The Economics and Ethics of Private Property
Studies in Political Economy and Philosophy
Second Edition
Hans-Hermann Hoppe
Ludwig von Mises Institute AUBURN, ALABAMA Copyright © 1993 by Kluwer Academic Publishers Copyright © 2006 by the Ludwig von Mises Institute
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of reprints in the context of reviews. For information write the Ludwig von Mises Institute, 518 West Magnolia Avenue, Auburn, Alabama 36832.
Paperback Edition ISBN: 978-1-61016-679-9 TO MURRAY N. ROTHBARD
CONTENTS
Preface to the Second Edition ...... ix Preface to the First Edition...... xi
PART ONE - ECONOMICS
1 Fallacies of the Public Goods Theory and the Production of Security ...... 3 2 The Economics and Sociology of Taxation ...... 33 3 Banking, Nation States, and International Politics: A Sociological Reconstruction of the Present Economic Order . . 77 4 Marxist and Austrian Class Analysis ...... 117 5 Theory of Employment, Money, Interest, and the Capitalist Process: The Misesian Case Against Keynes...... 139 6 How is Fiat Money Possible?—or, The Devolution of Money and Credit ...... 175 7 Against Fiduciary Media ...... 205 8 Socialism: A Property or Knowledge Problem? ...... 255
PART TWO - PHILOSOPHY
9 On Praxeology and the Praxeological Foundation of Epistemology ...... 265 10 Is Research Based on Causal Scientific Principles Possible in the Social Sciences? ...... 295 11 From the Economics of Laissez Faire to the Ethics of Libertarianism...... 305 12 The Justice of Economic Efficiency ...... 331 13 On the Ultimate Justification of the Ethics of Private Property...... 339 14 Austrian Rationalism in the Age of the Decline of Positivism . . 347 15 Rothbardian Ethics...... 381
Appendix: Four Critical Replies...... 399 Subject Index ...... 419 Name Index...... 429
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Preface to the Second Edition
he first edition of The Economics and Ethics of Private Prop- erty, published in 1993, has been out of print for several years. T For some time and from many sides I have been urged to pre- pare a new edition, and Llewellyn Rockwell has graciously offered the Ludwig von Mises Institute to serve as its publisher. The Economics and Ethics of Private Property was dedicated to my teacher and mentor, Murray N. Rothbard, with whom I had been closely associated during the last ten years of his life, first as a visit- ing scholar at the Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute in New York City and after 1986 as a colleague at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. The year 2005 marks the tenth anniversary of Rothbard’s death. Thus, it seemed a most appropriate time to honor Murray anew with this second edition. The present edition of The Economics and Ethics of Private Prop- erty is enlarged. It adds four articles written after the original publi- cation of the book but related thematically to its central subject mat- ter of the economic and ethic rationale of the institution of private property—chapters 6, 7, 8, and 15. The opportunity of a new edition has also been used to make significant editorial improvements and revisions.
Hans Hermann Hoppe Las Vegas, Nevada, 2005
ix
Preface to the First Edition
he collapse of socialism across Eastern Europe—as mani- fested most dramatically by the events of the forever memo- T rable November 9, 1989, when the Germans of East and West reunited, moved and overjoyed, on top of the Berlin Wall—has added more support and urgency to the central thesis of this volume than I had ever hoped for. Whether the following studies deal with economic topics such as employment, interest, money, banking, business cycles, taxes, public goods, or growth; with philosophical problems as the foundations of knowledge, and of economics and ethics in particular; or the recon- struction and theoretical explanation of historical and sociological phenomena such as exploitation, the rise and fall of civilizations, international politics, war, imperialism, and the role of ideas and ide- ological movements in the course of social evolution—each ulti- mately contributes to but one conclusion: The right to private prop- erty is an indisputably valid, absolute principle of ethics and the basis for continuous “optimal” economic progress. To rise from the ruins of socialism and overcome the stagnation of the Western welfare states, nothing will suffice but the uncompromising privatization of all socialized, that is, government, property and the establishment of a contractual society based on the recognition of the absoluteness of private property rights.
xi xii The Economics and Ethics of Private Property