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'''Frank Chodorov''' (February 15, 1887 – December 28, 1966) was an American member of the [[Old Right (United States)|Old Right]], a group of [[libertarianism|libertarian]] thinkers who were [[United States non-interventionism|non-interventionist]] in foreign policy and opposed both the American entry into [[World War II]] and the [[New Deal]]. He was called by [[Ralph Raico]] "the last of the Old Right greats."<ref>[[Ralph Raico|Raico, Ralph]] (2011-03-29) [https://mises.org/daily/5088/Neither-the-Wars-Nor-the-Leaders-Were-Great Neither the Wars Nor the Leaders Were Great], [[Mises Institute]]</ref>

==Personal life==

===Early life===
Chodorov was born Fishel Chodorowsky on the [[Lower West Side, Manhattan|Lower West Side]] of [[New York]] on February 15, 1887, the eleventh child of [[Russians|Russian]]-[[Jewish]] immigrants. He graduated from [[Columbia University]] in 1907, then worked at a number of jobs around the country. While working in [[Chicago]] (1912–17), he read [[Henry George]]'s ''[[Progress and Poverty]].''<ref>{{cite book |title=Fugitive Essays: Selected Writings of Frank Chodorov |last=Chodorov |first=Frank |authorlink= |editor= Charles H. Hamilton |year=1980 |publisher=Liberty Press |location=Indianapolis |isbn=0-913966-72-X|page=13 |url=http://files.libertyfund.org/files/1730/0126_Bk.pdf |accessdate=2010-07-25}}</ref> Chodorov wrote that he "read the book several times, and each time I felt myself slipping into a cause."<ref>{{cite book |title=Out of Step: The Autobiography of an Individualist |last=Chodorov |first=Frank |authorlink= |year=1962 |publisher=Devin-Adair |location=New York |page=50}}</ref> According to Chodorov:
{{quote|George is the apostle of [[individualism]]; he teaches the [[ethics|ethical]] basis of [[private property]]; he stresses the function of [[capital (economics)|capital]] in an advancing civilization; he emphasizes the greater productivity of voluntary cooperation in a [[free market]] economy, the moral degeneration of a people subjected to state direction and [[socialism|socialistic]] conformity. His is the philosophy of [[free enterprise]], [[free trade]], free men.<ref>{{cite journal |last=Chodorov |first=Frank |year=1941 |title=Education for a Free Society |journal=Scribner's Commentator |publisher=Scribner's |volume=9 |issue=February |pages=36–37}}</ref>}}

===Henry George School===
In 1937, Chodorov became director of the Henry George School of Social Science in New York.<ref>[http://henrygeorgeschool.org/ Henry George School of Social Science]</ref> There he established (with Will Lissner) and edited a school paper, ''[[The Freeman]]''. It published articles by [[Albert Jay Nock]] (founder of an earlier journal also called ''The Freeman''), as well as such leading figures of the day as [[John Dewey]], [[George Bernard Shaw]], [[Bertrand Russell]], [[Lincoln Steffens]] and [[Thorsten Veblen]]. Chodorov used the magazine to express his antiwar views:
{{quote| Every day we must repeat to ourselves as a liturgy, the truth that war is caused by the conditions that bring about poverty; that no war is justified; that no war benefits the people; that war is an instrument whereby the haves increase their hold on the have-nots; that war destroys liberty.<ref>http://oll.libertyfund.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=654&Itemid=287</ref>}}

With the coming of [[World War II]] such views were no longer tolerated: Chodorov was ousted from the school in 1942. He wrote that "it
seemed to me then that the only thing for me to do was to blow my brains out, which I might have done if I had not had [[Albert Jay Nock]] by my side."<ref>{{cite book |title=Fugitive Essays: Selected Writings of Frank Chodorov |last=Chodorov |first=Frank |authorlink= |editor=Charles H. Hamilton |year=1980 |publisher=Liberty Press |location=Indianapolis |isbn=0-913966-72-X|page=18 |url=http://files.libertyfund.org/files/1730/0126_Bk.pdf |accessdate=2010-07-25}}</ref> Nock had weathered similar "war fever" during [[World War I]] when, as editor of the antiwar journal ''[[The Nation]]'', he had seen that magazine banned from the U.S. mails by the [[Woodrow Wilson|Wilson]] administration.<ref>{{cite book |title=The Betrayal of the American Right |last=Rothbard |first=Murray N. |authorlink=Murray Rothbard |year=2007 |publisher=Ludwig von Mises Institute |location=Auburn, AL |isbn=978-1-933550-13-8 |page=5 |url=https://mises.org/books/betrayal.pdf |accessdate=2010-07-25}}</ref>

