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Nations by Consent and States by Coercion:
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Mar 12, 2026
Murray Rothbard is the father of modern anarcho-capitalism, the man who coined the very term. I hate to see anti-immigration closed border advocates using Rothbard’s name in vain, besmirching his anarchist character. A common claim by paleo-libertarians such as Lew Rockwell and Hans-Hermann Hoppe is that Rothbard supported statist closed border policies. They cite an essay entitled Nations by Consent and misinterpret it to be an endorsement of government border regulation and control. No! These culture statists make a rather embarrassing error - they confuse “nation” and “State.” Rothbard made no such equivocation; on the contrary the essay is about the difference between a nation and a State. He makes this abundantly clear.
The "nation," of course, is not the same thing as the state, a difference that earlier libertarians and classical liberals such as Ludwig von Mises and Albert Jay Nock understood full well. … A "nation" is a complex of subjective feelings of nationality based on objective realities. … The "nation" cannot be precisely defined; it is a complex and varying constellation of different forms of communities, languages, ethnic groups, or religions. - Rothbard, Nations by Consent: Decomposing the Nation-State.
Paleos like to pretend Rothbard is endorsing statist border nazis and other restrictions on freedom. The latest example of paleos citing Rothbard in this fallacious and misleading manner is Rothbard’s Defense of Border Control by David Gordon and Wanjiru Njoya on LewRockwell.com. They write:
National self-determination, and the principle of nations by consent, recognize people in a specific nation, living in a specific country, and within a specific geographical space. Therein lies the foundation of border control.
See what they did? They assumed that “nation” means “State” thus it is okay for States to violate freedom of travel. It is clear to readers of Rothbard that he meant nations and *not* States. Rothbard was for, not fief border control by governments, but for >property border control by owners. Anti-immigrationists tend to confuse property, a morally defensible concept based on natural rights, with fief, a morally dubious concept based on conquest and dominion.
The Paleo bias in favor of using State aggression rather than property rights for “control” is quite obvious in this curious interpretation of Rothbard.
Rothbard: I began to rethink my views on immigration when, as the Soviet Union collapsed, it became clear that ethnic Russians had been encouraged to flood into Estonia and Latvia in order to destroy the cultures and languages of these peoples.
Gordon & Njoya: Should that be read as, “I’ve now decided to support border control because I just discovered that Russians have flooded Eastern Europe”? or, even worse, “Mass immigration is bad because I just heard the news about what is happening in Estonia”?
No. It should be read as, “I oppose government subsidized migration and immigration.” This obvious interpretation follows directly from Rothbard’s anarcho-capitalism. How could anyone who has read Rothbard think otherwise? Nations are by consent, but States are by coercion. Know the difference!
See the Library of Liberty Murray Rothbard index.