Uploaded July 2026 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
On the 250th anniversary of the American Revolution, the French Revolution is being re-litigated again—the left holding it up as necessary progress, conservatives citing Burke to argue it proves free-market ideas end in blood. Ryan McMaken, drawing on Rothbard and Ralph Raico, rejects both. Liberalism's role, he argues, was small and confined to the revolution's first months; what followed owed nothing to Jefferson and everything to three forces—the extreme centralization of the French state, twenty-five years of war, and a revolutionary regime that simply replaced the old bureaucracy with a harsher one while keeping every lever of power intact. The real mirror of the American Revolution wasn't the revolution at all, but the decentralist, secessionist peasants of the Vendée it crushed.
Recorded at the Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama, on July 25, 2026.
Mises University is the world's leading instructional program in the Austrian School of economics, and is the essential training ground for economists who are looking beyond the mainstream.
0:00 Intro: Why the French Revolution Still Matters
4:31 The Left's Marxist Reading (Barrington Moore)
8:20 The Conservative View (Edmund Burke)
11:21 Beyond Both Camps
13:38 Rothbard on French Absolutism
16:41 The Failure of Economic Reform (Turgot and the Physiocrats)
19:46 Rothbard and Raico on Liberalism's Role
23:35 The Timeline: Liberalism's Brief Moment
27:24 Post-Liberal by 1790: Three Simultaneous Revolutions
33:29 Why It Went Bad, Part One: Centralization
39:39 War
41:55 The State That Never Left
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On the 250th anniversary of the American Revolution, the French Revolution is being re-litigated again—the left holding it up as necessary progress, conservatives citing Burke to argue it proves free-market ideas end in blood. Ryan McMaken, drawing on Rothbard and Ralph Raico, rejects both. Liberalism's role, he argues, was small and confined to the revolution's first months; what followed owed nothing to Jefferson and everything to three forces—the extreme centralization of the French state, twenty-five years of war, and a revolutionary regime that simply replaced the old bureaucracy with a harsher one while keeping every lever of power intact. The real mirror of the American Revolution wasn't the revolution at all, but the decentralist, secessionist peasants of the Vendée it crushed.
Recorded at the Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama, on July 25, 2026.
Mises University is the world's leading instructional program in the Austrian School of economics, and is the essential training ground for economists who are looking beyond the mainstream.
0:00 Intro: Why the French Revolution Still Matters
4:31 The Left's Marxist Reading (Barrington Moore)
8:20 The Conservative View (Edmund Burke)
11:21 Beyond Both Camps
13:38 Rothbard on French Absolutism
16:41 The Failure of Economic Reform (Turgot and the Physiocrats)
19:46 Rothbard and Raico on Liberalism's Role
23:35 The Timeline: Liberalism's Brief Moment
27:24 Post-Liberal by 1790: Three Simultaneous Revolutions
33:29 Why It Went Bad, Part One: Centralization
39:39 War
41:55 The State That Never Left
Find free books, daily articles, podcasts, lecture series, and everything about the Austrian School of Economics at https://Mises.org.
X ► https://x.com/mises/
Facebook ► facebook.com/mises.institute
Instagram ► instagram.com/misesinstitute
SoundCloud ► soundcloud.com/misesmedia
Apple Podcasts ► podcasts.apple.com/us/artist/mises-institute/1280664810
Rumble ► rumble.com/c/c-2212754
Odysee ► odysee.com/@mises
Podcasts ► mises.org/podcasts
