Hans-Hermann Hoppe

Hans-Hermann Hoppe
Hans-Hermann Hoppe
Born	(1949-09-02) September 2, 1949 Peine, West Germany
Nationality	German-American
Academic career
Institution	University of Nevada, Las Vegas
Field	Austrian Economics, Political Philosophy
School or tradition	Austrian School
Alma mater	Goethe University Frankfurt
Influences	Ludwig von Mises Murray Rothbard Jürgen Habermas Karl-Otto Apel Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn
Contributions	Argumentation ethics, Analysis of democracy and public goods theory
Awards	The Gary G. Schlarbaum Prize (2006), The Frank T. and Harriet Kurzweg Award (2004)

Hans-Hermann Hoppe (German: [ˈhɔpə]; born September 2, 1949) is a prominent Austrian school economist and libertarian anarcho-capitalist philosopher, although he prefers to be known as an advocate of private law society. He is a Professor Emeritus of economics at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Hoppe is the author of several widely discussed books and his work has been translated to 22 languages. He is currently living with his wife in Istanbul, Turkey.

Academic career

Born in Peine, West Germany, he attended the Universität des Saarlandes in Saarbrücken, and the University of Frankfurt, studying philosophy, sociology, history, and economics. His doctoral studies began with Marxist thought, under Frankfurt School philosopher Jürgen Habermas as his Ph.D advisor. However he quickly became disillusioned in this pursuit, partly due to the influence of Eugen Böhm von Bawerk and his critique of marxism and Milton Friedman. He earned his Ph.D. in Philosophy from the Goethe University Frankfurt in 1974. He was then a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Michigan, in Ann Arbor, United States, from 1976 to 1978. He earned his habilitation in Foundations of Sociology and Economics from the University of Frankfurt in 1981. He taught at several German universities and at Johns Hopkins University Bologna Center for Advanced International Studies, Italy. In 1986, he moved from Germany to the United States, to study under Murray Rothbard. He remained a close associate to Rothbard until his death in January 1995. Hoppe was then Professor of Economics at University of Nevada, Las Vegas until retirement in 2008. Hoppe was involved in the formation of what came to be called paleo-libertarianism. Hoppe has served as the editor of the Journal of Libertarian Studies, coeditor of the Review of Austrian Economics, and coeditor of the Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics. He is a Distinguished Fellow with the Ludwig von Mises Institute, and the author of several widely-discussed articles and books. In 2005, he founded the Property and Freedom Society as a more radical alternative to the Mont Pelerin Society.

Argumentation ethics

Main article: Argumentation ethics

Argumentation ethics is an apriori, value-neutral justification for libertarian ethics (1988). Argumentation ethics builds on the concept of Discourse ethics developed by Jürgen Habermas (Hoppe's PhD advisor) and Karl-Otto Apel, further on Misesian praxeology and the deontological ethics of economist Murray Rothbard. Argumentation ethics argues the non-aggression principle is a presupposition of argumentation and so cannot be rationally denied in discourse. Many modern libertarian scholars have accepted Hoppe's argument, among them Murray Rothbard, Walter Block, and Stephan Kinsella. Rothbard had written:

In a dazzling breakthrough for political philosophy in general and for libertarianism in particular, he has managed to transcend the famous is/ought, fact/value dichotomy that has plagued philosophy since the days of the scholastics, and that had brought modern libertarianism into a tiresome deadlock. Not only that: Hans Hoppe has managed to establish the case for anarcho-capitalist-Lockean rights in an unprecedentedly hard-core manner, one that makes my own natural law/natural rights position seem almost wimpy in comparison.

