[Cross-posted at PFS Blog]
Translation of René Scheu and Hans-Hermann Hoppe, “Hans-Hermann Hoppe im Gespräch” [Hans-Hermann Hoppe in conversation], Schweizer Monat Issue 982 (Dec. 13, 2010) (pdf), a German-language interview on the topic of democracy and private law society, with the Swiss monthly Schweizer Monatshefte (Dec. 2010).
Interview
Issue 982 – December 2010
Hans-Hermann Hoppe in conversation
Hans-Hermann Hoppe is one of the most controversial libertarian intellectuals of the present day. He offers in his books a radical critique of democracy. It is for him that form of state in which a majority skillfully helps itself at the expense of a minority. René Scheu met Hans-Hermann Hoppe in Zurich and Lech am Arlberg. After the preliminary talks, the exchange of ideas took place in a classic-binding manner via e-mail.
by René Scheu and Hans-Hermann Hoppe
12/13/2010
Mr. Hoppe, with friends in Brazil I recently led an intensive discussion about the advantages and disadvantages of direct-democratic models. When I explained to them the political system of Switzerland, in which the people have the last word, their spontaneous answer was: “That is indeed the purest communism!” We see that differently in Switzerland and are proud of our direct-democratic tradition, for which many Europeans envy us. How do you see that?
Hans-Hermann Hoppe: Yes, of course democracy, whether direct or indirect, is a form of communism. A majority decides about what belongs to me and what belongs to you and what I and you are allowed to do or not. That has nothing to do with private property, but very much with the relativization of property, thus with common property, thus with communism.
With private property, I exclusively determine what is done with my property (provided that I do not thereby damage the physical integrity of the property of others). And in the case of multiple owners of the same thing, the co-owners can separate at any time, insofar as they sell their property share. Every ongoing property community is therefore voluntary and mutually beneficial. Conversely: with common property or communism, others – some majority – (also) determine the use of things located in my possession. At the same time, I cannot separate myself from the other co-owners and their majority decisions by simply selling my common property shares. Tellingly, such share certificates do not exist at all, neither in any democracy nor in the former socialist Eastern Bloc countries.
The constitution sets limits for the state and the democratic majority principle and protects the freedom rights of the citizens. Your critique of the majority principle is justified – yet it is a problem of the constitutional state (Rechtsstaat), not of democracy in itself.
First, constitutions are always state-constitutions, i.e., they already presuppose the right to levy taxes and to exercise an ultimate monopoly of jurisdiction. But how, oh how, can it be claimed of an institution that is based on compulsory levies and possesses a monopoly of jurisdiction that it can protect property and freedom?
It is one of the central tasks of a state to protect the property of its citizens – also of a modern democratic state. In Article 26 of the Federal Constitution of the Swiss Confederation it says: “Property is guaranteed.” Whereby one must supplement that in paragraph 2 it says: “Expropriations and restrictions of property that are equivalent to an expropriation will be fully compensated.”
As a tax collector, the state is an expropriating property protector. A contradiction in itself. And as the ultimate judge and arbitrator in all conflict cases including those in which it or its agents are themselves involved, the state does not preserve and protect valid law, but it changes it via legislation to its benefit. It perverts law. Another contradiction. And secondly: every constitution must be interpreted, be it by a supreme court or, as in Switzerland, by a certain popular majority. What does, e.g., “fully compensated” mean in connection with an expropriation? As much as the expropriated person demands? (But then no expropriation is needed.) Whatever restrictions a constitution may impose on a state in its actions, the decision about whether its acting is lawful or unlawful is in all cases made by persons who are themselves agents of the state. It is therefore foreseeable that the definition of private property and property protection will be steadily narrowed and eroded in favor of the legislative power of the state. Who saws off the branch on which he himself sits?
