Property Rights are the Foundation of Civilization
Joseph Newhard
Issue date: 4/18/07 Section: Commentary
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by Hans-Hermann Hoppe
Ludwig von Mises Institute, $30.00
For those who are serious about political philosophy, Dr. Hoppe is a breath of fresh air in an era dominated by a lot of "hot air" from our professors, politicians and pundits. I have found all of Hoppe's other books to be sufficiently accessible to the intelligent layman and indispensable to the serious student, and The Economics and Ethics of Private Property is no exception. In it, one will find a collection of essays rich in economic scholarship and deep in philosophical inquiry in which Hoppe delineates the ethics of private property while providing fascinating economic applications of the concept.
Perhaps the most important essay is On the Ultimate Justification of the Ethics of Private Property, where Hoppe offers the revolutionary Axiom of Argumentation. He demonstrates that only the "private property ethic can be justified argumentatively, because it is the praxeological presupposition of argumentation as such." He observes that self-ownership is implied in the very act of argumentation, and therefore that self-ownership cannot be denied without committing a performative contradiction. He also notes that property is a prerequisite for argumentation because without the ability to appropriate natural resources, mankind would die off and there would be no such thing as arguments. My reliance on his positive foundation of ethics has left my collectivist professors and friends unable to refute the principle of individual self-ownership.
Other essays include a devastating attack on the Keynesian theory of money, employment and interest; a deconstruction of the popular concept of a "public good," and what I found to be a powerful and persuasive critique of "free banking." Also quite interesting are Hoppe's investigation into the insidious origins of fiat currency, his essay examining the similarities and differences between Marxist and Austrian class analysis, and his work on epistemology and the Austrian method. I do not believe that "indispensable" is too strong a word to describe this book's importance for economists and libertarians. As an added bonus, the sturdy textbook binding, of which I'm a huge fan, guarantees readers a lifetime of intellectual stimulation.
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