===''Analysis''===
Chodorov published articles in a variety of magazines, including [[H.L. Mencken]]'s ''[[American Mercury]]'', the ''[[Saturday Evening Post]]'' and ''[[Scribner's Magazine|Scribner's]]''.<ref>Frank Chodorov (Charles H. Hamilton, ed.), ''[http://files.libertyfund.org/files/1730/0126_Bk.pdf Fugitive Essays]'' (Indianapolis: Liberty Press, 1980) ISBN 0-913966-73-8, p. 224</ref> In 1944, he launched a four-page monthly broadsheet called ''analysis'', described as "an individualistic publication—the only one of its kind in America." [[Murray Rothbard]] called it "one of the best, though undoubtedly the most neglected, of the 'little magazines' that has ever been published in the United States."<ref name="mises">{{cite journal |last=Rothbard |first=Murray N. |year=1967 |title=Frank Chodorov, R.I.P |journal=Left & Right: A Journal of Libertarian Thought |publisher=Murray N. Rothbard |volume=3 |issue=1 |pages=3–8 |url=https://mises.org/journals/lar/pdfs/3_1/3_1_1.pdf}}</ref>

Along with Nock's works, Chodorov was influenced by [[Franz Oppenheimer]]'s ''The State'':<ref>''[https://mises.org/books/the_state_oppenheimer.pdf The State]''</ref> "[B]etween the state and the individual there is always a tug-of-war," wrote Chodorov, "whatever power one acquires must be to the detriment of the other."<ref>{{cite journal |last=Chodorov |first=Frank |year=1949 |title=The Cardinal Crime |journal=Analysis |publisher=Frank Chodorov |volume=1949 |issue=March |page=2}}</ref> Attracting a modest subscriber base, the magazine merged with the conservative weekly ''[[Human Events]]'' in 1951, where Chodorov became an associate editor.

===''The Freeman''===
In 1954, Chodorov again became editor of ''[[The Freeman]]'', in its new incarnation, revived under the auspices of [[Foundation for Economic Education]] (FEE). He contributed several articles over the years to FEE's ''Essays in Liberty'' series, beginning with Volume 1 in 1952. He engaged with [[William F. Buckley]] and [[Willi Schlamm]] on the question of whether individualists should support interventionism to aid people resisting [[communist]] aggression. Chodorov continued to advocate non-intervention, but as the [[Cold War]] continued, he lost influence: the American [[conservatism in the United States|conservative]] movement came to be a bastion of interventionist foreign policy in combating [[USSR|Soviet]] expansionism.

===Intercollegiate Society of Individualists===
In 1953, Chodorov founded the [[Intercollegiate Studies Institute|Intercollegiate Society of Individualists]] (ISI), with [[William F. Buckley, Jr.]] as president, becoming the first national conservative student organization, reaching 50,000 members by the end of the century. In later years, ISI became extremely influential as a clearinghouse of conservative publications and as a locus of the conservative intellectual movement in America. It later evolved into the Intercollegiate Studies Institute.

Chodorov was a major influence on many of those who would go on to lead the [[Libertarianism|libertarian]] and [[conservatism in the United States|conservative]] movements, including Buckley, [[M. Stanton Evans]], [[Murray Rothbard]], Edmund A. Opitz, and [[James J. Martin]]. Rothbard, an economist, wrote:
{{quote|I shall never forget the profound thrill—a thrill of intellectual liberation—that ran through me when I first encountered the name of Frank Chodorov, months before we were to meet in person. As a young graduate student in economics, I had always believed in the free market, and had become increasingly libertarian over the years, but this sentiment was as nothing to the headline that burst forth in the title of a pamphlet that I chanced upon at the university bookstore: ''[https://mises.org/etexts/taxrob.asp Taxation is Robbery]'', by Frank Chodorov. There it was; simple perhaps, but how many of us, let alone how many professors of the economics of taxation, have ever given utterance to this shattering and demolishing truth?<ref name="mises" />}}

===Later years===
A secular [[Jew]], Chodorov gained a greater appreciation for religious thought in later years.<ref>Frank Chodorov, "[http://www.cooperativeindividualism.org/chodorov-frank_autobiographical-story.html How a Jew Came to God]</ref> He was an avid fan of [[Western (genre)|westerns]].<ref>Chodorov, Frank, [https://mises.org/daily/4930/I-Watch-Westerns I Watch Westerns], ''[[Mises Institute]]''</ref> He died in 1966.