You argue strictly from the concept of property. In an ideal world populated by good people, it is clearly regulated who owns what. In practice, however, it always comes to conflicts. It therefore needs an instance that ensures clear conditions in such cases: the constitutional state. The constitutional state and democracy belong together.
Correct. There will presumably always be murderers, robbers, thieves, and fraudsters, and every society must successfully keep such lawbreakers in check to endure. For this, it needs a legal order. So far, so good. But a legal order is something other than a “constitutional state” or a “democratic legal constitution.” The ideas “state” or “democracy” and “law and legal certainty” are logically incompatible. The (democratic) state is defined by the fact that it may commit injustice and carry out expropriations. State law is always perverted law. What a society actually needs to maintain law and order and to ensure “clear conditions” is no state and no democracy, but a private law order.
Let us stay for now with democracy. The opposition in Switzerland is not formed by some parties, but by the people. Its always-threatening “no” domesticates politics. You write in your books that democracies will go under just as “Soviet communism was destined for ruin.” A daring comparison – how do you come to that?
First: every form of communism, including democracy, is economically unproductive. The general standard of living is lower than it would otherwise be. What concerns the case of Switzerland in particular: well, democracy can at best function “halfway” in very small, culturally homogeneous communities, i.e., without quickly ending in economic ruin. Where everyone knows everyone and knows about their social position and where there is therefore a pronounced social control, there it is difficult to want to procure the property of others by “democratic means,” even if this is “theoretically” possible. Social pressure prevents such a thing from happening. If necessary, if social pressure alone is not sufficient, the natural local elites ensure with other means that democratic-communist agitators are brought to reason.
That is thought one-sidedly. Political participation also has a positive effect: it strengthens the sense of responsibility of the citizens.
That is wishful thinking. The larger and more anonymous the personal units become about which is democratically decided, the more unscrupulously one can give in to one’s respective feelings of envy, lust for power, and delusions. And the faster democracy becomes an instrument to empower and enrich oneself at the expense of others, and the more inevitably it comes to a steady economic decline.
Why then does Switzerland stand there economically and politically more stable as a direct-democratic state than the northern and southern neighbors, who stand for representative democracy? The more direct the democracy is, the more successful it is economically.
I have already hinted at the answer to this. The relative economic success of Switzerland in comparison to its large neighboring countries has little or nothing to do with its direct democracy, but rather with the fact that Swiss democracy is a small democracy. Small not only because Switzerland overall is a small country; small primarily and especially because Switzerland is strongly decentralized, with many small homogeneous and (still) relatively autonomous cantons. Democracy in Switzerland is (still) largely local democracy. Local matters are decided locally, without intervention from “outside” or “above” (from Bern, Brussels, Washington, or New York). That is the secret of Switzerland.
Measured against the ideal image of many “democratizers,” the image of a democratic world state for which all local problems are global problems that must also be solved globally, ultimately the image of the United Nations, Switzerland with its independent cantons is with that even distinctly undemocratic. For it categorically excludes other, larger (and thus according to democratic logic “better” legitimized) majorities from any local decision-making. Yet it is precisely this undemocratic element, i.e., its high degree of political decentralization, that makes Switzerland economically overall so successful.
Democracies have an indisputable advantage. One can vote those politicians who advocate a blatant redistribution and enrichment policy out of office “without bloodshed,” as Karl Popper once formulated it.
First of all, democracy has the much more important disadvantage that one is allowed to advocate a blatant redistribution and enrichment policy at all and with that, at least in “large” democracies, can also be elected and actually is – instead of being put in the pillory as a communist agitator and expelled from the place. As for the alleged advantage of democracy in the peaceful change of government, the question presupposes that governments or state rulers – that means territorial jurisdiction and tax monopolies – are fit for securing peace at all. I dispute that. But even if one accepts this assumption, then “democracy” by no means follows from it. One can, e.g., also change a government peacefully by determining the holders of state power positions through regularly organized lotteries.
