This may well have been covered before, but I came across this article:
http://www.openrepublic.org/open_republic/20051001_vol1_no2/content/20051001_ehh1.htm
Would be interested to hear other views on this.
What makes him think Austrians believe otherwise?
-Jon
Ummm…the standard strawman of Austrian economics that no Austrian ever looks at reality, but stays in some sterile gedanken experiment.
I have to admit my eyes started to glaze over towards the end of the article when Hoppe was compared with Goebels and the Nazi’s but I managed to keep on reading.
I don’t know what this institute stands for as have been unable to navigate through the rest of the website. But I think their many beef is that
A) Hoppe constructed an aprori social theory which isn’t supported by empirical facts.
B) That Hoppe is a conservative, doesn’t share their egalitarian values and will only be a footnote in the history of Libertarianism.
Off the top of my head the answer to
a) is that one requires a theory to interpret empirical facts and further that the empirical facts certainly support his aprori theories.
b) To which I reply the fact that he is a conservative horrifies the left-libertarian who came to libertarianism in a spirit of adolescent rebellion and continue to hold to their egalitiarian values because they have yet to grow up, and that whilst Hans-Hoppe is clearly a leader of a certain libertarian faction today - I have never heard of this institute today who probably sold out their principles like the CATO institute to ingratitate themselves with the statists of the day, which is why Hoppe is an intollerant extremist akin to the Nazi’s for thinking outside the social democratic box.
I honestly couldn’t find anything that actually addressed the contents and arguments contained in the book, just an attack on its conclusions.
I think that’s quite a silly thing to say.
For me I think this article is by-and-large a wordy ad-hominem on Hoppe based on the author’s dislike for his (perceived) personal social conservatism. That Hoppe does not necessarily refer to empirical examples of anarchist societies (of which there are many) does not refute his basic argument.
This is a typical straw man. Unfortunately these people have relatively little understanding of a priori methodology and the difference between analytic and synthetic propositions. Synthetic a priori doesn’t reject empiricism per se, as in math, you cannot know 1 + 1 = 2 is true unless you’ve experienced it, but it rejects empericism in the sense that every instance of 1 and 1 must be experienced in order to know the numerical outcome. The same is true of Austrian Economics.
Not too dissimilar from the norm, then. [:P]
-Jon
I find it insulting to imply that my lack of support for conservatism equates to mere “adolescant rebellion”. This is simply baseless condescension, and I find the idea that embracing your personal preferances comes with the territory of “growing up” to be highly laughable. The argument could just as easily be formed that the Hoppeans are still clinging to their nationalistic, racist values and are trying to superimpose them onto libertarianism. It’s also a mistake to assume that criticism of Hoppe always comes from a “social democratic box” or some statist perspective.
That being said, this was a fairly lame criticism, particularly with regaurd to the misunderstandings and attacks on austrian economics (if anything, I think Hoppe should be critisized as not being Austrian enough in some ways since his argument essentially overlooks the implications of the division of labor).
Amazing post Simon. I have to agree. I have yet to run across an entrepreneur or someone engaged in commerce who identifies with the egalitarianism or anti-capitalism of some segments of the libertarian left.
The more I get into Hoppe, the more I enjoy and can relate to his work.
Not only is that statement irrelevant to the validity of the ideas in question (wether someone is personally an enterprenuer or not), but it’s also simply false. It doesn’t follow that if you’re a left-libertarian (or a fill-in-the-blank) you’re part of a particular economic class (or age group for that matter); I had thought that only the marxists thought like that with their particular brand of polylogism and economic determinism. There are filthy rich people who champion socialism and there are dirt poor people who champion capitalism, so lets not buy into this overgeneralized nonsense.
Also, let’s be clear about this: not all criticism of right-libertarianism comes from left-libertarians, and it is important to not get left-libertarianism confused with something like the Cato Institute (a decidedly conservative think tank by my standards) or democratic socialists or anything of that sort. I think you have a distorted view of what the libertarian left is.
I think you need to re-read my post.