Author: Curt Doolittle

REMINDING MYSELF (AND EVERYONE ELSE) : HOPPE

Uniting conservatives and libertarians once again, and permanently undermining postmodernism requires reforming libertarianism, which in turn seems to require adopting the operationalism of the scientific method as a defense against obscurantism. To reform libertarianism, I have to restate what is currently in that easily criticized, absurdly erroneous continental and cosmopolitan nonsense we call apriorism, and restate it, cleansed of those errors, in ratio-scientific language. The language of science it transparent. Because of that transparency, It is an extremely ethical language. And that is its primary value to our disciplines of ethics, politics and economics.

But if I do make that restatement of libertarianism in scientific language, and invalidate most of the fallacies in libertarian and austrian arguments, then what does that really mean for libertarianism? What changes? If I invalidate the fallacy of economics as aprioristic rather than empirical, then do Hoppe’s arguments outside of apriorism survive? Of course they do. That economics is an empirical science, and that the current justifications for property rights are fallacious, doesn’t mean that all of hoppe’s arguments based upon property rights do not survive. They do.

In fact, while an uncomfortable amount of Hans’ work is hero-worship, or promotion of Mises and Rothbard, his own contributions to the criticism of democracy, the necessity of property, the analysis of incentives, and the use of private insurance companies to provide regulation and commons are consistently exceptional. His durability in spite of the failure of Misesian apriorism is a demonstration of the quality of his theories.

I don’t really see Hoppe addressing Rothbardian ethics so much as property itself. And in all cases I can think of, Hoppe emphasizes the use of institutions to compensate for the limits of rothbardian ethics, rather than justifying rothbardian ethics. (I still have to go over everything or talk to him in person to make sure I understand him on this matter or not.)

I am pretty sure I have put a permanent death sentence upon rothbardian ethics already – particularly the fallacy of aggression (NAP/IVP). And I am very close to doing the same to misesian apriorism and the fallacy of economics as non-empirical. But the basis of libertarian POLITICAL ECONOMY is constituted in property rights, the (private) common law, an independent judiciary, and the use of competing insurance organizations to provide regulatory services for the commons. And all of those bases survive my criticisms of Rothbardian “ghetto” ethics, and misesian Continental apriorism.

Even if, as some have argued, Hoppe’s critique of Democracy is a restatement of Kuehnelt-Leddihn, and not an innovation in itself. Even if argumentation ethics fail the test of sufficiency. Even if misesian apriorism is a fallacy. Even if rothbardian ethics and the NAP were more harmful to the pursuit of liberty than beneficial. Hoppe’s contribution to formal institutions would survive. And more importantly, and most importantly, his successful completion of the program of reducing all ethics and politics to statements of the voluntary exchange of property as a rigorous form of argument would survive.

And it is that particular lesson that I learned from him. And the profundity of that lesson, is one that the world has been missing for two thousand five hundred years. The missing logic of cooperation which we call ‘ethics’, is nearly solved. And by adapting Ostrom’s form to Hoppe’s property, we can finish the formal logic of cooperation. And fulfill the promise that mises intuited, but could not himself solve. He knew too little of logic and mathematics, and we had not yet understood computability at the time. Rothbard was a good historian and a terrible philosopher. Hoppe turns out to have been a pretty important philosopher in the history of ideas.

That is, if we complete this work based upon his, before someone else does and deprives hans of the credit.

Credit is due.