In democracies, there is political competition. That does not necessarily mean that the best and most competent people get into the important offices. But it does guarantee a certain standard of competence of the politicians.
Competition is not invariably “good.” Only competition in the production of goods is good. In contrast, competition in the production of bads is “bad,” yes, worse than bad. We want no competition in who can beat us up best. So it is also with democracy and political competition. Democracy allows one to appropriate the property of other persons via majority. It stands in contradiction to the commandment of all high religions not to want to covet the property of others. While a lottery would present us with some “random” thief-fence as a ruler, “democratic competition” guarantees that only the “best” thieves-fences advance into the decisive power positions, i.e., those who from the property-owner standpoint are the worst of all rulers. Democracy ensures – and all the more, the larger it is (!) – that only and exclusively bad persons, plagued by no moral scruples whatsoever and obsessed with hunger for power and megalomania, reach the top of the state – the respective “best” smooth-talkers and know-nothings who promise the “people” the most in a demagogic manner without having the slightest prospect of success therewith.
That is an exaggeration. Politicians are on average neither worse nor better than other people. And what is with the independent entrepreneur-politicians, such as Switzerland still knows them today?
A man like Christoph Blocher is a stroke of luck for Switzerland. In a “large” democracy, like Germany or the USA, a Blocher would not have a ghost of a chance. And even in Switzerland, Blocher has tellingly not succeeded in gaining a majority and reaching the very top. And that, although also Blocher, with all merits that he has for Switzerland, is by no means a pure liberal and uncompromising defender of private property.
Even better would be the chances for such men if Switzerland became again, just as it once was, a confederation of cantons, instead of an increasingly centralized federal total-state. All that applies, by the way, exactly the same for the USA. There too it would have been better if one had retained the confederation existing after the Revolutionary War, instead of adopting the current, federal central-state constitution. That would have spared the world not only a permanent source of foreign policy aggression and warmongering. America overall would be far wealthier and peacefully-civilized today than is actually the case.
From this derives, by the way, a central demand – if property and freedom are close to one’s heart. Instead of, politically correctly, supporting the current trend toward ever larger political centralization, one should fight it with all means at one’s disposal. We need no European total-state, such as the EU wants to create. And even less do we need a world state. We need rather a Europe and a world that consists of hundreds or thousands of small Liechtensteins and Singapores.
Would you as an anarchist not have to have great trust in the wisdom of the people?
As for the wisdom of the people, realism is above all appropriate. We do not vote on and then let a majority of votes decide who manufactures our suits, cars, computers, and houses, who heals our diseases, and who instructs or entertains us. Everyone determines this themselves for themselves, with their property and their individual purchasing decisions. The people would, rightly, perceive it as a severe loss of prosperity, yes as a catastrophe, were this not so. That testifies to wisdom. But of all things with a good like law and order, which affects our lives much deeper than all cars and houses, there the people rely on the supposed wisdom of a majority. That testifies to breathtaking stupidity. Or better: to popular-stupefaction, for which the propagandists and profiteers of democracy are responsible. But of course I hope that the people will ultimately be wise enough to see through this madness as well.
You brought the private law society into play at the beginning, which gets by entirely without a state. Such thought experiments are undoubtedly attractive. But how does one have to imagine such an anarchistic private law order concretely? The incentives to appropriate the property of others violently would be very high. One does not have to fear being prosecuted by police or military.
First: a private law order is a society in which every person and institution is subject to one and the exact same legal rules. There is in this society no “state law” or “public law” that grants state employees privileges over mere private persons. There is no ultimate monopoly of law and no tax privilege. There is in this society only private property and a private law valid for everyone equally. Concretely with regard to the question this means: also the production of law and order is done in a private law society by freely financed companies standing in competition with one another, just like the production of all remaining goods and services.
