Hoppe a Utopian Conservative?

Economics Political Theory
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I would like to preface this by stating that I am a fan of Hans-Hermann Hoppe. I find him to be spot on in multiple areas on which he writes and speaks. His contributions on IP and property rights are top notch, and his economics in monetary history and theory as well as micro concepts in general are quite sound.

However I recently came across the following critique and I’d like to share it, as well as get some feedback. I found it to be well-written and—aside from a few interpretations/comments I found to be unfair (or at least misguided)—well-argued.

I am very interested to hear some reactions and opinions…

The errors of Hans-Hermann Hoppe

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Most of his criticisms are leveled against Hoppe’s methodology, which is essentially Rothbardian, but with no mention of Rothbard. I’m suspicious that this guy is largely unfamiliar with most anarcho-capitalist theory altogether. The rest of his criticisms are that Hoppe attracts bigots and that gives liberalism a bad name. Boo Hoo. I think there are some good criticisms of Hoppe (and Rothbard) but this wasn’t one of them.

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Pathetic article. From memory, not even worth re-reading.

Response written by a friend long ago:

Thanks for forwarding that article by Dr. Hartwich on to me, Ron. I’m not entirely sure how I would respond to it, though, because Hartwich says that “my critique is a critique of Hoppe’s idea of anarcho-capitalism, notof other anarchists,” but then he goes on, largely, to critique standard positions held by anarcho-capitalists and I think in many of these instances he’s either mistaken as to what their actual views are or he’s being disingenuous. The same applies to his criticisms of Hoppe; I think he’s misrepresenting many of his arguments.

For example, on the topic of law and order in a stateless society, Hartwich says “who should effectively fight them [criminals] after we have abolished criminal law and reduced it to some kind of compensation mechanism?” Surely, though, he knows that anarcho-capitalists only favour the elimination of statepolice and not police altogether? Hartwish also says that “if Hoppe ignores the simple fact that violence and crime always originate from human beings, not from legal entities [i.e. the state], this underlines how illusionary his whole theory is.” But I don’t think anyone - most especially Hoppe - would dispute that aggression can only be initiated by acting individuals. What Hoppe is saying is that the institutional structure of the state, as an organisation that has a monopoly on the use of force and of ultimate decision making, will necessarily lead to more conflict in society as these legal privileges are, of course, conferred on certain individuals. I’m wondering if I’m misunderstanding Hartwich’s argument on this because to me this seems like a pretty elementary contention of Hoppe’s to grasp.

There are many other theoretical points made by Hartwich that I take issue with, but I won’t go into them all here!

Concerning a ‘liberation strategy,’ though, Hartwich makes reference to a number of views espoused by Hoppe that, if true, I would definitely notbe in agreement with. He alleges that Hoppe’s liberation strategy involves being a martyr, preaching hatred to young people, hating everyone who supports the state, etc., e.g.:

“This means hating… the intellectuals at state universities. He [Hoppe] also suggested using popular prejudices against the intellectuals to incite hatred. Their books, for example, are most often not worth reading and we should tell this to the people – well, why not burn these books then, I was asking myself. In fact, why not burn the intellectuals?.. The next step in his liberation strategy consisted of making sacrifices for the truth, even if that meant jeopardizing one’s own professional career. That sounds very much like a call for libertarian martyrs.”

However I’m inclined to believe that Hartwich is grossly mischaracterizing Hoppe’s views. Regarding the role of intellectuals in society today, Hoppe does believe that the majority of them do propagate statist ideology, but he does not say we should incite hatred against them. On the contrary he has said that “even if most intellectuals have been corrupted and are largely responsible for the present perversities, it is impossible to achieve an ideological revolution without their help.”* I think it is unbecoming of Hartwich to make the stretch from Hoppe’s view, that most intellectuals’ books are merely not worth reading, to include in his article such a silly statement like: why don’t we burn their books then, or better yet, why don’t we burn them.

Concerning sacrifices for the truth even if it negatively impacts one’s careers, the quintessential cases I’m thinking of that Hoppe would have been referring to are the careers of Mises and Rothbard. There’s no need to go into their histories here, but this certainly does not mean becoming a ‘libertarian martyr,’ whatever that means. I don’t know to what extreme Hartwich believes Hoppe thinks libertarians should go, but I know Murray Rothbard used to say that “you can do very little for liberty when you’re in jail” and I’d be surprised if Hoppe actually advocated a contrary view.

