Hoppe: A Précis

On my list of things to write someday is an overview of the social thought of Hoppe, whom I consider to be the preeminent social thinker of our time, along the lines of Oxford University Press’s 100-page “A Very Short Introduction” series (previously called “Past Masters“). ¹ I may use the term “A Précis” due to my fascination with Louisiana law and French terms and my former law professor Alain Levasseur’s fondness for this term for a concise, student-oriented textbook or summary-style treatise, something shorter and more accessible than a full-scale, comprehensive treatise, or “a student edition of a comprehensive treatise with the same title.” ²

In the meantime, the assembled links will have to suffice.

• Panel: The Significance of Hans-Hermann Hoppe (Austrian Economics Research Conference 2019, Mises Institute, Auburn, Ala.)
• Stephan Kinsella, ^“Mises, Rothbard, Hoppe: An Indispensable Framework,” in Rothbard at 100: A Tribute and Assessment, Stephan Kinsella and Hans-Hermann Hoppe, eds. (Papinian Press and The Saif House, 2026)
• Hülsmann and Kinsella, “Preface,” in A Life in Liberty: Liber Amicorum in Honor of Hans-Hermann Hoppe, Jörg Guido Hülsmann and Stephan Kinsella, eds. (Houston, Texas: Papinian Press, 2024)
• Hülsmann and Kinsella, “Introduction: Essays in Honor of Hans-Hermann Hoppe,” Mises Daily (Aug. 7, 2009), in Guido Hülsmann & Stephan Kinsella, eds., Property, Freedom, and Society: Essays in Honor of Hans-Hermann Hoppe (Mises Institute, 2009)
• Kinsella, “Foreword,” in Hans-Hermann Hoppe, A Theory of Socialism and Capitalism (Laissez Faire Books, 2013)
• Kinsella, “Afterword,” in Hans-Hermann Hoppe, The Great Fiction: Property, Economy, Society, and the Politics of Decline (Laissez Faire Books, 2012)
• Kinsella, six-lecture Mises Academy course “The Social Theory of Hoppe” (Mises Academy, 2011)
• Kinsella, “Read Hoppe, Then Nothing Is the Same,” Mises Daily (June 10 2011) (introducing the Mises Academy course)

See also:

• Kinsella, Hoppe: First significant thinker to get libertarianism totally right
• ——, Hoppe’s Argumentation Ethics and Its Critics
• ——, Argumentation Ethics and Liberty: A Concise Guide
• Hoppe, remarks in Presentation of the 2015 Murray N. Rothbard Medal of Freedom
• Hoppe, remarks in Panel: The Significance of Hans-Hermann Hoppe (Austrian Economics Research Conference 2019, Mises Institute, Auburn, Ala.)
• Kinsella, Book Review of Hans-Hermann Hoppe, The Economics and Ethics of Private Property (1993), The Freeman (Nov. 1994): 640–642
• ——, “The Undeniable Morality of Capitalism,” St. Mary’s L. J. 25, no. 4 (1994): 1419–47 [review essay of Hans-Hermann Hoppe, The Economics and Ethics of Private Property (1993)], in Legal Foundations of a Free Society (Houston: Papinian Press, 2023)
• ——, Hoppe on Covenant Communities and Advocates of Alternative Lifestyles
• ——, Hoppe Is Not A Monarchist
• ——, Hoppe on Intellectual Property
• ——, Hoppe on Liberal Economies and War
• ——, Hoppe on Property Rights in Physical Integrity vs Value
• ——, Hoppe on Treating Aggressors as Mere “Technical Problems”

For some classic and selected recent overviews by Hoppe:

• Resources listed at Rothbard at 100: A Tribute and Assessment, Stephan Kinsella and Hans-Hermann Hoppe, eds. (Papinian Press and The Saif House, 2026)
• Hoppe, “Coming of Age with Murray” (Mises Institute, Oct. 2017)
• ——, Libertarianism and the “Alt-Right” (PFS 2017)
• ——, Murray N. Rothbard and the Ethics of Liberty, Introduction to the new edition of Murray N. Rothbard, The Ethics of Liberty (New York: New York University Press, 1998)
• ——, Hoppe’s Review of Rothbard’s Festschrift
• ——, Introduction to Democracy: The God That Failed

Update: there are not many issues I can think of where I disagree with Hans. He is agnostic; I am atheist; but that is minor. I am more pro-bitcoin than he is, I think. On occasion he slightly slips and refers to production and transformation as a source of property rights but when he is being careful it is clear he is really talking about production as a source of wealth (and he has agreed with me in private on this nuance). ³ One issue I have not been able to get clear in my mind is this comment in Jörg Guido Hülsmann, Free Banking and the Free Bankers, RAE, Vol. 9, No. 1 (1996). He writes:

