Paleolibertarism: Il pensiero di Hans-Hermann Hoppe [Paleolibertarianism: The Thought of Hans-Hermann Hoppe], by Piero Vernaglione, was published just a few weeks ago in Italian.
This 116 page book provides a brief description of Hoppe’s entire “system” of thought–property ethics, epistemology, failed economic systems (socialism and democracy), anarcho-capitalism in operation, and strategy (secession).
Here is a book review in Italian and its English translation, courtesy Google.
In addition to works in foreign languages about Hoppe’s thought, Hoppe’s own publications have been translated into over 20 foreign languages.Update: Mr. Robert newson has translated the aforementioned review:
Review of “Paleolibertarianismo: Il pensiero di Hans-Hermann Hoppe”
(translated from http://passaggioalbosco.blogspot.com/2007/07/paleolibertarismo.html)
⃠A nimble, 119 page work, edited by Rubbettino (12euro), “Paleolibertarismo…” is researcher Piero Vernaglione’s monograph on the school of thought which has been most able to rigorously unite economic freedom and conservative culture, with special emphasis on the work of Hans-Hermann Hoppe.
Briefly, libertarianism (or anarcho-capitalism) is the “theory of justice” that promotes a free, stateless society centred around private property, consensual exchange, and the non-aggression principle. In particular, all individual rights (these days conflated with expressions such as “human rights”, “civil rights”, etc.) are conceived as property rights: for example “freedom of speech” cannot mean to claim to be able to say what one pleases at another’s house.
Libertarian theory, especially in its systematization by Murrary N. Rothbard, envisions and hopes for a society free of the state, the Leviathan responsible for aggression – above all through taxation – against individuals’ property (hence their freedoms).
By dint of a coherent, detailed and undoubtedly fascinating doctrine, it is maintained that all functions presently carried out by the state, including the administration of law and order could be performed by private actors in a free society.
In the introduction, Vernaglione writes: “Libertarianism is the theory that in the last half-century has probably presented the most serious challenge to the dominant political culture.” Certainly it is the doctrine that has provided the best tools to recognize the “emperor’s nudity”: the violent, abstract, unjust, and subversive mechanisms of state power and political modernity.
Coming of age in the US from the 1960′s and 70′s on, libertarianism was promptly highjacked by the social protest movements, easily able to twist the words and concepts of a rigorous doctrine that exalted merit, the market, personal responsibility, and serious commitment to the achievement of important objectives in one’s own life, for their own counter-cultural, multi-cultural, anti-religious and libertine ends.
This sort of manipulation of libertarian theory by left-libertarians (and the Libertarian Party), shrinking it down to a socialist-leaning and generalized anti-prohibitionism, claiming ever more “new rights”, and turning libertarian society into a sort of eternal rave-party of happiness,freeing man from work to deliver him to the paradise of irresponsibility, has had the merit of inspiring, from the 1980′s on, a more in-depth study of libertarianism, which, regarding theory of justice, had previously concentrated mainly on the distortions of political power, ignoring the cultural aspects decisive in promoting a free society.
Rothbard himself was a protagonist in this work, but the term “paleolibertarism” was coined in the 1990′s by Llewelyn H. Rockwell, Jr.: “We must get rid of the culturally defective framework of libertarianism. I suggest calling this substitute, with its ethical and cultural principles, “paleolibertarianism”, that is, old libertarianism. I use the term in the same way that conservatives use the term “paleoconservatism”: not as a new credo, but a reprising of one’s own roots, a way of distinguishing oneself from the neocons. We haven’t got an equivalent of neocons, but it’s urgent and appropriate to distinguish libertarianism from libertinism.”
In “The Manifesto of Paleolibertarianism”, Rockwell continues,”conservatives have always maintained, rightly so, that political freedom is a necessary but not sufficient condition for a good society. Political freedom isn’t even sufficient for free society. We also need social institutions and moral standards that encourage public virtue, and protect the individual from the state. Unfortunately, many libertarians – especially those of the Libertarian Party – see liberty as a necessary and sufficient condition for all purposes. Worse still, these people equate freedom from state oppression with freedom from cultural norms, religion, bourgeois morality, and social authority. In its seventeen years, the Libertarian Party has never reached one percent in a national election, but has ruined the most glorious political idea of human history, confusing it with libertinism. For the love of that glorious ideal, it’s time to give it a good cleaning-up.”
This natural sympathy between (paleo)libertarianism and conservative ideals, which best reflect the cultural roots of American political history, led Rothbard at the start of the 1990′s to support the American Religious Right in the scandals of the left-libertarians. Rockwell and other libertarians as well proposed alliances with the “paleoconservatives” of Pat Buchanan. The “dialogue” was subsequently largely interrupted by Rothbard’s death and Hans-Hermann Hoppe’s clarifications (see: “The Intellectual Incoherence of Conservatism”, also presented in Enclave – rivista libertaria magazine, no. 35, march 2007).