Now to the incentive structure of a privately-lawfully organized law and security industry in contrast to the current, state-organized one. There is an all-decisive difference. The state, also the democratic one, operates as an ultimate monopoly of law in a contractless legal vacuum. There is no normal, private law contract between the state as a provider of law and order and its citizens as consumers. What the state “offers” is roughly this: I guarantee you contractually nothing at all; neither do I promise you which things concretely they are that I intend to protect as “your property,” nor do I tell you what I oblige myself to do if I, in your opinion, do not fulfill my performance – but I reserve for myself in any case the right to unilaterally determine the price for my “performance” and to change via legislation all current rules of the game during the ongoing game anyway.
One just imagine once a freely financed, private-enterprise security provider, regardless of whether police, insurer, or arbitrator, who presents such an offer to his prospective customers. He would be immediately bankrupt for lack of customers. Private security providers must therefore offer contracts to their customers. These contracts must contain clear property descriptions as well as uniquely defined reciprocal services and obligations, and they can be changed during their agreed period of validity only by mutual consent. Even more, to be acceptable for a security buyer, the offered contracts must contain provisions about what happens in the event of a conflict between insurer and policyholder, and what in the case of a conflict between different insurers or their respective customers. And these cases can only be regulated by mutual consent between insurers and insured by naming for this a third party independent of the respective disputing parties, appearing trustworthy to both sides, as an arbitrator. And as for this third party: it too is freely financed and stands in competition with other arbitrators. Its customers, i.e., the insurers and the insured, expect from it that it passes a judgment that can be universally recognized as fair and just. Only arbitrators who are capable of this will be able to maintain themselves or grow in the arbitrator market. Arbitrators who cannot do that disappear from the market.
I ask: Under which of these two arrangements, the state or the private law one, can one be more secure of one’s life and property?
Let us stay with the concrete. Two neighbors fall out because a large fir tree casts too much shadow. In a private law society, it is not clear to whom the injured party should turn in the case of a conflict. Who represents the legal order of which you speak? And what if not all residents of a territory accept the same legal order?
Quite simple. The two disputing parties go to their insurer. If they are both customers of one and the exact same insurance, it decides the case, of course after thorough review of the existing property and contract relations of the adversaries and in accordance with the provisions of the insurance contract. If multiple insurers are involved and these come to a uniform solution in the assessment of the case, then it is both insurers together who make the decision. And if different insurances arrive at different judgments, then one calls upon a universally esteemed arbitrator, and it is this arbitrator who makes the decision. The procedure is quite clear and unambiguous, and it corresponds to the legal practice actually applying in large parts of (international) business transactions.
With regard to its unambiguity (no chaos, but clear conditions!), it differs in no way from the current (national) legal practice. But it has the decisive advantage that everyone can choose their insurers, insurance contracts, and independent arbitrators and can terminate them, instead of being insured and judged by a single and non-terminable compulsory institution.
That sounds like a beautiful, ideal world. In practice, however, people are committed to no coherent attitude. Laws and contracts must be interpreted – according to binding criteria, which in turn must be interpreted. There threatens confusion and chaos, a bit like in the market of cell phone providers and tariffs, where constantly new providers push onto the market, whose offers and contracts in turn must be assessed by meta-providers etc. Would such a life not be very exhausting?
I assume this question is not meant entirely seriously. It reminds me of the situation in 1989, shortly after the collapse of “really existing socialism” in the GDR. At that time, when the GDR-ers, the Ossis, for the first time got to see the abundance of the goods selection in West German stores, there was not seldom the complaint to be heard that this was all far too much and confusing. One did not know at all what one should buy in the face of so many offers. How beautiful, by contrast, it had been in the former GDR. There there was, e.g., with cars only the choice between a Trabi and a Wartburg, and that with an over ten-year delivery period, and the stores were almost always empty, so that the choice, if there was one at all in the face of the general shortage economy, was always comprehensibly simple. Do you want that? Then, and only then, does it make sense to plead for the current democratic legal constitution!
The conversation was conducted in writing by René Scheu.