So yeah, all in all I wasn’t terribly impressed by Dr. Hartwich’s critique. Personally, I don’t really agree so much with a number of Hoppe’s conservative values, but, from the tone of Hartwich’s article, I get the feeling there’s been a personality clash or something and so he’s then gone on to exaggerate or misconstrue Hoppe’s various viewpoints to make him look bad."

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I’m not so sure about that. I agree it is odd that the author never mentions Rothbard…but is Hoppe’s methodology fully consistent with Rothbard’s? Arguing that homosexuals would have to be removed from society (even in the simple context of private communes) doesn’t seem congruent with truly liberal ideology. And I have to admit I may not be familiar enough with Rothbard’s prescription for ancap, but did he really argue that all possible conflicts between individuals could be reduced to conflicts of property? And did he commit the same error of acknowledging the existence, presence, and influence of groups, and then simply ignoring groups all together when addressing conflict?

I do believe the author’s critique on Hoppe’s view of crime is weak, as he characterizes Hoppe’s position to be that human beings “lose their capability to do evil just because the legal fiction of the state disappears”…this, when he accurately describes the position only a few lines above as being that there would be less an incentive to commit criminal acts and protection would be more effective. He also claims that Hoppe “refused to become a martyr by choosing to fight against the university’s decision to rebuke him for his homophobe comments.” I found the case to be quite different…Maybe I’m missing something, but I don’t exactly see how Hoppe was even in a position to be a martyr for anything. I didn’t think his professorship or anything else of that magnatude was being threatened. And even if it were, I don’t see how simply accepting termination or resigning would make Hoppe an example of someone making a sacrifice for standing by his principles. Quite the contrary, I would think the anti-martyr action would be to renounce his statement in the face of censure…not defend it.

Mistakes like that are always disappointing to read…but it doesn’t completely invalidate his overall argument, some main points of which I mention above. Does Hoppe just not approach anarcho-capitalism from the right angle?

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Thank you for the response and reproducing that email here. I am happy to read reactions to such a critique. However, despite your friend bringing up a few of the very same issues I had with Hartwich’s piece (although for slightly different reasons), I didn’t find it very convincing. While I do agree that it does sound like Hartwich took a few extra steps, and that there may be an addition of something on a more personal level in his critique, it doesn’t sound like your friend’s email was much more than the same. I would have liked to see him address the points I list in the post above, which I took to be the crux of the overall argument.

I would certainly like to hear your thoughts on that as well.

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I agree it is odd that the author never mentions Rothbard…but is Hoppe’s methodology fully consistent with Rothbard’s? Arguing that homosexuals would have to be removed from society (even in the simple context of private communes) doesn’t seem congruent with truly liberal ideology.

Hoppe does have qualms with classical liberalism however his idea of private communities is very much consistent with Mises’ conception of liberalism:

The program of liberalism… if condensed into a single word, would have to read: property…

It seems to be very much in line with Rothbardian ideas.

Hoppe:

“Likewise, in a covenant founded for the purpose of protecting family and kin, there can be no tolerance toward those habitually promoting lifestyles incompatible with this goal. … (violators) will have to be physically removed from society.”

Rothbard:

With every locale and neighborhood owned by private firms, corporations, or contractual communities, true diversity would reign, in accordance with the preferences of each community. Some neighborhoods would be ethnically or economically diverse, while others would be ethnically or economically homogeneous. Some localities would permit pornography or drugs or abortion, others would prohibit any or all of them.

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“I agree it is odd that the author never mentions Rothbard”

That’s because he is completely ignorant of him & his works.

“But is Hoppe’s methodology fully consistent with Rothbard’s?”

An axiomatic-deductive rationalist objective ethics. Yes. Except Hoppe begins earlier with argumentation ethics, as opposed to natural law. Though they aren’t mutually exclusive.

