A few months ago we were invited to speak at the European Students For Liberty regional conference in Stockholm. Our institute has previously written articles for ESFL and we have also delivered a webinar for them, on May 1st on the topic The Myth of the Socialist Paradise Sweden. It was a great event with about 200 attendees and it was, to our knowledge, greatly appreciated. Thus, we were truly looking forward to speaking at a one of their conferences that was going to be held in our hometown.
The topic of the speech was “How to achieve freedom”. In the speech we were going to bring up Mises and use him as a role model in the struggle for freedom, and how you had to be uncompromising in your struggle and never water down your message in order to better suit the masses. What mattered was devotion to truth and to your principles. After all, Mises in his memoirs concludes that if there was one thing that he regretted it was that he compromised too much (Memoirs, p. 60).
As a part of our attendance at the event we were planning on selling books from many of the great authors and legends like Ludwig von Mises, Murray Rothbard, Hans-Hermann Hoppe, Henry Hazlitt, Stephan Kinsella, Linda and Morris Tannehill and many more. Since these books are hard to get and a bit more expensive in Sweden we always try to sell them at good prices. We were granted the permission to have a table to sell the books from during the day. At this point everything was ok.
However, a few days before the event we announced at the ESFL event page that we were going to sell these books during the day and about ten minutes later we got a message from the organizers asking us to immediately remove the “Hoppe comment”. [continue reading…]
From Sean Gabb on VDare: Libertarianism, Conservatism, And Immigration: The Hoppe Solution By Sean Gabb on October 21, 2012 at 12:14am [See also John Derbyshire On Hans-Herman Hoppe—The Last Paleolibertarian] [Peter Brimelow writes: Alas, I had to miss the recent annual meeting of Hans-Herman Hoppe’s Property and Freedom Society in Bodrum, Turkey—for my thoughts on last year’s and earlier meetings, see here. The next meeting will be heldSeptember […]
Somewhere in between the two lie neo-reactionaries. I can’t quite get a handle on this term, but I have been seeing it with rising frequency this past few months. Is it really possible to have a category that includes both Jonah Goldbergand the weird but brilliant Mencius Moldbug? (I am a regular reader of MM, insofar as one can be a regular reader of a blogger who sometimes goes two months between posts.)
One percipient observer sees the beginnings of an entirely new kind of conservatism, distinct from all the foregoing: a “Dark Enlightenment,” of which I am (he says) one of the fuglemen, along with the aforementioned Mencius Moldbug.
O fortunate age! O happy times! in which shall be made public my incomparable atchievements, worthy to be ingraved in brass, on marble sculptured, and in painting shewn, as great examples to futurity! and O! thou sage inchanter, whosoever thou may’st be, doom’d to record the wondrous story! forget not, I beseech thee, the trusty Property and Freedom Society, the firm companion of my various fate! ~ Don Quixote de la Mancha1
Complying with Rothbard’s strict unanimity criterion, Turkey is the only modern day libertarian country. It is difficult for those who don’t speak a word of Turkish to comprehend the marvel, but I was able to get a good taste after interviewing scores of English-speakers in Turkey, all of whom were anarchocapitalist. This must be due to the diplomatic manoeuvrings and popular scheming of Turkey’s Property and Freedom Society (PFS), especially its annual meetings, with The Honourable Hans-Hermann Hoppe as host alongside his wife Gülçin as “the indispensable framework”. I was very fortunate that the 7th annual PFS meeting coincided with my recent visit to the southwest Turkish city of Bodrum.
Bodrum has so rich a history that it is even where “the father of history” Herodotus resided, and so, although I do not claim to be a professional historian, its history of historical awareness plausibly explains how it became the most libertarian country in the world today. The conference venue was the Hotel Karia Princess, which sounds like a cruise ship, and in the beginning of its history the evidence would indicate that it was a cruise ship that decided to stay put at the best location rather than travel to pick up passengers, or, more likely, to return them. The rooms were large enough for a modest harem. The food! The food was fit for a: libertarian. And the drinks! At 16 months since the last Property and Freedom Society meeting, it was a long time between drinks. And for Duncan of the U.K., Doolittle of the U.S. and De Roeck of Belgium, it looked like it was also a long time between meals. Evidently drinking like a fish has a different meaning to eating like a fish. It is very libertarian to think of progress as weight loss.