Paleolibertarians are opposed both to political conservatism, defined as the claim to unite cultural conservatism and welfare state, and to the left-libertarian or “modal libertarian” position, which confuses the struggle against the state with attacking the family, authority, religion (paleolibertarians are convinced that the cradle of the free society is to be traced back to the Judeo-Christian tradition), and the spontaneous hierarchies of a natural order and market society.
On one hand, in fact, it’s held that every good conservative must be an enemy of the state, whose history and growing networks have broken down the traditional institutions of western liberal societies, setting off what Hoppe defines as a process of de-civilization. The state, in fact, erodes individual liberties and intermediate bodies, looking to make for itself a sole interlocutor: the citizen/subject/elector/consumer:
“The state, to impose its role as judge of final recourse, must eliminate all independent jurisdictions and judges, and this requires the erosion or even the destruction of the authority of the head of the family, community, and the churches. This is the main reason for the bulk of the state’s policies. Public schooling and welfare serve this destructive objective, as do likewise the promotion of feminism, anti-discrimination policies, quotas, relativism, and multi-culturalism. All this undermines the family, the community, and the church. “Freeing” the individual from the discipline of these institutions, to render him “equal”, isolated, defenceless, and weak before the state”
(H.-H. Hoppe, Reviving the West).
In this way, for example, the mammoth systems of compulsory public welfare and assistance pervert the natural relations between parents and children, remove the natural importance of family ties, attack at the base the principles of personal responsibility and saving, promoting irrational social and economic behaviours: “releasing individuals from the obligation of looking after their own income, their own health, their own security, their own old-age and the education of their children, the obligatory state “insurance” represents a systematic attack on personal responsibility and on institutions like the family, relatives, local community, and church. Tthe dimension and the prospects for private provision of these activities are reduced, and so too diminishes the importance of the family, ties to relatives, children, community and church” (Ivi).
On the other hand, paleolibertarianism not only holds that the spreading of individual liberty would not result in a triumph of egotism, but it strongly asserts the incompatibilty of a free society with the diffusion of hedonistic, relativistic, and nihilistic cultures, weak thoughts, antisocial behaviours (eg. drug-taking), multi-culturalism, egalitarianism, etc. The individual cost of deviant behaviours, for example, absent welfare programmes, would be entirely borne by the very same antisocial subjects, rendering them completely marginal (private charity would finally regain its lost and glorious role, with the attention to efficiency and personal merit it has always had). The natural order of a stateless world is composed of freely recognized social authorities, able to guarantee its functioning and preservation from the aggression of politics. The removal of these social ties marks the defeat of the free society.
Rockwell, for example, writes about family: “The traditional family, produced by natural law, is the basic unit of a civil and free society. the family promotes the values necessary for the preservation of a free society such as conjugal love, self-discipline, patience, cooperation, respect for one’s elders, and self-denial. Families encourage moral behaviour and provide children with the appropriate education, thereby allowing continuation of the species. Chesterton said that the family “could be broadly defined as anarchic”, given that the origins of its authority are purely voluntary; the state didn’t invent it and cannot abolish it”.
It seems to me that Piero Vernaglione gets to the heart of paleolibertarianism (other important points of which are total rejection of military interventionism, and firm condemnation of all “neolibertarian” political compromises ), with these words:
“Traditional morality and economic freedom mutually reinforce each other in a sequence wherein there initially exists a causal relationship between the former and the latter, but subsequently a feedback mechanism comes into play, with economic freedom in its turn useful in strengthening and consolidating the traditional moral order”
The paleolibertarian proposal is to exit the statist prison via the only possible avenue: that of the virtuous loop between economic freedom and conservative culture.
{ 14 comments }
The Mises Institute should consider commissioning an Italian speaker to translate this work into English.
I think the intellectual contributions of Hoppe have been profound. And these achievements make it all the more tragic because his views have yet to be seriously digested, even among those intimately familiar with his work.
I think it is high time that we make Hoppe the new Rothbard! By that I mean the quintessential exponent of Misesian economic theory. Rothbard occupied this role during his lifetime, only to be truly recognized after his untimely death. Let not the same happen to Hoppe.
To 1st Commenter:
True enough, but Hoppe was not the originator of many ideas attributed to him. Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn, which Hoppe constantly cites deserves our attention also.
I agree! But do we consider Rothbard an originator in economic and political theory? His brilliant Man Economy and State is nothing more than a general re-statement of Mises’ Human Action. And one can read with great delight Rothbard’s contributions to political theory while not learning anything new provided there exists previous acquaintance with the work of Chodorov, Nock, Boettie, Spooner, &c.
So one does not need to claim originaltity in order to be considered a serious thinker. And more importantly, through the persistent amalgamation of previous theories, there invariably emerges entirely new contributions and insights, as is most evident in Rothbard himself, and, I would argue, in Hoppe.
So yes, Hoppe’s contributions to democratic theory follows that of Kuehhnelt-Leddihn, just like his important contributions to Praxeology follows those of Mises. But these unique contributions on Hoppe’s part were made possible by his intellectual predecessors, even though they may not be entirely original.