Some critics of fractional reserve banking think that the root of the free bankers’ fallacies is that they maintain that the holding of money constitutes savings. Yet, as it has already been stated above: one cannot save without investing, nor is it possible to invest without saving at the same time. This refers to all goods and, thus, to money. The terms savings and investment (or better: savings-investment) refer to all actions. From the point of view of the acting person each means which he disposes of-even for the shortest delay of time-is savings-investment. Like the cate-gory of means-ends, it is a categorical feature of action. The machines owned by a great industrialist are as much his savings-investment as the coffee cup that I own as a part of my savings-investment. So are cars, refrigerators, dentists’ equipment, computers, and the fresh pizza served in a restaurant. And so is the money that one owns, too.⁶⁴

⁶⁴ Here my opinion deviates from that of Rothbard. He says: “A man may allocate his money to consumption, investment, or addition to his cash balance.” (Man, Economy, and State, p. 678, see also pp. 179f), thus suggesting that holding a cash balance is something different from savings-investment. Hans-Hermann Hoppe has given another expression to this view in claiming that time-preference and the utility of money are “two distinct and praxeologically unrelated factors” (The Economics and Ethics of Private Property [Boston: Kluwer, 1993], p. 119). To be sure, there is no causal connection between the demand for money and the interest rate. Increasing the quantity of money cannot reduce the interest rate because money’s real value, its purchasing power, would be reduced accordingly. Yet this is no reason to overlook the unity in all acts, viz., in all valuation. Value is the preference accorded to an effect, and at least in the realm of action this can mean nothing but that the preferred effect should be achieved before alternative but less urgent effects. As action-and all other means-are always employed in the pursuit of some ends or effects acting man necessarily has to value (i.e., select) his means according to the urgency of the ends they are supposed to achieve. Thus, time-valuation is present in all actions. Actions with money can be no exception.

However, it should be noted that it is the holding of money which constitutes savings-investment. The holding of money substitutes, on the other hand, does not constitute savings-investment but claims on savings-investment in the form of money. It cannot give disposition of more than the existing stock of money-even if the owners of fiduciary money substitutes believe the contrary to be the case. See Bohm-Bawerk, “Rechte und Verhaeltnisse vom gueterwirtschaftlichen Stand-punkt,” in Gesammelte Schriften (Frankfurt!M.: Sauer & Auvermann, 1968).

Note the statement: “The holding of money substitutes, on the other hand, does not constitute savings-investment but claims on savings-investment in the form of money.”

If anything, I now somewhat leery of this kind of analysis, which is common in economic reasoning: the intermixture of legal-juridical and economic analysis. Strictly speaking economic analysis is descriptive and wertfrei. As Hoppe notes:

Essentially, economic analysis consists of: (1) an understanding of the categories of action and an understanding of the meaning of a change in values, costs, technological knowledge, etc.; (2) a description of a situation in which these categories assume concrete meaning, where definite people are identified as actors with definite objects specified as their means of action, with definite goals identified as values and definite things specified as costs; and (3) a deduction of the consequences that result from the performance of some specified action in this situation, or of the consequences that result for an actor if this situation is changed in a specified way. And this deduction must yield a priori-valid conclusions, provided there is no flaw in the very process of deduction and the situation and the change introduced into it being given, and a priori—valid conclusions about reality if the situation and situation-change, as described, can themselves be identified as real, because then their validity would ultimately go back to the indisputable validity of the categories of action. ⁴

It is true that there can be a distinction between praxeological-teleological analysis, which studies the purpose and intent behind action, and contingent facts, but they are both descriptive, not normative.

Economics starts with praxeology and introduces assumptions to make it more interesting, such as the assumption that there are other people (society; exchange; division of labor) and that there is money (catallactics). ⁵ But even Crusoe alone on his island acts and employs scarce resources, so economic analysis applies to him too: there is time preference, production, profit and loss, capital and consumer goods, opportunity cost, and so on.