What I found most representative of PFS was a conversation I had involving the youthful Kinsella jnr. He is understandably so familiar with censoring his opinions that his father had to remind him that it is okay to speak his mind at PFS, which Hoppe proclaims a “political correctness free zone”. I think everyone struggled a little with this; jetlag was a non-issue compared with turning down our self-censorship settings. Many of us had forgotten where our self-censorship setting was, as we find it easier to just change the channel. I wonder if the popularity of sport can be explained as simply people finding somewhere where they are allowed to speak their mind and genuinely speak out in plain language against the opposition.
What I found fiercest was the very gentlemanly Karl-Peter Schwarz chastising Václav Klaus and Tyler Cowen for their opposition to returning land confiscated by governments to their rightful owners.
What I found funniest was Hoppe reading out the many functions of government that Hayek supported. Next time Hoppe delivers that speech there needs to be an intermission. But even without an intermission, or any time constraints of any sort since Hoppe wrote the schedule, even then! there was still only time for the speech to be just basically a list of where Hayek supported government.
Professor Hoppe’s latest book, The Great Fiction: Property, Economy, Society, and the Politics of Decline, was published today by Laissez Faire Books. It is available for purchase in print or ebook form here; epub and mobi versions available here.
The title comes from a quotation by Frederic Bastiat, the 19th century economist and pamphleteer: “The state is the great fiction by which everyone seeks to live at the expense of everyone else.”
The release of Professor Hoppe’s new book is timed nicely to coincide with the Seventh Annual Meeting of the Property and Freedom Society later this month in Bodrum, Turkey.
Jeff Tucker’s discussion of the book for Laissez Faire Books, “Tucker’s Take,” is below:
There is reality and there is Ben Bernanke. The two are ever more disconnected. Speaking in Jackson Hole, Wyo., Fed Chair Ben Bernanke claimed his money printing has created 2 million jobs and pushed stock prices higher.
“The odds are strong that the Fed’s asset purchases will make money for the taxpayers, reducing the federal deficit and debt,” Bernanke said, presumably with a straight face. “And of course, to the extent that monetary policy helps strengthen the economy and raise incomes, the benefits for the U.S. fiscal position would be substantial.”
Never mind the elevated unemployment rate and worst economic recovery since the Great Depression. Never mind that the credit system is entirely broken down. The reality that we’ve lost a decade of growth to these policies is in the headlines. And at this very time, Bernanke figures that QE1 and 2 went so well, it’s time for a third. One wonders if the Fed chairs plan is to create enough money from nowhere to buy all the governments debt, reducing the deficit and debt to virtually zero.
Nobody in his right mind would think the value of the dollar could withstand that onslaught of printing, except maybe Bernanke.
Leaving little doubt what his policy will be, Bernanke said, “The Federal Reserve will provide additional policy accommodation as needed to promote a stronger economic recovery and sustained improvement in labor market conditions in a context of price stability.”
But does more money mean more economic growth and jobs? Is that all we’ve been lacking? Let us consult Hans-Hermann Hoppe, the intellectual giant of Austrian School whose new book is being released by the Laissez Faire Club tomorrow. The book is called The Great Fiction. It is a mighty addition to an increasingly impressive archive of books available to all members. The fiction of which he speaks is public authority as embodied in governments and central banks. Viewed through a Hoppean lens, Bernanke is making up stories. As Hoppe says: More money is just this: more money. It does not and cannot increase social wealth by one iota.
Money doesn’t increase wealth for society, so who benefits from all this monetary manipulation? Hoppe explains: Easy credit also engenders a systematic redistribution of social wealth in favor of… the central bank, and the commercial banks within [its] cartel. Monetary theory is but a small part of this far-reaching book, but Hoppe instructs the reader as to why and how the state controls money through the central banking apparatus and commercial banking cartel. As much as Bernanke yammers on about creating jobs and stimulating the economy for the working man, central bank policy benefits the banks and government, plain and simple.
The Ben Bernanke’s of the world don’t have to sacrifice to lend the commercial banking system or the government money. This isn’t money his bank has saved or accumulated. To make a loan, it simply conjures the money from thin air, debasing the existing dollars in circulation.
