Ralph Raico was an American historian and libertarian public intellectual who devoted his life to recovering the liberal tradition and exposing the predatory nature of state power. Teaching European history at Buffalo State College and serving as a senior fellow of the Ludwig von Mises Institute, he specialized in the history of liberty, the liberal tradition in Europe, and the relation between war and the rise of the state. Raico combined classical erudition with polemical sharpness. He insisted that a genuine liberalism is rooted in private property and voluntary exchange, that society can organize itself without a tutelary state, and that war is the chief means by which governments expand their authority. These convictions shaped his scholarship and activism over five decades.
Raico’s commitment to liberty emerged during his youth in the Bronx. He read Henry Hazlitt’s Economics in One Lesson, campaigned for Senator Robert Taft, and defended Joseph McCarthy in school debates. With classmates Leonard Liggio, George Reisman, and Ronald Hamowy, he formed a study group later dubbed the “Circle Bastiat.” They handed out free‑market literature and argued with passers‑by on Manhattan sidewalks. Their activism brought them to the Foundation for Economic Education, whose staff arranged a meeting with Ludwig von Mises. In February 1953, Mises invited the teenagers to his graduate seminar at New York University on the condition they “not make noise.” Raico thus studied price theory and human action alongside graduate students and met Murray Rothbard. The seminar instilled in him an ethos of scholarship: the historian must penetrate his subject, resist intellectual fads, and write plainly.
After high school, Raico earned degrees at City College of New York and the University of Chicago. At Chicago, he studied in the Committee on Social Thought under F. A. Hayek and co‑founded The New Individualist Review. Edited and written by graduate students, the journal published essays by Milton Friedman, Hayek, and George Stigler. Friedman later said the student editors set an intellectual standard unmatched by later publications. Raico also undertook translation. Funded by the William Volker Fund, he produced the first English edition of Mises’s Liberalismus. The translation, published in 1962 as Liberalism: In the Classical Tradition, introduced English readers to Mises’s systematic defence of private property, free trade, peace, and limited government. He later wrote a dissertation on Benjamin Constant, Alexis de Tocqueville, and Lord Acton, showing that Christianity can provide a moral foundation for liberalism.
In Raico’s view, there is only one liberalism. In Classical Liberalism and the Austrian School, he writes that “there was no ‘classical’ liberalism, only a single liberalism, based on private property and the free market, that developed organically.” Liberalism assumes that civil society is largely self‑regulating; its main institutions—family, church, market, and voluntary associations—function best when free from state interference. Among the rights it prioritizes are private property, freedom of contract, and freedom of exchange. Historically, liberalism has manifested a “hostility to state action, which…should be reduced to a minimum.” By grounding liberalism in property and voluntary exchange, Raico rejected the notion that there is a valid “modern” liberalism centred on redistribution and regulation. He also disputed the charge that liberalism is atomistic or anti‑religious. His dissertation argued that Constant, Tocqueville, and Acton found religious justifications for liberty and recognized the essential value of family, church, and other “natural” institutions. These institutions possess a moral authority distinct from the coercive authority of the state. According to Raico, liberalism depends on a moral order anchored in civil society and is not reducible to secular individualism.
Raico’s training as a historian gave his liberalism a cosmopolitan dimension. He highlighted the contributions of French liberals such as Constant, Charles Comte, Charles Dunoyer, and Gustave de Molinari, who, he argued, provided the most radical formulations of laissez‑faire. He criticized Hayek for conceding too much to the welfare state and suggested that the French tradition remained truer to the liberal ideal. In 1999, he published Die Partei der Freiheit, a monograph on the German Liberal Party in the nineteenth century that reintroduced figures like Eugen Richter to modern readers. Although he noted that German liberals lacked the economic sophistication to defend laissez‑faire effectively, he praised their commitment to constitutional government and their opposition to militarism. By excavating these forgotten strands, Raico showed that liberalism was a broad European phenomenon rather than an exclusively Anglo‑American one.
