Professor Hoppe’s introduction to Murray Rothbard’s The Logic of Action (One, Two) (1997) is available here: PDF. For other incisive explorations of Rothbard’s thought, see Professor Hoppe’s Introduction to The Ethics of Liberty and his obituary in this collection.
A Chinese translation of Fallacies of the Public Goods Theory and the Production of Security (JLS, Vol. 9 Num. 1) is now available as: “第一章 公共财货理论的谬误 与安防生产 .” It is available in PDF here.
Below is David Gordon’s introductory essay to Professor Hoppe’s recently published monograph From Aristocracy to Monarchy to Democracy.
Published at Mises Daily.
***
Hoppe on Democracy, Progress, and the State
DECEMBER 27, 2014
[This is David Gordon’s introductory essay to Hans-Hermann Hoppe’s new book From Aristocracy to Monarchy to Democracy.]
Hans-Hermann Hoppe is a master of theoretical history. He tells us that
it is not my purpose here to engage in standard history, i.e., history as it is written by historians, but to offer a logical or sociological reconstruction of history, informed by actual historical events, but motivated more fundamentally by theoretical — philosophical and economic — concerns.
The work of Carl Menger and Ludwig von Mises on the commodity origin of money is a prime example of what Hoppe has in mind.
In carrying out his illuminating project, Hoppe finds himself in opposition to the dominant way of looking at the evolution of government. According to this perspective, government has over the centuries become ever more democratic. Rule by the people is the final form of government; once it has been reached, history, at least as far as government is concerned, has ended. This historical movement, further, is a “good thing.” It is the triumph of freedom. History is the story of progress. [click to continue…]
Professor Hoppe’s introduction to the 1998 edition of Murray Rothbard’s The Ethics of Liberty is appended below. (Internet archive version; local pdf; Mises Daily version; audio version: Part 1, 2).
INTRODUCTION
By Hans-Hermann Hoppe
IN AN AGE OF intellectual hyperspecialization, Murray N. Rothbard was a grand system builder. An economist by profession, Rothbard was the creator of a system of social and political philosophy based on economics and ethics as its cornerstones. For centuries, economics and ethics (political philosophy) had diverged from their common origin into seemingly unrelated intellectual enterprises. Economics was a value-free “positive” science, and ethics (if it was a science at all) was a “normative” science. As a result of this separation, the concept of property had increasingly disappeared from both disciplines. For economists, property sounded too normative, and for political philosophers property smacked of mundane economics. Rothbard’s unique contribution is the rediscovery of and philosophy, and the systematic reconstruction and conceptual integration of modern, marginalist economics and natural-law political philosophy into a unified moral science: libertarianism. [click to continue…]
Newly released by the Mises Institute: From Aristocracy to Monarchy to Democracy. PDF and epub links below. A related speech is linked below as well.
Note: The copyright to this work is held by Hans-Hermann Hoppe, who hereby releases and licenses this work with a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License, despite any notice to the contrary on the published version.
[Update: David Gordon’s introductory essay is available at “Hoppe on Democracy, Progress, and the State”: Introductory Essay to From Aristocracy to Monarchy to Democracy.]
A Tale of Moral and Economic Folly and Decay
In this tour de force essay, Hans-Hermann Hoppe turns the standard account of historical governmental progress on its head. While the state is an evil in all its forms, monarchy is, in many ways, far less pernicious than democracy. Hoppe shows the evolution of government away from aristocracy, through monarchy, and toward the corruption and irresponsibility of democracy to have been identical with the growth of the leviathan state. There is hope for liberty, as Hoppe explains, but it lies not in reversing these steps, but rather through secession and decentralization. This pocket-sized, eye-opening monograph is ideal for sharing with friends. It can revolutionize the way a reader sees society and the state.
From Aristocracy to Monarchy to Democracy
The following is a video of Prof. Hoppe speaking at the Rafael del Pino Foundation’s Master Lecture Series in Madrid, Spain, on June 20, 2013: “From Aristocracy to Monarchy to Democracy: A Tale of Moral and Economic Folly and Decay.”
Several Polish translations of Hoppe articles are available at the Polish Ludwig von Mises Institute (www.mises.pl), which are compiled here. The listings include also other materials such as the video noted below. A Polish translation of Professor Hoppe’s A Theory of Socialism and Capitalism is also forthcoming in Dec. 2014-Jan 2015 from the Polish Mises Institute, under the title „Teoria Socjalizmu i Kapitalizmu.”
Społeczeństwo prawa państwowego czy prywatnego? (video) – Society based on the public or the private law?
Professor Hoppe’s monograph The Private Production of Defense has been translated into Chinese, as 防卫的私人生产. It is available in PDF here.