Because there is no sacrifice, no delay of consumption to lend, the central bank lends to those who would not otherwise be creditworthy, and lends at lower rates. Commercial banks do the same. If the loans don’t work out, the banks look to the central bank to bail them out, just as the central bank bails itself out.
Because central bank credit is not backed by savings, booms and busts are the logical result of these monetary expansions. Investments and projects take time to complete. It is only determined later which projects were needed or not. The results of risky, easy lending show up later with clusters of bankrupt companies and projects. Todays stimulus will be tomorrows crash.
Of course, government would love to create goods and services out of thin air. Imagine the votes that could be bought! But government cant do that. What it can and does do with abandon, as Hoppe points out, is redistribute property as it sees fit.
This constant meddling by government creates uncertainty for businessmen. And among the many ways that the state can meddle, Hoppe points out the state preference is for meddling with money. Because money is the most easily and widely salable good, it allows the state operators the greatest freedom to spend their income as they like.
U.S. businesses say they are currently uncertain about taxes, regulations, and Obamacare. The result, as Hoppe explains, is that it is too risky for the producer to invest in producer goods. Only present, instantly serviceable goods can protect against unpredictable contingencies.
Increased inflows of new money only drive prices up, with purchasing power becoming low. For protection against uncertainty, prices should fall, but the policy of increasing the money supply has the wrong effect.
Thus, as the result of the current monetary policy, the restoration of the desired level of uncertainty protection will be delayed and the crisis prolonged, writes Hoppe.
Bernanke told the Jackson Hole crowd something different:
It seems clear, based on this experience, that such policies can be effective, and that, in their absence, the 2007-09 recession would have been deeper and the current recovery would have been slower than has actually occurred.
The recession might well have (and should have) been deeper, but by now it would be long gone without the Bernanke’s meddling.
Central banks are one of the greatest mischief makers of our time, Hoppe writes. While the last two Fed chairmen have been considered rock stars, Hoppe considers them counterfeiting bureaucrats. They are backed by many intellectuals on the payroll who explain, like alchemists, how stones (paper) can be turned into bread (wealth). With a monopoly power over the printing press, the Fed can pay for unpopular wars and popular social programs.
This week’s featured author, professor Hoppe, has lived a lively, interesting life. His wife is also a Ph.D. economist, and they live in Istanbul. Hoppe retired from teaching at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. He taught a number of those years with his friend Murray Rothbard and received tenure by way of a student petition.
He continues to be a much-sought-after speaker in Europe and around the world. He was invited to a private audience with the prince of Liechtenstein to discuss economics, philosophy, and anarchy. He and his wife host the Property and Freedom Society salon in Bodrum, Turkey, each year, attracting intellectuals from all over the world, representing various disciplines. Jeffrey Tucker and I will be attending later this month.
[Omitted text:
Professor Hoppe considers “Central banks one of the greatest mischief makers of our time.” While the last two Fed Chairmen have been considered rockstars, Hoppe would consider them counterfeiting bureaucrats. Again, society is made no richer with the printing of more money. Just the early receivers of the money (government and big banks) benefit at the expense of those receiving the money last. The gap between rich and poor in this country can look to this as a reason.
With a monopoly power over the printing press, the Fed can pay for unpopular wars, popular social programs. Hoppe points out in a reprinted Interview with The Daily Bell the Fed can afford to hire hundreds of Phd economists, “turned into government propagandists ‘explaining,’ like alchemists, how stones (paper) can be turned into bread (wealth).”]
If you’ve waited to join the club, this is the week you’ve been waiting for. Hans-Hermann Hoppe is an intellectual giant. The Great Fiction is his new book. Like all Laissez Faire Club e-books, his work provides the antidote to the nonsense you hear about money and banking from the mainstream finance press. Sign up today and you will be curling up with your e-reader and Hoppe’s book, for a wonderfully instructive weekend.
Professor Hoppe’s article Der Staat als bloßer Konkurrent [PDF] [“The State as a Mere Competitor”] has appeared in a recent issue of the conservative/free-market leaning magazine FOCUS (35/2012), the third-largest weekly news magazine in Germany.
“If you are unfamiliar with the work of Hoppe, prepare for The Great Fiction to fundamentally shift the way you view the world. No living writer today is more effective at stripping away the illusions most everyone has about economics and public life. Hoppe causes the scales to fall from one’s eyes on the most critical issue facing humanity today: the choice between liberty and statism.”