==Works==
* ''The Economics of Society, Government and State'' (1946)
* ''One is a Crowd: Reflections of an Individualist'' (1952) ([https://www.mises.org/books/onecrowd.pdf E-book].)
* ''The Income Tax: Root of All Evil'' (1952) ([https://www.mises.org/etexts/rootofevil.pdf E-book].)
* ''The Rise & Fall of Society: An Essay on the Economic Forces That Underline Social Institutions'' (1959) ([https://www.mises.org/books/society.pdf E-Book].)
* ''Flight to Russia'' (1959)
* ''Out of Step: The Autobiography of an Individualist'' (1962) ([https://www.mises.org/books/outofstep.pdf E-book].)
* ''Fugitive Essays'' (1980) ([http://oll.libertyfund.org/index.php?option=com_staticxt&staticfile=show.php&title=1730 Available online].)

==In popular culture==
In the [[North American Confederacy]] [[alternate history]] series by [[L. Neil Smith]], in which the [[United States]] becomes a [[Libertarianism|Libertarian State]] after a successful [[Whiskey Rebellion]] and the overthrowing and execution of [[George Washington]] by firing squad for treason in 1794, '''Frank Chodorov''' was chosen by the [[Continental Congress]] to be [[H. L. Mencken|H. L. Mencken's]] successor after his assassination in a duel in 1933. He served as the 20th President of the North American Confederacy from 1933 to 1940. He is succeeded by [[Rose Wilder Lane]], who served as the 21st president from 1940 to 1952.

==References==
{{reflist}}

==Further reading==
* {{cite journal|last=Riggenbach|first=Jeff|title=Frank Chodorov, Nonvoter|journal=Mises Daily |publisher=[[Ludwig von Mises Institute]] |date=December 24, 2010|url=https://mises.org/daily/4933/Frank-Chodorov-Nonvoter}}
* {{cite journal|last=Riggenbach|first=Jeff|title=Frank Chodorov, Educator|journal=Mises Daily |publisher=[[Ludwig von Mises Institute]] |date=December 31, 2010|url=https://mises.org/daily/4927/Frank-Chodorov-Educator}}
* {{cite encyclopedia |last=Steelman |first=Aaron |authorlink= |editor-first=Ronald |editor-last=Hamowy |editor-link=Ronald Hamowy |encyclopedia=The Encyclopedia of Libertarianism |title=Chodorov, Frank (1887–1946) |url= http://books.google.com/books?id=yxNgXs3TkJYC  |accessdate= |edition= |year=2008 |publisher= [[SAGE Publications|SAGE]]; [[Cato Institute]] |location= Thousand Oaks, CA |id= |isbn= 978-1-4129-6580-4 |oclc=750831024| lccn = 2008009151 |pages=62–3 |quote= |ref= }}

==External links==
{{wikisourceauthor}}
* [https://mises.org/pdf/whois/chodorov.pdf Who Is Frank Chodorov?] by [[Murray Rothbard]]
* [https://mises.org/literature.aspx?action=author&Id=112 Frank Chodorov Literature Archive] at [[Ludwig von Mises Institute|Mises.org]]
* [https://mises.org/articles.aspx?AuthorId=112 Frank Chodorov Daily Article Archives] at [[Ludwig von Mises Institute|Mises.org]]
* [http://www.lewrockwell.com/chodorov/chodorov-arch.html Frank Chodorov: Archives] at [[LewRockwell.com]]

{{Libertarianism}}

{{Authority control}}

{{Persondata <!-- Metadata: see [[Wikipedia:Persondata]]. -->
| NAME = Chodorov, Frank
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES = Fishel Chodorowsky
| SHORT DESCRIPTION = American libertarian thinker
| DATE OF BIRTH    = 1887-02-15
| PLACE OF BIRTH   = Lower West Side, Manhattan
| DATE OF DEATH    = 1966-12-28
| PLACE OF DEATH   =
}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Chodorov, Frank}}
[[Category:1887 births]]
[[Category:1966 deaths]]
[[Category:American people of Russian-Jewish descent]]
[[Category:American foreign policy writers]]
[[Category:American male writers]]
[[Category:American libertarians]]
[[Category:Jewish American writers]]
[[Category:Georgists]]
[[Category:Libertarian theorists]]
[[Category:Old Right (United States)]]
[[Category:Former atheists and agnostics]]