"Nevertheless, by coming out with a genuinely new theory (amazing in itself, considering the long history of political philosophy) Hoppe is in danger of offending all the intellectual vested interests of the libertarian camp. Utilitarians, who should be happy that value freedom was preserved, will be appalled to find that Hoppean rights are even more absolutist and “dogmatic” than natural rights. Natural rightsers, while happy at the “dogmatism” will be unwilling to accept an ethics not grounded in the board nature of things. Randians will be particularly upset on the satantic immanual kant and his “synthetic a priori”.

Randians might be mollified, however, to learn that Hoppe is influence by a group of German Kantians (headed by mathematician Paul Lorenzen) who interpret Kant as a deeply realistic Aristotelian, in contrast to the Idealist interpretation common in the U. S.

As a natural rightser, I don’t see any real contradiction here, or why one cannot hold to both the natural rights and the Hoppean rights ethic at the same time. Both rights ethics, after all, are grounded, like the realist version of Kantianism, in the nature of reality. Natural law, too, provides a personal and social ethic apart from libertarianism; this is an area Hoppe is not concerned with."

… pg 2 http://www.hanshoppe.com/wp-content/uploads/publications/liberty_symposium.pdf

"And I have to admit I may not be familiar enough with Rothbard’s prescription for ancap, but did he really argue that all possible conflicts between individuals could be reduced to conflicts of property? "

“Liberals generally wish to preserve the concept of “rights” for such “human” rights as freedom of speech, while denying the concept to private property.[1] And yet, on the contrary the concept of “rights” only makes sense as property rights. For not only are there no human rights which are not also property rights, but the former rights lose their absoluteness and clarity and become fuzzy and vulnerable when property rights are not used as the standard.” ~ http://mises.org/daily/2569

“And did he commit the same error of acknowledging the existence, presence, and influence of groups, and then simply ignoring groups all together when addressing conflict?”

No.

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“But there Hoppe loses his razor-sharp analytical brilliance which made him a good economist, and all he does is indulge himself in highly abstract speculations about alternative social systems. He leaves the foundations of classical liberalism far behind and so his thinking is quite literally losing ground.”

He correct’s it’s errors. Since when has the state, in the history of the world - ever remained limited? Utopian? Guilty as charged.

Assume a group of people, aware of the possibility of conflicts; and then someone proposes, as a solution to this eternal human problem, that he (someone) be made the ultimate arbiter in any such case of conflict, including those conflicts in which he is involved. I am confident that he will be considered either a joker or mentally unstable and yet this is precisely what all statists propose. ~ http://www.lewrockwell.com/hoppe/hoppe18.html

“But what is natural about a social system which has never existed?”

Ancient Celtic Ireland - 1,000 years.

“While the purely free and laissez-faire society arises unselfconsciously where people are given free rein to exert their creative energies, statism has been the dominant principle throughout history. Where State despotism already exists, then liberty can only arise from a self-conscious ideological movement that wages a protracted struggle against statism, and reveals to the mass of the public the grave flaw in its acceptance of the propaganda of the ruling classes. The role of this “revolutionary” movement is to mobilize the various ranks of the oppressed masses, and to desanctify and delegitimize the rule of the State in their eyes.” ~ http://mises.org/daily/3735

“Hoppe’s system is the mere result of his own theoretical considerations.” And finally: If Hoppe envisages a society based entirely on mutually voluntary contractual agreements, doesn’t he need ‘a new man’ to make this vision work? Does Hoppe seriously believe that imperfect, often irrational and not always moral people can be integrated into a voluntary society, free of any kind of coercion without endangering the freedom and property rights of other individuals?"

Hilarious considering classical liberalism is what requires a “new man”. Angels to run the government.

“A tax-funded protection agency is a contradiction in terms - an expropriating property protector - and will inevitably lead to more taxes and less protection. Even if, as some - classical liberal - statists have proposed, a government limited its activities exclusively to the protection of pre-existing private property rights, the further question of how much security to produce would arise. Motivated (like everyone else) by self-interest and the disutility of labor, but endowed with the unique power to tax, a government agent’s answer will invariably be the same: To maximize expenditures on protection - and almost all of a nation’s wealth can conceivably be consumed by the cost of protection - and at the same time to minimize the production of protection.” ~ Hans-Hermann Hoppe ~ http://www.lewrockwell.com/hoppe/hoppe7.html

I’m stopping here sorry, this article is a joke - filled with fallacies.