Someone asked me the other day if I believe in conspiracies. Well, sure. Here’s one. It is called the political system. It is nothing if not a giant conspiracy to rob, trick and subjugate the population.
People participate in the hope of making our lives better, or at least curbing the damage government does. Yet look at the results: exactly the opposite. No matter who is selected as temporary front men to “reform” the system, the regime thrives and the population withers.
It should be obvious by now that reform doesn’t happen by drawing ever more people into the ranks of the oppressor class. But somehow, people keep getting pulled in. What’s more, the regime is fully aware of this, even if the population is not. So, yes, I would call it a conspiracy.
The word conspiracy comes from the Latin roots con and spiro, meaning to breathe together. It implies a shared interest and an understanding between people that doesn’t always need to be openly stated. In the normal use of the term, the purpose of a conspiracy is always negative or destructive — a deceptive plot to do something bad.
This is why the government is always accusing other people of conspiring — terrorists cells, armed resistance at home and abroad, rebellious and plotting sectors of society — but exempts itself completely. The regime regards itself as unimpeachably fantastic, never destructive, never nefarious. Therefore, it is incapable of conspiracy.
It all depends on how you look at it. You don’t have to work yourself into a fever over the Bilderbergers or the Trilateralists to see real conspiracy. Take a look at any government bureaucracy. Everyone there knows the goal: more power, more money and less work. The bureaucratic class “breathes together” toward the same nefarious goal of making itself safer and richer, while making normal life difficult for those who are subject to its dictates. And it all comes at the expense of everyone else.
The more dependencies government creates, the more people it can convince to go along with the conspiracy, and the better off it is. This is why Frederic Bastiat once described the political system as follows: “Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else.”
The fiction part is the deception. It works only so long as the social consensus is there to support it. The task of anyone who opposes the great conspiracy, then, is to reveal and expose the reality that is being covered up by all the stories of all the wonderful things that government does. The fiction is unsustainable in light of logic and evidence. The curtain must be pulled back.
To my mind, the modern thinker who has best dissected the true nature of modern politics is Hans-Hermann Hoppe. He is incredibly clearheaded about modern politics, particularly the workings of democracy. It is a system of governance that was developed to give the people more direct control over the government; in fact, it has given the government more direct control over the people.
I’m pleased to report that Laissez Faire Books is publishing his next book, a massive collection with the title drawn from Bastiat: The Great Fiction. It will be released in electronic form to members of the Laissez Faire Club. So it comes free as part of the subscription.
As I’ve told many people, the Laissez Faire Club works like any high-end private club. Once you are a member, the drinks are on the house. And this book by Hoppe is one very stiff drink!
Joining the club right now gives you all the books we’ve already released — plus movie shorts to go along with them and forums to discuss them — and this Hoppe book plus many others come once per week. It is an incredible deal by any standard, and the perfect way to defeat the great conspiracy.
If you are unfamiliar with the work of Hoppe, prepare for The Great Fiction to fundamentally shift the way you view the world. No living writer today is more effective at stripping away the illusions most everyone has about economics and public life. Hoppe causes the scales to fall from one’s eyes on the most critical issue facing humanity today: the choice between liberty and statism.
The whole of Hoppe’s writings on politics can be seen as an elucidation of Bastiat’s point. He sees the state as a gang of thieves that uses propaganda as a means of disguising its true nature. In fleshing this out, Hoppe has made tremendous contributions to the literature, showing how the state originates and how the intellectual class helps perpetuates this coverup, whether in the name of science, religion or the provision of some service like health, security, education or whatever. The excuses are forever changing; the functioning and goal of the state is always the same.
The reader will be surprised at the approach Hoppe takes because it is far more systematic and logical than people expect of writers on these topics. I suspect that this is because he did not come by his views except after a long intellectual struggle, having moved systematically from being a conventional left socialist to becoming the founder of his own anarcho-capitalist school of thought.
This particular work goes beyond politics, however, to show the full range of Hoppe’s thoughts on issues of economics, history, scientific methodology and the history of thought. In each field, he brings that same level of rigor, that drive for uncompromising adherence to logic, the fearlessness in the fact of radical conclusions.