Raico’s most provocative work concerned war. Influenced by Randolph Bourne’s dictum that war is the health of the state, he argued that conflicts serve as pretexts for the expansion of governmental power. In his essay “Harry Truman and the Atomic Bomb,” he condemned the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as war crimes “worse than any that Japanese generals were executed for in Tokyo and Manila,” concluding that “if Harry Truman was not a war criminal, then no one ever was.” For Raico, democratic leaders cannot claim immunity from moral judgment. He applied the same standard to World War I. In his chapter “World War I: The Turning Point,” he rejected the thesis that Germany unleashed the conflict and argued there is “no evidence whatsoever that Germany in 1914 deliberately unleashed a European war which it had been preparing for years.” None of the major powers desired a general European war; the catastrophe resulted from miscalculation and alliances. He insisted there was no valid reason for American entry. President Woodrow Wilson proclaimed neutrality while his administration, except for Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan, favored the Allies. In Raico’s telling, democracy began to mean that majoritarian processes legitimize government power to conscript, censor, and tax without restraint. War and nationalism, he argued, created the central banking systems, income taxes, and conscription machinery that underpin the modern state.
Raico expanded these arguments in Great Wars and Great Leaders: A Libertarian Rebuttal. The essays examine Woodrow Wilson, Winston Churchill, Franklin Roosevelt, and other figures revered by mainstream historians. Robert Higgs writes that academic historians tend to elevate such wartime leaders to god‑like status and to see investors and employers as oppressors. Raico refused to join this veneration. Having attended Mises’s seminar and studied under Hayek, he recognized that these leaders lusted after power and were responsible for mass death. He insisted that if democratic leaders order atrocities, their crimes should not be hidden by patriotic myth or national self‑congratulation. In reviewing the book, one writer quoted him calling Franklin Roosevelt a “failure, a liar, and a fraud.” Such judgments stem from his conviction that war and the growth of the state are inseparable. He urged Americans to adopt a noninterventionist foreign policy and to view peace and free trade as the true friends of liberty.
Throughout his career Raico combined teaching, scholarship, and activism. He spent decades at Buffalo State College, where he taught European history and influenced generations of students. He earned his Ph.D. under Hayek, co‑edited The New Individualist Review, authored Classical Liberalism and the Austrian School, Great Wars and Great Leaders, and The Party of Freedom: Studies in the History of German Liberalism, translated Mises’s Liberalism, served as senior editor of Inquiry magazine, and won the Gary G. Schlarbaum Prize for Lifetime Achievement in the Cause of Liberty. He also collaborated with Rothbard on the Journal of Libertarian Studies and served as a vice president of the Cato Institute. Beyond his institutional roles he wrote for the Mises Institute, the Independent Institute, the Foundation for Economic Education, and the Libertarian Alliance, helping to shape modern libertarian scholarship.
Contemporary scholars attest to Raico’s influence. Jörg Guido Hülsmann remarks that the lessons of Mises’s seminar—penetrate your subject, eschew jargon, and write plainly—are evident in Raico’s work. Robert Higgs calls him “my favorite historian,” emphasizing his combination of personal integrity, scholarly mastery, and courage. Jeffrey Tucker describes him as “the leading historian of liberalism of his day” and highlights his definition of liberalism as the belief that society runs itself. These tributes underscore how Raico shaped the intellectual landscape of libertarianism, providing historical depth and moral seriousness.
Ralph Raico was more than a historian; he was a guardian of the liberal tradition. Educated by Mises and Hayek, he translated and defended the doctrine that private property, voluntary exchange, and limited government are the foundations of a free society. He resurrected forgotten European liberals and showed that liberalism has deep continental roots. He argued that religion and civil society provide the moral foundation for liberty. He subjected wars and their leaders to relentless scrutiny, demonstrating how conflict expands state power and destroys freedom. His essays combine scholarship with moral clarity, reminding readers that free institutions require constant vigilance. On his birthday we celebrate a scholar who used history not to praise the state but to vindicate liberty.