But this is no way emasculates the stature of Hoppe as a serious intellectual thinker.
I agree. In my opinion, Hoppe is a giant equal in stature to Mises or Rothbard. And he is still with us. How lucky is that?
Odd though that the title is paleo-libertarianism… Would it not be better to call it a form of liberalism in Europe? The term is not perverted yet there, so no reason to spread our admittadly less catchy and unamusing title “libertarian” elsewhere.
As far as I am concerned, our primary goal should be to cleanse the word liberal of American statist tampering; not to attempt to convert the real liberals in what would be a viewed as yet another American crusade.
I think the term liberal never fully reflected the pure libertarianism of the anarchist. So it might still be handy to use a different term to “liberal”.
paul raises a good and in my opinion incredibly accurate point. The philosophy of contemporary liberalism is fraught with concerns over monopolized security. The very idea of decentralization and individual responsibility is enough to send them into a frenzy of emotive irrationality. A contemporary liberal will always be found harboring fear of true freedom. A liberal, as I understand the term, has done more to sacrifice liberty for security than any other political philosophy that I can think of.
Miller,
You’ve got a point. In looking over both left wing “Critical Theory” and right wing denunciations of “Totalitarian Humanism”, I’m beginning to see a common thread of disagreement with the idea that a universally enforced statist conception of “objective law” and “human rights” is at all valid.
miller,
Thanks. Actually i stole the idea from Hoppe. When will i ever be original? LOL! I don’t even know what book he writes this in, probably democracy or else a theory on socialism…
It was a great revelation to me; the devastating results of the intellectual inconsistency of the old liberal. Are free markets best? Are coercive monopolies very bad? Does the state corrupt whatever it touches? So all of us liberals agree? But we think it best the state monopolizes security, courts and what else? Surely we’ve got to be kidding! LOL!
There have been four phases to liberalism: Pre-liberalism (Adam Smith, Voltaire, Burke), Early Liberalism (Tocqueville, Acton, among others), Paleo-Liberalism (Mises fits in here), and Neo-beralism (Roepke, Hayek, Ruestow, Hoppes, Rothbard even?).
Hope that clears it up. Substitute the word liberal for libertarian if you want.
Oh no, tough luck, Liberalism means left-wing, period. =>:) It doesn’t matter what it used to mean 200 years or whatever. By the way, why would anyone want paleo- in front of their preferred -ism? Paleo- means ancient and makes Conservatism look young.
- TLWP Sam,
In Europe, political liberalism is (in most places) pretty much free-market economy and a moderate form of libertarianism on the values’ side (i.e., to the right of libertarianism on the social line, same as libertarianism on the economic line); so, it’s NOT AT ALL left-wing, rather between libertarianism and conservatism. I guess the American equivalent would be “classical liberalismâ€.
Besides, liberalism, here, still means the philosophy of John Locke and JS Mill. I agree that libertarians are much more uncompromising (even the minarchists), which might justify using another term to mark a specificity… but then maybe not. Locke and Mill are not a bad heritage to claim and their writings are pretty radical as well: John Simmons reads Locke as “on the edge of anarchy†and I’ve seen a similar treatment of Mill’s “On Liberty†by an Italian professor.
Why should we leave socialists misuse the term liberal for their own purposes? or (worse) spread the confusion in countries where it never existed in the first place?
Last, IMHO, anarchism is just liberalism pushed to its logical conclusions (various types of minarchism being somewhere on the line in between the two). So, we can just point that out to (classical) liberals and move on with the discussion… it helps in convincing liberals (who are otherwise frightened by the term anarchism and tend to equate it with anti-globalism or leftist vandalism -as pretty much everybody else, but radical libertarians; sigh -:) of the virtues of anarchism and in getting allies!
This being said, I tend to agree with you about “paleo-â€whatever… First time I saw the term “paleo-libertarianismâ€, it kinda scared me; I was wondering whether those people meant to go back to 19th century anarchist communes or to tribal modes of organisations?! I’d rather see libertarianism as the way of the future. But, well, I guess, potential readers are most likely to be accounted with the term beforehand.
- Dain,
Human rights can’t be state-enforced; that’d be an inherent contradiction. Human rights are a synonym for the freedom from state intervention, the sphere of self-sovereignty still recognised to each individual! Claiming the opposite is pure double-speak… which (of course) shouldn’t astonish us when issued by states and consorts.
Best, M-
Neo-liberalism in America arose a bit after the “New Left” had died down and mainstream liberalism was performing poorly both in terms of its social goals and electorally. The Neo-liberals sought to reform liberalism for the modern era and the result was Bill Clinton. I say good for them. Unfortunately many neo-liberals (often associated with “The New Republic”) discredited themselves by supporting the Iraq war and often viciously criticizing those who dissagreed. Now the “progressive movement” or the “net-roots” are pushing them to the side. In economics the division is between the Economic Policy Institute and Rubin’s “Hamilton Project”, with the rift discussed from a “progressive” perspective here. I’m glad the Republicans got punished but I’m wary over what will happen now.
News: An English translation is in the works.
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