Mises himself was careful to distinguish between descriptive-economic and normative-juristic-legal realms, when he distinguished between possession of a resource (his “sociological” or “catallactic” “ownership”) and the legal ownership of a resource (his juristic ownership). ⁶

Bohm-Bawerk of course recognizes that legal rights can play a role in economic analysis, but they should be explicitly introduced.  ⁷

In Human Action (Part Six) and Man, Economy, and State, with Power and Market (ch. 12 of Man, Economy, and State and most of Power and Market), Mises and Rothbard analyze the implications of a hampered market: that is, some deviation from the natural or normative situation in which property rights exist to support normal descriptive economic possession. ⁸

(Aside: I always thought it odd Mises wrote:

Up to now the only part of praxeology that has been developed into a scientific system is economics. A Polish philosopher, Tadeusz Kotarbinski, is trying to develop a new branch of praxeology, the praxeological theory of conflict and war as opposed to the theory of cooperation or economics.[6][6] T. Kotarbinski, “Considérations sur la théorie générale de la lutte,” Appendix to Z Zagadnien Ogólnej Teorii Walki (Warsaw, 1938), pp. 65-92; the same author, “Idée de la methodologie générale praxeologie,” Travaux du IXe Congrés International de Philosophie (Paris, 1937), IV, 190-94. The theory of games has no reference whatever to the theory of action. Of course, playing a game is action, but so is smoking a cigarette or munching a sandwich. See below, pp. 87 ff. ⁹

If only part of praxeology has been developed, in “economics,” and it could be developed into a “praxeological theory of conflict and war as opposed to the theory of cooperation or economics”, then what is Part Six, discussing the hampered market economy? It seems to me that economics relies on contingent assumptions to make the analysis interesting; this has to involve action and possession of resources; but usually involved other people, money, exchange. And it usually assumes normative, juristic, legal rights that are based on underlying economic behavior like possession, production, trade. ¹⁰ And why does there need to be a separate “praxeological” “theory of games”? After all it’s just one of many things people do. Just as in economics, to make it “more interesting,” we introduce contingent assumptions like: there are other people (society), exchange, specialization and division of labor, preference for consumption over labor, there is money not mere barter (catallactics), there are laws not merely brute force; so we could introduce other assumptions like: there are bad laws/hampered market; people like to play games.)

And in discussions of banking, money, etc., economists presume not only the existence of money and possession and exchange, but also a legal system that recognizes the normative-legal-juridical aspects of these things. Such as Hulsmann’s comment that IOUs or money substitutes are “claims” for goods. But these concepts are not uncontroversial primitives. As an example in standard positive law, contracts are views as legally enforceable obligations. Yet in Rothbard’s (correct, in my view) approach, contracts are not enforceable obligations or promises, but are just transfers of title to owned resources—in my view, contracts are the legal analog to economic exchange. ¹¹ But money proper is a purely economic-descriptive concept, just as possession is, and just as exchange is. If we are going to read a lot into the legal classification of some instrument–a stock, a “title,” “ownership,” a “debt”—we need to be both explicit and careful about this, to avoid equivocation, question-begging, loaded questions, and so on. ¹² For example quite often in the fractional-reserve debates ¹³ there are arguments about ownership, title, “claims,” IOUs/debts, fraud, notice; most of these are juristic or legal concepts and so any normative assumptions contained therein should be made clear, along with the awareness that any conclusions reached are dependent on the soundness of the legal categories assumed.

Update: From a Facebook post a couple years ago: [note: see Kinsella, “Mises, Rothbard, Hoppe: An Indispensable Framework,” in Rothbard at 100: A Tribute and Assessment, Stephan Kinsella and Hans-Hermann Hoppe, eds. (March 2, 2026)]

1. See, e.g., Plato by R.M. Hare, Kant by Roger Scruton, etc. [↩]
2. See, e.g., Alain Levasseur, Louisiana Law of Obligations in General: A Précis (3^rd ed. LexisNexis, 2009); idem, Louisiana Law of Conventional Obligations: A Précis (LexisNexis, 2010); idem, Alain Levasseur  and David Gruning, Louisiana Law of Sale and Lease: A Précis, 3^rd ed. (Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press, 2015). [↩]
3. Libertarian and Lockean Creationism: Creation As a Source of Wealth, not Property Rights; Hayek’s “Fund of Experience”; the Distinction Between Scarce Means and Knowledge as Guides to Action. [↩]
4. Hoppe, TSC p. 142. [↩]
5. See Mises: Keep It Interesting. [↩]
6. Libertarian Answer Man: Self-ownership for slaves and Crusoe; and Yiannopoulos on Accurate Analysis and the term “Property”; Mises distinguishing between juristic and economic categories of “ownership”. [↩]
7. See Disentangling Legal and Economic Concepts. [↩]
8. See On Property Rights in Superabundant Bananas and Property Rights as Normative Support for Possession. [↩]
9. Chapter 5, §2 of The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science; see Kinsella, The Other Fields of Praxeology: War, Games, Voting… and Ethics? [↩]
10. See On Property Rights in Superabundant Bananas and Property Rights as Normative Support for Possession. [↩]
11. The Title-Transfer Theory of Contract. [↩]
12. See “Classificationism, Legislation, Copyright”. [↩]
13. The Great Fractional Reserve/Freebanking Debate. [↩]