It seems too limiting to describe Hoppe as a member of the Austrian or libertarian tradition, for he really has forged new paths, in more ways than he makes overt in his writings. We are really dealing here with a universal genius, which is precisely why Hoppe’s name comes up so often in any discussion of today’s great living intellectuals.
It also so happens that Hoppe is also an extremely controversial figure. I don’t think he would have it any other way.Besides, this is always the case for truly creative minds that do not shrink from the conclusions of their own premises. The perspective from which he writes stems from a passionate yet scientific attachment to radical freedom, and his work comes about in times when the state is on the march.
Everything he writes cuts across the grain. It is paradigm breaking. Just when you think you have figured out his mode of thinking, he takes it in a direction that you didn’t expect. It is not only his conclusions that are significant, but the masterful way that he arrives at them.
It is my great honor as executive editor of Laissez Faire Books to be the publisher of a work of this significance. It is a testimony to the fact that progress in ideas is still possible in our time. So long as that remains true, so long as the tradition Hoppe represents is living and improving, we have reason to believe that human liberty has not and will not finally succumb to the great conspiracy.
The movie Inception (2010) directed by Christopher Nolan, is one of the few films I’ve seen that takes the idea of ideas themselves seriously.
It’s about a team of experts that specializes in corporate espionage by extracting information from dreams. This time, their job is much harder: They are asked to implant a new idea in someone’s head using the same methods.
The following exchange takes place to illustrate the power of an idea:
“OK, this is me, planting an idea in your mind. I say: Don’t think about elephants. What are you thinking about?”
Point taken!
Another character explains the deeper issue of either extracting or implanting ideas:
“What is the most-resilient parasite? Bacteria? A virus? An intestinal worm? An idea. Resilient… highly contagious. Once an idea has taken hold of the brain, it’s almost impossible to eradicate. An idea that is fully formed — fully understood — that sticks — right in there somewhere.”
In real life, people are implanting ideas in our heads all the time. If you watched either of the big political conventions over the past week, you know this. They tell us that we need them to keep us safe, secure, prosperous, virtuous, and fair. In their absence, something terrible will happen.
The goal here is a different version of espionage. We are being persuaded to give them money to conduct their campaigns and then, at the appointed hour, march to the government-designated spot and mark the ballot in the way they want us to.
Fewer and fewer are going along with this, but just enough comply to give the appearance of consent. Millions have an idea implanted in their heads and they act on it. It more or less works. It’s worked for a very long time. The system isn’t as healthy as it used to be, but it is still the best shot that the ruling elite have to elicit our cooperation.
What if most of what is happening at these partisan conventions is illusion? What if the real powers that run our lives are largely untouched by voting and elections? And what if these real powers are so vulnerable that if we stop believing in them, they will lose their power? What if the path to freedom were as clear as discovering reality after a period of dreaming?
This is the point of view of Hans-Hermann Hoppe. He is the author of the e-book of the week in the Laissez Faire Club: The Great Fiction. It can be downloaded today with a $10 membership in the Club.
The Great Fiction explains the inner workings of the state like no other book. Hoppe digs deep into history, the origin of property, the nature of power, the truth about money, and many other subjects to show that much of what we tend to believe about the system is essentially a fable.
The apparatus of power does not protect us; it robs us. It does not stabilize the economy; it siphons of wealth from the many for the few. It does not keep us safe; it makes the world safe for them, but endangers our lives and prosperity. The intellectual class that is dispatched to defend the system of power is looking after its self-interest.
The Great Fiction is the lie pushed by the political class that the exploitation we face daily is necessary and inevitable. Neither is true. As part of the big fiction, there are many smaller fictions, as well. Hoppe discusses each in turn: the idea that the state provides our security, that it guards our money, that our societies are managed scientifically by experts, that the nation-state is some kind of immortal being that will last forever.
Hoppe is one of the leading intellectuals in the world today, a big thinker on the level of a Hume, Hegel, Kant, Marx, and Mises. The essays in here are some of his sharpest and most far reaching, dealing with property, money, society, law, and even the scientific method. His reputation in Europe is so large that people clamor for private invitations to his salon. He writings have been translated to a dozen languages.