Analysis of democracy

Main article: Democracy: The God That Failed

In Democracy: The God That Failed, Hoppe compares monarchies with democratic states. Hoppe claims that the structural perverse incentives inherent in democracy make it more prone to destroy wealth than comparable monarchical regimes. A monarch, being a long-term ruler and able to further bequeath his position, has interest in the long-term well being of the economy, would often be hesitant to excessively accumulate debt, or otherwise engage in large-scale short-term capital consumption compared to a similar democratically elected ruler, who is more akin to a renter, or temporary custodian of the state due to the shorter time he has to use his power for his benefit. Hoppe further notes that the theoretical possibility of entrance into government also dulls the resistance of the citizens to excessive abuse of government power, as compared to monarchies, in which abusive monarchs were often overthrown and killed.

Hoppe points to comparable policies adopted by existing western and eastern monarchies as well as several such past policies to empirically support his analysis. Hoppe does not put forward this criticism in support of monarchy, but rather as a critique of democracy.

Anti-Gay Views and Allegations of Racism

In Democracy - the God that Failed, Hoppe refers to homosexuality as a “perversion,” likening it to pedophilia as a “victimless crime” that nonetheless is a perverse “abnormality.” Critics allege that Hoppe calls for coercive violence against homosexuals when, in Democracy the God the Failed, he argues that “They--the advocates of alternative, non-family and kin-centred lifestyles such as, for instance, individual hedonism, parasitism, nature-environment worship, homosexuality, or communism--will have to be physically removed from society, too, if one is to maintain” the “libertarian order” which Hoppe favors. Defenders of Hoppe claims he is referring only to “advocates” of homosexuality rather than to all homosexuals, and that the “removal” of the former would be non-aggressive if it is done in accordance with private property rights.

Hoppe has also been accused of racism for (among other things) advocating for a “systematic pro-European immigration bias”; Hoppe’s view in this regard is rooted in his belief that Europeans exhibit “all-around superior (above-average) intellectual performance and character structure.”

Immigration

Hoppe has advanced the position that in a non anarcho-capitalist society some restrictions on immigration are a "second best" option.

First, with the establishment of a state and territorially defined state borders, “immigration” takes on an entirely new meaning. In a natural order, immigration is a person’s migration from one neighborhood-community into a different one (micro-migration). In contrast, under statist conditions immigration is immigration by “foreigners” from across state borders, and the decision whom to exclude or include, and under what conditions, rests not with a multitude of independent private property owners or neighborhoods of owners but with a single central (and centralizing) state-government as the ultimate sovereign of all domestic residents and their properties (macro-migration). If a domestic resident-owner invites a person and arranges for his access onto the resident-owner’s property but the government excludes this person from the state territory, it is a case of forced exclusion (a phenomenon that does not exist in a natural order). On the other hand, if the government admits a person while there is no domestic resident-owner who has invited this person onto his property, it is a case of forced integration (also non-existent in a natural order, where all movement is invited).

Hoppe's views on immigration are controversial within the wider libertarian movement. Walter Block offered arguments against Hoppe's immigration position in a 1999 article, "A Libertarian Case for Free Immigration."

Academic freedom controversy

During a lecture in a course on Money & Banking, Hoppe hypothesized that homosexuals will generally display shorter time preference for capital consumption because they tend not to have biological heirs, and thus have a lesser incentive to engage in long-term saving. One of Hoppe's students characterized this statement as derogatory and a matter of opinion rather than fact. According to the Chronicle of Higher Education:

In his lectures, Mr. Hoppe said that certain groups of people – including small children, very old people, and homosexuals – tend to prefer present-day consumption to long-term investment. Because homosexuals generally do not have children, Mr. Hoppe said, they feel less need to look toward the future. (In a recent talk at the Ludwig von Mises Institute, which Mr. Hoppe says was similar to his classroom lecture, he declared, "Homosexuals have higher time preferences, because life ends with them.")

[The student], Mr. Knight found that argument unwarranted and obnoxious, and he promptly filed a complaint with the university. In a telephone interview on Saturday, Mr. Knight said: "I was just shocked and appalled. I said to myself, Where the hell is he getting this information from? I was completely surprised, and that's why I went to the university about this."