Professor Hoppe’s latest publication is the article “A Realistic Libertarianism,” LewRockwell.com (Sept. 30, 2013), which served as a basis for a speech at the recently-concluded 2014 Annual Meeting of the Property and Freedom Society, media for which should be available presently.
A German translation of The Ethics of Entrepreneurship and Profit (LewRockwell.com, June 23, 2014) is now available in Eigentuemlich Frei, pp. 44-49.
An online version of Professor Hoppe’s paper “L’Europe De L’Apres-Communisme: Émigration, Integration Et Balkanisation,” traduit par Jakob Arfwedson, with a Foreword by Henri Lepage (Paris: Institut Euro 92, 1993) is now available in HTML here; also in pdf; doc.
This paper appears to be a French translation of an Italian version, “Migrazione, centralism secessione nell’Europa e contemporanea,” Biblioteca della Libertà n. 118, July-September 1992 (“Migration, centralism and Secession in Contemporary Europe”). Pascal Salin’s response thereto is appended below. For a similar English version, see “The Economic and Political Rationale for European Secessionism,” in David Gordon, ed., Secession, State & Liberty(Transaction, 1998), online here.
[click to continue…]
Professor Hoppe’s essay, “The Economic and Political Rationale for European Secessionism,” in David Gordon, ed., Secession, State & Liberty (Transaction, 1998), is available online.
Professor Hoppe’s monograph Kritik der kausalwissenschaftlichen Sozialforschung: Untersuchungen zur Grundlegung von Soziologie und Ökonomie [Criticism of causal scientific social research: Studies on the foundation of sociology and economics] (Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1983) has been reformatted by François Guillaumat. This version is cleaner than the original and has endnotes converted to footnotes (doc; pdf; original version). A continually-updated doc version is available here.
A Portugese translation of Democracy: The God That Failed, is now available. The English translation of Professor Hoppe’s Preface to the Portugese edition is available here.
An Italian translation of Economic Science and the Austrian Method (1995) has appeared, translated by Luigi Pirri, and an introduction by Piero Vernaglione.
Latest publication: The Ethics of Entrepreneurship and Profit, LewRockwell.com (June 23, 2014)
Reflections on State and War By Hans-Hermann Hoppe
Making the World Safe from Democracy or: How to Defend Oneself Against the United States
After this excursion into the theory of democratic peace I am back to the proposition that there is no greater threat to lasting peace than the democratic state, and in particular the United States. Thus, the question: how to make the world safe from democracy or how to defend oneself against the U.S..
Making the World Safe from Democracy or: How to Defend Oneself Against the United States
Democracy: The God That Failed
I am delighted to see a Portuguese translation of my Democracy: The God That Failed in print.
Of all my books, Democracy has been by far the most successful. From its original publication in 2001 until today, the book has been vociferously both condemned and hailed. In some intellectual circles, it has made me a persona non grata, an “unwanted” person – not just with the dominant leftish and relativist mainstreamintelligentsia, but also among many self-styled classical liberals and libertarians. Yet at the same time the book has also become a source of inspiration to many independent and self-thinking people and helped in the formation of a steadily growing international network of intellectual friends, allies, students, and affiliates.
Now available: Ekonomi och praxeologi, translation of Economic Science and the Austrian Method
Below is an English translation of Professor Hoppe’s interview by “Wirtschaftswoche”, Germany’s leading business-weekly. The interview covers various topics, including the business cycle, the nature of the state, anarcho-capitalism, taxation as expropriation, and the like.
***
Interview in Wirtschaftswoche
“Taxes are expropriation”
by Malte Fischer
The anarcho-libertarian economist Hans-Hermann Hoppe argues for a state-free society. Where government has, for example, no right to compel the citizens to pay taxes to finance armed forces.
Business Week:
Professor Hoppe, We currently have booming state intervention in both the economy and in society again. Many citizens want more government and less market. How do you explain that?
Hoppe:
History shows that crises promote the growth of the state. This is particularly evident in wars and terrorist attacks. Governments use such crises in order to pose as crisis-solvers. This also applies to the financial crisis. It has provided the governments and central banks with a welcome opportunity to intervene even more in the economy and society. Government representatives have managed to lay the blame for the crisis on capitalism, the markets and greed.
Without the intervention of central banks and governments in the form of liquidity injections and stimulus programs, wouldn’t the world have been thrown into a deep depression like in the 1930s?
There is a misconception that governments and central banks can aid the economy with programs to help it bounce back. Even in the 1930s in the USA there were economic stimulus programs. But the Great Depression did not end until after the Second World War. In prior years, the U.S. unemployment never fell below 15 percent. The banks were hoarding the central bank money, instead of using it to lend.
The current circumstances are similar. The money is not getting into the goods markets, therefore the prices of commodities barely rise. But that does not mean that there is no inflation. You just have to look at how the stock markets are developing to identify where the money is going. Inflation is taking place on the asset markets. [click to continue…]