Here is just a sample of some of the material you will find
Three marks of a state (that the state does not advertise)
Why a population puts up with the taxes, bullying, and bad service from the state
Why intellectuals turn to the state for support
Why compulsory education really exists
Why and how the state brings about the war of all against all
Why property rights exist only because of scarcity
Why every deviation from property rights leads to social loss
Why modern life is, in some ways, more savage than primitive prehistoric times
Why richer states are more aggressive
Why and how the family originated as an economic unit
Why self-sufficiency is the path to poverty
Why the Malthusian trap is real and how we escaped it
Why technological improvement necessarily grows from ownership and trade
Why the crucial ingredient that ushered in modernity is human intelligence
Why total privatization is not only possible, but desirable
Why it is naive to expect the state to ever reform money
Why the immigration issue is more complicated than either side admits
Why the best path forward for freedom must include the right to secede
Why truly just laws must necessarily extend from private property
Why there can be no religious freedom without property rights.
If you are unfamiliar with the works of Hans-Hermann Hoppe, prepare for The Great Fiction to cause a fundamental shift in the way you view the world. No living writer today is more effective at stripping away the illusions almost everyone has about economics and public life. More fundamentally, professor Hoppe causes the scales to fall from one’s eyes on the most-critical issue facing humanity today: the choice between liberty and statism.
The title comes from a quotation by Frederic Bastiat, the 19th-century economist and pamphleteer: “The state is the great fiction by which everyone seeks to live at the expense of everyone else.” He does not say that this is one feature of the state, one possible aspect of public policy gone wrong, or one sign of a state gone bad in a shift from its night watchman role to becoming confiscatory. Bastiat is characterizing the core nature of the state itself.
The whole of Hoppe’s writings on politics can be seen as an elucidation on this point. He sees the state as a gang of thieves that uses propaganda as a means of disguising its true nature. In fleshing this out, Hoppe has made tremendous contributions to the literature, showing how the state originates and how the intellectual class helps perpetuate this coverup, whether in the name of science, religion, or the provision of some service like health, security, education, or whatever. The excuses are forever changing; the functioning and goal of the state are always the same.
“Only few people can see through the entire charade,” he writes, “and even fewer have the courage to speak up against it.”
It is true, then, that Hoppe stands with a long line of anarchist thinkers who see the state as playing a purely destructive role in society. But unlike the mainline of thinkers in this tradition, Hoppe’s thinking is not encumbered by utopian illusions about society without the state. He follows Ludwig von Mises and Murray N. Rothbard in placing private property as a central element in social organization. In justifying this point of view, Hoppe goes far beyond traditional Lockean phrases. He sees private property as an inescapable institution in a world of scarcity, and draws on the work of contemporary European philosophy to make his claims more robust than any of his intellectual predecessors’.
The reader will be surprised at the approach Hoppe takes because it is far more systematic and logical than people expect of writers on these topics. He came to his views after a long intellectual struggle, having moved systematically from being a conventional left-socialist to becoming the founder of his own anarcho-capitalist school of thought.
The dramatic change happened to him in graduate school, as he reveals in the biographical sections of this book. He takes nothing for granted in the course of his argumentation. He leads the reader carefully through each step in his chain of reasoning. This approach requires extraordinary discipline and a level of brilliance out of the reach of most writers and thinkers.
This particular work goes beyond politics, however, to show the full range of Hoppe’s thoughts on economics, history, scientific methodology, and the history of thought. In each field, he brings that same level of rigor, that drive for uncompromising adherence to logic, the fearlessness in the face of radical conclusions.
In light of all of this, it seems too limiting to describe Hoppe as a mere member of the Austrian or libertarian tradition, for he really has forged new paths — in more ways than he makes overt in his writings. We are really dealing here with a universal genius, which is precisely why Hoppe’s name comes up so often in any discussion of today’s great living intellectuals.
It so happens that Hoppe is also an extremely controversial figure. I don’t think he would have it any other way. Regardless, this is always the case for truly creative minds that do not shrink from the conclusions of their own premises. The perspective from which he writes stems from a passionate, yet scientific attachment to radical freedom, and his work comes about in times when the state is on the march.
Everything he writes cuts across the grain. It is paradigm breaking. Just when you think you have figured out his mode of thinking, he takes it in a direction that you didn’t expect. It is not only his conclusions that are significant, but the masterful way that he arrives at them.