These comments triggered an academic controversy which resulted in a "nondisciplinary" letter being issued February 9, 2005 instructing Hoppe to "...cease mischaracterizing opinion as objective fact." The ACLU represented Hoppe, and he was defended in an editorial article in the The Rebel Yell, the UNLV student newspaper." Carol Harter, president of UNLV, in a February 18, 2005 letter said that "UNLV, in accordance with policy adopted by the Board of Regents, understands that the freedom afforded to Professor Hoppe and to all members of the academic community carries a significant corresponding academic responsibility. In the balance between freedoms and responsibilities, and where there may be ambiguity between the two, academic freedom must, in the end, be foremost." Following the controversy the "nondisciplinary" letter was withdrawn from his personnel file.

Works

Books

• Handeln und Erkennen (Bern 1976)
• Kritik der kausalwissenschaftlichen Sozialforschung (Westdeutscher Verlag 1983) ISBN 3-531-11624-X.
• Eigentum, Anarchie und Staat (Westdeutscher Verlag 1987)
• A Theory of Socialism and Capitalism (Kluwer Academic Publishers 1989) ISBN 0-89838-279-3. Full Text in PDF format
• Economic Science and the Austrian Method (Ludwig von Mises Institute, 1995) ISBN 0-945466-20-X. Full Text in PDF format
• Democracy: The God That Failed (Transaction Publishers, 2001) Paperback (in English) ISBN 0-7658-0868-4.
• The Economics and Ethics of Private Property (2nd edition, Ludwig von Mises Institute, 2006) ISBN 0-945466-40-4
• The Great Fiction: Property, Economics, Society, and the Politics of Decline (Laissez-Faire Books, 2012) ISBN 978-1621290308
• Editor: The Myth of National Defense. Essays on the Theory and History of Security Production. Ludwig von Mises Institute. October 2003. ISBN 0-945466-37-4. Full Text in PDF format With writings by L.M. Bassani, C. Lottieri, M.N. Rothbard, E. von Kuehnelt-Leddihn, B. Lemennicier, G. Radnitsky, J.R. Stromberg, L.J. Sechrest, J.R. Hummel, W. Block, and J.G. Hulsmann.
• Translator: Capital and Production by Richard Ritter von Strigl ISBN 0-945466-31-5
• Property, Freedom, and Society: Essays in Honor of Hans-Hermann Hoppe. Ludwig von Mises Institute. July 2009. ISBN 978-1-933550-52-7.

Interviews

• A 2011 interview with Hoppe
• A 2004 interview with Hoppe
• A 2003 radio interview with Hoppe
• A 1998 interview with Hoppe

Articles

• Collection of Hoppe's publications.
• Full text of Hoppe's 1998 introduction to The Ethics of Liberty by Murray Rothbard. (also in PDF format).
• Hoppe, Hans Hermann (1988). "On the Ultimate Justification of the Ethics of Private Property" (PDF). Liberty. 2. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
• In Defense of Extreme Rationalism: Thoughts on D. McCloskey's The Rhetoric of Economics by Hans-Hermann Hoppe.
• Hoppe, Hans Hermann (1988). "breakthrough or buncombe?" (PDF). Liberty. 2. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
• "My Battle With the Thought Police" Hoppe's own account on what happened
• LewRockwell.com: Hoppe's archives at LewRockwell.com
• “Small is Beautiful and Efficient: The Case for Secession”. Telos 107 (Spring 1996). New York: Telos Press.

Festschrift

• Property, Freedom, and Society: Essays in Honor of Hans-Hermann Hoppe

See also

• Outline of libertarianism

External links

• Hans-Hermann Hoppe homepage
• Hans-Hermann Hoppe, The Mises Institute
• The Property and Freedom Society
• Hoppe's Ten Lecture Seminar, "Economy, Society, and History"
• More on Hoppe's Argumentation Ethics