Hans Hermann Hoppe is by far one of the most controversial individuals in the libertarian movement. This is due to both the left (and the right) misunderstanding his political and economic stances. In order to understand why Hoppe is misunderstood, we must first understand who Hoppe is and why he thinks the way he does.
Brief History: Hans Herman Hoppe was born in West Germany in September 2nd 1949. He later attended the German school Saarland University as an undergraduate student and later got his Ph.D. and Master’s Degree at the Frankfurt-based school of Goethe University. He became a student of the self-identified Marxist Jürgen Habermas. Hoppe was originally very supportive of his mentor but eventually disavowed him due to his “morally bankrupt” Leftist beliefs. This eventually led to him learning about Austrian Economics:
“He began as a prize student of Jürgen Habermas, the famous German philosopher and social theorist. Habermas was, and remains to this day, a committed Marxist. He is the leader of the notorious Frankfurt school. Habermas was very impressed with Hans, and, under the patronage of this eminent Marxist, Hans had every reason to expect a stellar academic career in his native Germany. A problem soon arose, though, one which has had happy results for all those who love liberty. Hans soon came to realize that the leftism and socialism he had grown up with was intellectually barren and morally bankrupt. He discovered on his own the great works of Ludwig von Mises and Murray N. Rothbard.”
A Short History of Man – Progress and Decline by Hans Hermann Hoppe (Introduction by Lew Rockwell) page 9
After learning about free-market economics from Mises and Rothbard, Hoppe would later expand upon the ideas promoted by Mises and Rothbard through his own academic contributions. The works of Hoppe have received a mixed reception amongst the libertarian movement depending on who you ask. Hoppe has simultaneously inspired individuals such as Curtis Yarvin and Stephan Kinsella while also recieving criticism from leftist organizations like UnKoch My Campus and bleeding heart Libertarians such as Nathan Smith. Now that we’ve explained who Hoppe is, it’s now time to talk about his more controversial beliefs.
“Physical Removal”: Hoppe’s stance on freedom of association is by far the most controversial and misunderstood aspect of his book “Democracy: The God That Failed”:
“As soon as mature members of society habitually express acceptance or even advocate egalitarian sentiments, whether in the form of democracy (majority rule) or of communism, it becomes essential that other members, and in particular the natural social elites, be prepared to act decisively and, in the case of continued nonconformity, exclude and ultimately expel these members from society. In a covenant concluded among proprietor and community tenants for the purpose of protecting their private property, no such thing as a right to free (unlimited) speech exists, not even to unlimited speech on one’s own tenant-property. One may say innumerable things and promote almost any idea under the sun, but naturally no one is permitted to advocate ideas contrary to the very purpose of the covenant of preserving and protecting private property, such as democracy and communism. There can be no tolerance toward democrats and communists in a libertarian social order. They will have to be physically separated and expelled from society. 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. They—the advocates of alternative, non-family and kin-centered lifestyles such as, for instance, individual hedonism, parasitism, nature–environment worship, homosexuality, or communism—will have to be physically removed from society, too, if one is to maintain a libertarian order.”
Democracy: The God That Failed by Hans Hermann Hoppe page 218
Most leftists will stop reading here and assume Hoppe is advocating for fascism or whatever buzzword they’re using to demonize him. In reality during an interview with Micheal Malice he makes it very clear that his plans for “physical removal” is much more akin to social ostracism:
Another issue I have with Hoppe’s “Physcial Removal” quote is that it’s also taken out of context by the right as well. I’ve seen right-wingers claim that Hoppe advocated for an Pinochet-style dictatorship. This is blatantly untrue and highly misleading for the same reasons mentioned above. In order to understand why this occured we must first talk about the “Free Helicopter Memes”.
Free Ride, Left Side: During Donald Trump’s 2016 political campaign, various Trump supporters have begun posting memes joking about the murder of Trump’s political enemies through death flights (a form of execution involving throwing the victim out of helicopters) on bulletin boards such as 4chan. Examples of these memes can be seen down bellow:
Eventually these “Free Helicopter Ride” memes began to spread their way into the libertarian movement around 2017-2018 due to the infamous Physical Removal quote mentioned previously. Examples of these memes can be seen down bellow:
Don’t get the wrong idea. I generally like these memes, mainly because it pisses off the right people. It’s better to mock your enemies then allow yourself to become terrified of them. Fear is a sign of weakness, so it’s important for us to avoid showing fear when facing our opponents. At the same time though there are individuals who take the memes too far and unironically advocate for mass genocide of political opponents. Remember that these memes are meant to be political satire aren’t representative of Hoppe’s actual beliefs.