Where does Hoppe see our current crisis ending? Here is a passage to give you a sense:
Empire building bears the seeds of its own destruction. The closer a state comes to the ultimate goal of world domination and one-world government, the less reason is there to maintain its internal liberalism and do instead what all states are inclined to do anyway, i.e., to crack down and increase their exploitation of whatever productive people are still left. Consequently, with no additional tributaries available and domestic productivity stagnating or falling, the Empire’s internal policies of bread and circuses can no longer be maintained. Economic crisis hits, and an impending economic meltdown will stimulate decentralizing tendencies, separatist and secessionist movements, and lead to the breakup of Empire. We have seen this happen with Great Britain, and we are seeing it now, with the U.S. and its Empire apparently on its last legs.
It is my great honor as executive editor of Laissez Faire Books to be the publisher of a work of this significance. This is more than a collection in the libertarian tradition; it is a testimony to the fact that progress in ideas is still possible in our time. So long as that remains true, so long as the tradition Hoppe represents is living and improving, we have reason to believe that human liberty has not and will not finally succumb to the great fiction.
As noted previously, Professor Hoppe’s most recent book was recently published. It is an introduction to the field of private law societies and contains translations of several speeches held at the PFS and the LvMI, texts from LewRockwell.com and interviews from German newspapers. Amazon.de link; publisher’s website. (Other German-language publications and translations of Hoppe works.)
A new English translation of an interview with Professor Hoppe about his book has just been published:
I recently posted my own very loose translation of an interview in German conducted with Professor Hoppe, by the German web site, MisesInfo. Fortunately, on behalf of the Professor, Robert Groezinger has produced a much more polished and accurate version of the same interview, which is hot off the press, below, from his word processor. Share and enjoy:
First of all, Mr. Hoppe, thank you for taking the time to give us this interview. You have written in your new book, Der Wettbewerb der Gauner (“The Competition of Crooks”), that “We don’t need a European super state, which the European Union is seeking to establish … but rather a Europe and world consisting of hundreds or even thousands of tiny Liechtensteins and Singapores.” Such a trend is not apparent at the moment, rather the opposite. Do things first have to get even worse – politically and economically – , before they get better again?
Unfortunately, I’m afraid so. Before that we’ll probably have to experience national bankruptcy spreading through Portugal, Spain, Italy and ultimately on to Germany. Only then, I fear, will it become clear to everyone what many people already suspect now: that the EU is nothing but a gigantic machinery of income and wealth redistribution, from Germany and the Netherlands to Greece, Spain, Portugal, and so on. But that’s not all. It will also become clear that the same insanity, the same mess, exists even within each individual country: redistribution from Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg to Bremen and Berlin, from Little Town A to Little Village B, from one company or industry to another, from Smith to Jones and so on – and always following the same perverse pattern: redistribution from the more productive countries, regions, places, companies and individuals to those that are less productive or not productive at all. Bankruptcy will bring all of this to light in a dramatic fashion.
And perhaps then, finally, will come the realization that democracy – in whose name all these dirty tricks have been done – is nothing more than an especially insidious form of communism, and that the politicians who have wrought this immoral and economic madness and who have thereby enriched themselves personally (never, of course, being liable for the damages they have caused!), are nothing more than a despicable bunch of communist crooks.
Der Ökonom und Anarchokapitalist Hans-Hermann Hoppe spricht über die Mängel des Sozialismus, über Privateigentum als Voraussetzung für Wohlstand, untersucht die Zukunft der EU und plädiert für eine Welt ohne staatliche Regulierungen.
A new book has been released in German with material from Prof. Hoppe and a foreword by Prof. Thorsten Polleit (main title in English: The Competition of Crooks). This is an introduction to the field of private law societies and contains translations of several speeches held at the PFS and the LvMI, texts from LewRockwell.com and interviews from German newspapers. Amazon.de link; publisher’s website. [PDF]
Professor Hoppe was previously interviewed on Australian Broadcasting Corp. Radio, on the topic “Anarcho-capitalist libertarianism: What is it?” (approx. 25 minutes). It was aired on Jan. 23, 2012; audio is available here; the transcript is here, and below. As described on the ABC site, “What is anarcho-capitalist libertarianism? Hans Herman Hoppe explains the idea behind it and why it’s a very different and quite radical way to think about government, society and the economy.”
