Category: Commentary, Critique, and Response

https://mises.org/library/why-mises-and-not-hayekNO HANS. … BUT LOOK. YOUR STRAW MEN ARE BURNING.

https://mises.org/library/why-mises-and-not-hayek

I probably should publish an open letter on this subject but here is the correction of Hans’ position.

*It’s a False Dichotomy*

1 – The central question is whether propositions and theories are true enough to justify the use of force to enforce them without provoking defense and retaliation, that itself provides defense and retaliation – producing retaliation cycles. Hans is asking the wrong question. He is justifying economics rather than the results of the use of economic inquiry to alter human behavior because it provides decidability in questions of retaliation for the imposition of costs: what we call: Natural Law.

2 – Mises, Popper, and Hayek Failed as a Team To Solve The Problem of Cosmopolitan Pseudoscience, French Moralism, German Rationalism, and AngloPuritan Incomplete physical Empiricism and social utopianism. This set of various failures originates in the fact that the law in each ‘tribe'(culture) was the primary influence of the enlightenment in Cosmopolitan and Anglo Civilizations despite the vast differences between the Diasporic separatist, poly-logical justificationary law, and the anglo germanic naval-traders empirical law. Cultural Tradition and Philosophy were the primary influences of the enlightenment in German civilization thanks to Kant’s attempt to create a secular christianity despite correctly judging man’s rational rather than moral or immoral nature. Rousseau’s reinterpretation of Catholicism as moral narrative overcame Descarte’s influence, creating the false myths of man’s moral nature. Russian reinterpretation through literature was truncated by both invasion of cosmopolitan and french authoritarian thought, and the decidedly brutal cosmopolitan attempt to conquer Russia,s weaker literary, cultural, and political systems via bolshevism – so it never came to blossom.

3 – Popper correctly transformed epistemology from justificationism (excuse making – seeking permission from community and crown), to criticism (survival from criticism regardless of permission from community and crown).

4 – Mises correctly identified the necessary logic of criticism (test of natural law), with his invention of praxeology (economic operationalism). But he incorrectly stated it as a science rather than a logic by which we criticize theories. (Aside from the fact that he clearly had no concept of the demarcation between axiomatic (informationally complete) models, and theoretic (incomplete) descriptions.)

5 – Hayek correctly identified common, judge-discovered, empirical, natural law as our only critical, empirical, social science. But he was unable to deduce the unit of measure(property), or its cause(non imposition of costs against that which others had borne costs).

6 – Hoppe and Rothbard (more Hoppe than rothbard in my opinion) correctly identified that the unit of empirical commensurability for the purpose of decidability in dispute resolution in our social science is property, just as the unit of commensurability for the purpose of decidability in personal preferences between property is money.

7 – My contribution (as my own cultural bias: an american empirical scientist) has been to restate Mises, Popper, Hayek, Rothbard and Hoppe, as the solution to the Wilsonian Synthesis: We have, across three generations, by combining Cosmopolitan(Mises/Popper), German (Hayek/Hoppe), and Anglo(Scientific) research programs, despite our various cultural biases, not only (finally) developed a formal social science superior in completeness to the current state of the physical sciences, but by doing so we have united biology, ethics and morality(cooperation), law, (cooperation), politics (institutions of cooperation), group evolutionary strategy, and science and philosophy(truth-telling) under a single universally commensurable language.

BUT SCIENCE ADVANCES WITH FUNERALS

Yet, I suspect, that like in all science, as in all disciplines, knowledge progresses with funerals. Hans will not (or may not at this point be able to) abandon his investment in cosmopolitan pseudoscience, and german rationalism, and join the darwinian era of scientific reasoning. Rockwell is an exceptional organizer and activist, but has over-invested in fallacies, and in my experience hasn’t the depth of knowledge required to exit it. Block is a cosmopolitain in word and deed. And these are the only people producing anything of merit in the cosmopolitan, rothbardian-libertarian, anarcho-capitalist (diasporic separatist), movement.

So rather than engage in the Cosmopolitan (pseudoscientific), use of marxist(Cosmopolitan) straw men, lauding of undue praise, shaming of disagreement rather than fact or lie, rallying moral allies, rather than rallying to critical (scientific) truth, perhaps it would be time to restore the quest for liberty to its origins: the pursuit of “Sovereignty in Numbers”: the distributed dictatorship of sovereign men, who created that sovereignty by reciprocal insurance, and the organized application of violence to prohibit any alternative other than a condition of Sovereignty. The term Liberty is merely special pleading on the part of the middle class for conditions of sovereignty because of commercial rather than martial contributions to the commons. The term ‘Freedom’ is merely special pleading on the part of the working classes for conditions of sovereignty in exchange for participating in the market and maintaining the commons. The term positive freedom is merely a term used by the dependent classes for subsidy in exchange for non-violation of the commons. But it is sovereign men who create liberty, and freedom, and subsidy, by the organized application of violence to prohibit any alternative. And it is the prosperity that is created by Sovereign men in the forms of liberty, freedom, and subsidy, that attracts all to their domain.

Mises is not more important than Hayek; nor both more important than Popper; nor Rothbard and Hoppe more important than all three, nor me more important than all.

And Cosmopolitan (dishonest) rhetorical technique of heaping of undue praise on Mises despite his (intellectually embarrassing) attempt to cast his discovery of the method of criticizing empirical observations of cooperation (whether internal subjective tests, or external observed tests, or instrumentally observed tests) as purely deductive ‘science’ rather than an operational test of existential possibility of voluntary cooperation, and thereby objective morality: Natural Law; And arguing for the straw man of the virtue of economics rather than social science and the decidability of non-imposition, property in toto, and natural law; Undeservedly lauding Rothbard over the fallacy of the sufficiency of intersubjectively verifiable property while criticizing Hayek despite his correct identification of common law as a means of calculating the current scope of property in toto; All of these are just common intellectual failures of those who confuse religious pseudo-law, hermeneutic interpretation, rational justification, and feminine rallying and shaming, with the identification of, and truthful (testimonial) scientific (survivable) natural law by which we are able to use violence to enforce objective morality, and therefore produce economic returns without the creation of retaliation cycles.

WHAT IS TO BE DONE?

We will either refute and correct the Hoppeian/MIses Institute Narrative, and take (due) credit for solving the 2500 year old problem of the artificial demarcation between religion, philosophy, morality, law, and science, and forever cast the names of those involved in intellectual history, or Mises, Rothbard, Hoppe, and the Mises Institute and all its members will be remembered in history as the political and economic equivalent of phlogiston theory.

I will continue under the intentionally antagonistic label ‘Market Fascism’ which differs from Anarcho Capitalism by the simple criteria of using property in toto (demonstrated property) for decidability – including the commons of air, water, land, monument, institution, tradition, norm, and information – rather than intersubjectively verifiable property. The Tradition of Europa vs The Tradition of Commune and Ghetto.

Curt Doolittle

The Propertarian Institute

Kiev, Ukraine