economics by F. A. Hayek; Critique of Pure Reason by Immanuel Kant; What Social Classes Owe Each Other by William Graham Sumner; and The Man versus the State and Social Statics by Herbert Spencer.

Sometimes I would become obsessed with an issue and I would shut myself in my dorm room for two or three days, cut all my classes, and write about the issue until I had resolved it to my satisfaction. For example, when I read Human Action I noticed that Mises argued for determinism on the grounds that it follows from the law of causality, but when I read "The Mantle of Science" by Rothbard he argued for free will. So I stayed in my room, thought and wrote about the issue, and when I emerged two or three days later I had changed my opinion and agreed with Mises.

On another occasion, Rothbard's essays on war and disarmament caused me to hibernate for a couple days. When I rejoined the outside world I had changed my views to agree with Rothbard's.

The only other hibernation event that I recall concerned the issue of punishment. It struck me that punishment might not be consistent with the non-aggression principle, but Rothbard argued strongly in favor of eye-for-eye, tooth-for-tooth, and stripe-for-stripe retribution. After thinking about it for two or three days, I came out of my room opposed to punishment, and I have held that view ever since.

As much as I admired John Peters for having read so much libertarian literature, John, in turn, looked up to our classmate Walter Grinder who had read even more. John and Walt began going to coffee shops and having long conversations about economics, history, and political philosophy. I began to tag along with John to these coffee-shop meetings. I listened and learned a lot.

John corresponded with Murray Rothbard and arranged for us to visit him in New York over one of our school breaks. John knew enough about economics to have an intelligent conversation with Rothbard, and I knew my way around New York City well enough to find Murray's apartment, so we made a good team. Also, I got my parents to put us up at their house on Long Island. The meeting went well, and John arranged another visit. Walter Grinder went with us this time, and my parents graciously put us all up. Rothbard was very impressed with Walter.

After graduation I got a job with IBM in Kingston, New York, and I continued to visit the Rothbards periodically. Joey Rothbard always seemed glad to see me. Several times she dragged poor Murray out of bed to entertain me when I dropped in on them too early in the afternoon. Joey was a practicing Presbyterian, and I think one reason why she liked me to visit her husband was so that he could include more goyim in his circle of friends and followers. I got to know most of the people in Rothbard's inner circle: Leonard Liggio, Jerry Woloz, Joe Peden, Walter Block, Robert Smith, Jerry Tuccille, Roy Childs, Karl Hess, Gerald O'Driscoll, Mario Rizzo, et. al.

Walter Grinder and his wife and daughter moved to the Metropolitan area and I visited them frequently for the next few years and eagerly absorbed more knowledge from Walter.

After a thirty-year career as a technical writer and editor for IBM, I retired in 1997. Since then I have created my own website and gathered together all the libertarian articles that I have written over the years that were published in The Grove City College Collegian, The Libertarian Forum, the Atlantis News, The Abolitionist, Outlook, Formulations, and Fragments. I also finished writing a book on justice and published it on my website: Enforceable Rights: A Libertarian Theory of Justice.

Over the years I have been involved with attempts to establish a libertarian nation, participated in libertarian scholars conferences, was a founding member of the Radical Libertarian Alliance, and have been a Libertarian Party candidate three times. In this past election cycle my sons Matthew and Jesse and I were all Libertarian Party candidates here in Raleigh, North Carolina. See Operation Atlantis and the Radical Libertarian Alliance: Observations of a Fly on the Wall for my perspective on libertarian activities in New York in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Currently I am a member of the board of the Libertarian Nation Foundation and I maintain the links to Free-Market Alternatives to the State.

December 21, 2002

Back to LewRockwell.com Home Page