Hoppe On Monarchism: Another misconception about Hoppe that many individuals (mainly on the right) have of Hoppe is his views on Monarchism. Many Neo-Reactionaries like Curtis Yarvin assume that Hoppe’s book “Democracy: The God That Failed” is pro-Monarchism. In reality, Hoppe makes it very clear that he only sees Monarchism as the lesser of two evils when compared to Democracy:
“Despite the comparatively favorable portrait presented of monarchy, I am not a monarchist and the following is not a defense of monarchy. Instead, the position taken toward monarchy is this: If one must have a state, defined as an agency that exercises a compulsory territorial monopoly of ultimate decisionmaking (jurisdiction) and of taxation, then it is economically and ethically advantageous to choose monarchy over democracy.”
Democracy The God That Failed by Hans Hermann Hoppe page XX
Basically, Hoppe’s main objection to Monarchist nation-states is that it’s an institution that supposedly requires a monopoly on the use of force and coercive taxation to fund. What Hoppe fails to realize is that Monarchism doesn’t need force to exist. I’ve already explained why this is the case in my first blog post on Stateless Sovereignty. Despite Hoppe’s opposition to Monarchism, It’s not impossible for Monarchists to take influence from Hoppe’s work. Personally, my favorite part of that book is when Hoppe talks about the time preference of Monarchies compared to Democracies:
“A government is a territorial monopolist of compulsion—an agency which may engage in continual, institutionalized property rights violations and the exploitation—in the form of expropriation, taxation and regulation—of private property owners. Assuming no more than self-interest on the part of government agents, all governments must be expected to make use of this monopoly and exhibit a tendency toward increased exploitation. However, not every form of government can be expected to be equally successful in this endeavor or to go about it in the same way. Rather, in light of elementary economic theory, the conduct of government and the effects of government policy on civil society can be expected to be systematically different, depending on whether the government apparatus is owned privately or publicly. The defining characteristic of private government ownership is that the expropriated resources and the monopoly privilege of future expropriation are individually owned. The appropriated resources are added to the ruler’s private estate and treated as if they were a part of it, and the monopoly privilege of future expropriation is attached as a title to this estate and leads to an instant increase in its present value (‘capitalization’ of monopoly profit). Most importantly, as private owner of the government estate, the ruler is entitled to pass his possessions onto his personal heir; he may sell, rent, or give away part or all of his privileged estate and privately pocket the receipts from the sale or rental; and he may personally employ or dismiss every administrator and employee of his estate. In contrast, with a publicly owned government the control over the government apparatus lies in the hands of a trustee, or caretaker. The caretaker may use the apparatus to his personal advantage, but he does not own it. He cannot sell government resources and privately pocket the receipts, nor can he pass government possessions onto his personal heir. He owns the current use of government resources, but not their capital value. Moreover, while entrance into the position of a private owner of government is restricted by the owner’s personal discretion, entrance into the position of a caretaker–ruler is open. Anyone, in principle, can become the government’s caretaker. From these assumptions two central, interrelated predictions can be deduced:
(1) A private government owner will tend to have a systematically longer planning horizon, i.e., his degree of time preference will be lower, and accordingly, his degree of economic exploitation will tend to be less than that of a government caretaker; and
(2), subject to a higher degree of exploitation the nongovernmental public will also be comparatively more present-oriented under a system of publicly-owned government than under a regime of private government ownership.
A private government owner will predictably try to maximize his total wealth; i.e., the present value of his estate and his current income. He will not want to increase his current income at the expense of a more than proportional drop in the present value of his assets, and because acts of current income acquisition invariably have repercussions on present asset values (reflecting the value of all future—expected—asset earnings discounted by the rate of time preference), private ownership in and of itself leads to economic calculation and thus promotes farsightedness. In the case of the private ownership of government, this implies a distinct moderation with respect to the ruler’s incentive to exploit his monopoly privilege of expropriation, for acts of expropriation are by their nature parasitic upon prior acts of production on the part of the nongovernmental public. Where nothing has first been produced, nothing can be expropriated; and where everything is expropriated, all future production will come to a shrieking halt. Accordingly, a private government owner will want to avoid exploiting his subjects so heavily, for instance, as to reduce his future earnings potential to such an extent that the present value of his estate actually falls. Instead, in order to preserve or possibly even enhance the value of his personal property, he will systematically restrain himself in his exploitation policies. For the lower the degree of exploitation, the more productive the subject population will be; and the more productive the population, the higher will be the value of the ruler’s parasitic monopoly of expropriation. He will use his monopolistic privilege, of course. He will not not exploit. But as the government’s private owner, it is in his interest to draw parasitically on a growing, increasingly productive and prosperous nongovernment economy as this would effortlessly also increase his own wealth and prosperity—and the degree of exploitation thus would tend to be low.”
Democracy: The God That Failed by Hans Hermann Hoppe page 45-47
Basically what Hoppe is saying here is that the owners of “private governments” (aka Monarchies and Aristocracies) have a strong incentive to lower exploitation and taxation in order to maximize their wealth and make sure they have something to pass off to their heir before they die. This is all due to their naturally lower time preference. Time preference within the context of politics is how much a individual cares about the present compared to the future. An individual with lower time preference is far more likely to care about long term success over short term gains. The opposite is the case for high time preference individuals. Monarchies and Aristocracies have lower time preference due to their lack of term limits.
The vast majority of Monarchies and Aristocracies throughout history have allowed their rulers to remain in power until they died. After death, their assets would be given to a heir (successor) that the monarch or aristocrat chosen before death. If a individual of royality had no heir then their assets would be given to a new royal family or someone else genetically related to the original Aristocrat or Monarch in question. This is why Monarchies tend to have lower time preference. It’s because they have too much to lose compared to democratic representatives.
Democratic representatives on the other hand, care very little about long term success due to the lack of incentives to due so. A democratic caretaker doesn’t own a government assets and thus doesn’t have to worry about wasting or damaging government infastructure and resources. Democratic governments also have strict term limits. This means a representative can only remain in office for so long. This may seem like a good thing since it allows people to “vote out” bad leaders during elections. But in reality such a policy only further increases the time preference of the representatives. Because of their limited time in office, elected representatives only really focus on undoing whatever polticial progress their enemies have made while they were in office rather than fufilling campaign promises or maintaining government and economic stability. Although Hoppe isn’t a Monarchist, his critiques of modern Democracy is still something Monarchists can take ideas from.
Hoppe The “Marxist”: Another thing regime libertarians get wrong about Hoppe is when he tried to mix Marxist historical analysis with Austrian econonomics. Until recently most lolberts (regime libtertarians/libertines) would only accuse Hoppe of fascism (something that I debunked earlier) and call it a day. That is until Hoppe’s old work on Marxism came into light again in the libertarian movement. Now Hoppe went from being slandered as a “closeted fascist” to a “blatant communist” in less than a year. In order to understand why this happenend in such little time we need to look at Hoppe’s analysis of Marxism:
“The gradual abolition of feudal and absolutist rule and the rise of increasingly capitalist societies in Western Europe and the United States-accompanied by unheard of economic growth and increasing population-was the result of a growing class consciousness among the exploited, who were ideologically molded together through the doctrines of natural rights and liberalism. In this Austrians and Marxists agree. They disagree, however, as to whether the reversal of this liberalization process and the steadily increased levels of exploitation in these societies since the last third of the nineteenth century, and particularly pronounced since World War I, are the result of a loss in class consciousness. In fact, in the Austrian view Marxism must accept much of the blame for this development
Marxist and Austrian Class Analysis by Hans Hermann Hoppe pages 7-9
by misdirecting attention from the correct exploitation model of the homesteader producer-saver-contractor versus the non-homesteader-producer-saver-contractor to the fallacious model of the wage earner versus the capitalist, thus muddling
things up.” The establishment of a ruling class over an exploited one many times its size by coercion and the manipulation of public opinion, i.e., a low degree of class consciousness among the exploited, finds its most basic institutional expression
in the creation of a system of public law superimposed on private law. The ruling class sets itself apart and protects its position as a ruling class by adopting a constitution for their firm’s operations. On the one hand, by formalizing the internal operations within the state apparatus as well as its relations with the exploited population, a constitution creates some degree of legal stability. The more familiar and popular private law notions are incorporated into constitutional and public law, the more favorably disposed will be the public to the existence of the state. On the other hand, any constitution and public law also formalizes the immune status of the ruling class as regards the homesteading principle. It formalizes the right of the state’s representatives to engage in non-productive and non-contractual
property acquisitions and the ultimate subordination of private to public law. Class justice, i.e., one set of laws for the rulers and another for the ruled, comes to bear in this dualism of public and private law and in the domination and infiltration of public law over and into private law. It is not because private property rights are recognized by law, as Marxists think, that class justice is established.
Rather, class justice comes into being precisely whenever a legal distinction exists between a class of persons acting under and being protected by public law and another class acting under and being protected instead by some subordinate private law. More specifically then, the basic proposition of the Marxist theory of the state in particular is false. The state is not exploitative because it protects the capitalists’ property rights, but because it itself is exempt from the restriction of having to acquire property productively and contractually. In spite of this fundamental misconception, however, Marxism, because it correctly interprets the state as exploitative (unlike, for example, the public choice
school, which sees it as normal firm among others),” is on to some important insights regarding the logic of state operations. For one thing, it recognizes the strategic function of redistributionist state policies. As an exploitative firm, the state must at all times be interested in a low degree of class consciousness among the ruled. The redistribution of property and income is the state’s means by which it can create divisiveness among the public and destroy the formation of a unifying class consciousness among the exploited. Furthermore, the redistribution of state power itself through democratizing the state constitution and opening up every ruling position to everyone and granting everyone the right to participate
in the determination of state personnel and policy is actually a means for reducing the resistance against exploitation as such. Secondly, the state is indeed, as Marxists see it, the great center of ideological propaganda and mystification: Exploitation is really freedom; taxes are really voluntary contributions; noncontractual relations are really “conceptually” contractual ones; no one is ruled
by anyone but we all rule ourselves; without the state neither law nor security would exist; and the poor would perish, etc. All of this is part of the ideological superstructure designed to legitimize an underlying basis of economic exploitation. And finally, Marxists are also correct in noticing the close association between the state and business, especially the banking elite-even though their
explanation for it is faulty. The reason is not that the bourgeois establishment sees and supports the state as the guarantor of private property rights and contractualism. On the contrary, the establishment correctly perceives the state as the very antithesis to private property that it is and takes a close interest in it
for this reason. The more successful a business, the larger the potential danger of governmental exploitation, but the larger also the potential gains that can be achieved if it can come under government’s special protection and is exempt from
the full weight of capitalist competition. This is why the business establishment is interested in the state and its infiltration. The ruling elite in turn is interested in close cooperation with the business establishment because of its fmancial powers.
In particular, the banking elite is of interest because as an exploitative firm the state naturally wishes to possess complete autonomy for counterfeiting. By offering
to cut the banking elite in on its own counterfeiting machinations and allowing them to counterfeit in addition to its own counterfeited notes under a regime of fractional reserve banking, the state can easily reach this goal and establish a system of state monopolized money and cartelied banking controlled by the central
bank. And through this direct counterfeiting connection with the banking system and by extension the banks’ major clients, the ruling class in fact extends far beyond the state apparatus to the very nerve centers of civil society-not that much different, at least in appearance, from the picture that Marxists like to paint of the cooperation between banking, business elites, and the state.”Competition within the ruling class and among different ruling classes brings about a tendency toward increasing concentration. Marxism is right in this. However, its faulty theory of exploitation again leads it to locate the cause for this tendency in the wrong place.
Notice how no where in this quote (or the full article) does Hoppe claim that Marxism is a good ideology. He supports Marx’s historical analysis for the most part while also condemning his theory on exploitation and other fallacies promoted by him. The fact that Lolberts are claiming Hoppe is a Marxist for anazlying Marxism for what it really is shows us that none of these morons actually read the article in question. All Hoppe is doing is highlighting the Pros and Cons of Marxism. Calling him a “Marxist” for this makes no damn sense.
In conclusion, Hans Hermann Hoppe was an incredibly influencial individual in the libertarian movement. His knowledge of Austrian economics and History helped inspire many people. As the years go by it becomes more and more obvious that the real enemy to the liberty movement isn’t Hoppe or his Hoppean supporters but instead it’s the libertines. These libertines care less about preserving consistent methodological values or social order and care more preserving their hedonistic and degenerate lifestyles. It’s time to crush the Lolbert Mob once and for all.
Stateless Sovereignty 