As I recounted in “How I Became a Libertarian,” in Legal Foundations of a Free Society (Houston, Texas: Papinian Press, 2023), I was fortunate to meet Murray Rothbard before he died, in October 1994 at the John Randolph Club meeting near Washington, D.C, where he autographed by copy of Man, Economy, and State: “To Stephan: For Man & Economy, and against the state –Best regards, Murray Rothbard.” 1
I had forgotten some of details of that trip but just came across a letter to a former law school classmate from 1996 which has some details about my first meeting with Rothbard, Hoppe, et al. Here is an edited excerpt:
September 1, 1995
Dear [X],
This reply to your recent email has turned into such a long one that I’m mailing it by mail rather than by email.
The academic/intellectual interconnections game is sort of alien to me, and I’m not sure I’m handing it right, but I believe the way it works is that there’s lots of favoritism, or at least there’s sort of a developing of intellectual allies, who are then allied against intellectual enemies. I’m not even being cynical, necessarily, about this—I can see the need for assertiveness and cohesion and aggressiveness on the part of libertarians, the forming of allies, and battling of enemies.
Lately I’ve been reading more and more about the founding of Austrian economics, specifically Mises’s contribution. You may not interested in this type of thing, but the whole intellectual history of the movement, Mises, the intellectual milieu of the time (I’ve long been fascinated by Marxism, WWII, intellectual battles, etc.). I’ve been re-reading books on Mises’s life and related subjects. Briefly (hope I’m not boring you with this—it’s really interesting, to me), in the late 1800s Austrian economist Carl Menger wrote a revolutionary economics treatise, Principles of Economics. This solved many problems that economists had faced, with his recognition of the concept the principle of marginal utility—until then no one could understand why a glass of water was cheaper than a diamond, since water is so much more essential to life, etc. So many thought it was a case of “market failure,” etc. This typically happens—economic ignorance leads to denunciation of the market and to greater government power, when really the perceived problem, if a problem at all, is caused by government in the first place.
Menger, the founder of the Austrian school of economics, proposed a whole new methodology, where he focussed on the individual, and said don’t look at classes of people or classes of goods like “diamonds” or “water-in-general.” He said look at the individual, since only he makes decisions; and look at actual things he decides upon, not classes of goods. Thus, he said, if water is in greater supply, then of course it costs less than diamonds, because if you have lots of water, you value it, but it’s the next bit of water you’d have to buy, the marginal amount, that you’d value very low, because you’ve already got so much of it. Anyway, this may seem obvious to you, but it’s only because Menger’s ideas have spread. This was not obvious even to the most brilliant economist of the time.
Mises, also from Austria, came along, a student of Eugen Bohm-Bawerk (himself a student of Menger), became an ardent Mengerian/Böhm-Bawerkian, and carried the Austrian revolution in economics even further, with, in the beginning of the 20th century, a revolutionary theory of money and credit. This made him focus on the role of money in society, which finally led him to develop his theories on (1) the impossibility of efficient economic planning in socialism (because there would be no money prices left after private property had been destroyed, and money prices are essential to economic allocation), and (2) business cycle theory, namely central bank manipulation of the money supply, not the free market, is responsible for inflation, recessions, the Great Depression, etc. His paper in 1920, on (1), was, to my mind, probably the single most important thing written in the twentieth century. He devastated socialists’ claims to economic superiority, and for a couple decades all the European socialists were in a frenzy trying to refute Mises—but he always came back with a rebuttal. In fact his ideas on business cycle, methodology, etc., were winning the day when all of a sudden Keynes’s ideas in the 1930s became in vogue (primarily because they promoted heavy government control over the economy, so lots of people jumped at this excuse to grab power), and Mises’s ideas sank into obscurity. Finally in 1974 his disciple F.A. Hayek won the Nobel prize in economics, a year after Mises died, for work Hayek had done elaborating Mises’s business cycle theories. (Hayek died about a year ago; he was more famous than Mises, primarily because of the Nobel prize, and because he was more mainstream. Hayek was say, about half as well known to intelligent laymen as is Milton Friedman.) Some speculate that the Swedish Nobel prize committee waited till Mises died to give the award to Hayek, so they wouldn’t have to give it to Mises, because that would be admitting Mises had been right all along, and also because Mises was a die-hard free marketeer (Hayek was softer on the subject). It is a travesty of justice that Mises didn’t get the Nobel, and that he never even was able to get a paid teaching job at a university—he had to depend on free market foundations to pay his salary, so pro-Keynseian were universities (in America, where he had emigrated during WWII). (By the way, I hope I’m not hitting you with specialized jargon that you don’t know of. E.g. Keynes, business cycles, etc. Keynes is the big welfare-state economist whose work has been devastatingly influential: it is why we now talk of the Federal Reserve tinkering with the money supply to “speed up” or “slow down” the economy, etc. That’s also why we got off the gold standard, etc. The business cycle is the recurrence of inflation and boom/prosperity, followed by an inevitable recession or depression; this is typically blamed on free enterprise, and the central bank and government control of the money supply is then trotted out to “solve” these “problems”—when the problems are caused by having no gold standard, and having a central bank manipulate the money supply!)
Anyway, enough on that, but there’s so much of interest here re Mises’s life—he married at 60, was in tight with Rand, he gave these famous private seminars in Vienna and in New York after he got here, etc. In 1949 he published what I think is, to my knowledge, the most important book of the century, Human Action; the man was such a monumental genius, one of the most, if not the most, significant thinkers in the 20th century. Interestingly, many of his methodological/epistemological ideas were influenced by Kant—who Rand hated (I think she was simpleminded on this and somewhat missed the boat; but it’s beside the point).
Mises’s most important student was Rothbard; and Hoppe came over here from Germany about 10 years ago, after reading Mises’s and Rothbard’s works and being converted from socialism to die-hard Misesianism/libertarianism. Hoppe is an extremely bright guy, he was awarded the highest German award called a “genius grant,” which was basically like $55,000 a year to just write, think, study, for like 3 or 5 years—after getting his Ph.D.s in philosophy, economics, and sociology. I think it was during this time he became a radical Misesean—and such a brilliant one, such a creative thinker—probably much to the consternation of the German government who paid for the scholarship (I think he mentioned something about this one time to me but my memory is foggy on this). He moved over here to study under Rothbard, and they became fast friends and colleagues. Rothbard was finally offered a decent professorship, at UNLV, but only because it was a position endowed by some rich free-market benefactor who wanted to endow a free market professor, and Rothbard made them accept Hoppe too. So they were both there, until Rothbard died of a heart attack in New York this January. Hoppe’s still there, although he’d probably like to go to Auburn or George Mason, where there are Austrian enclaves in the economics dept., but he has a house, his wife teaches at UNLV, so it’s difficult.
I talked with Scott Kjar, an economics grad student who is transferring to Auburn now that Rothbard died. He does some of the article editing for the J. Libertarian Studies and he loves Hoppe and Rothbard. He told me some stories about the economics dept. at UNLV and the massive resentment toward Rothbard and Hoppe by the rest of the dept. First, they’re all mediocre (save Rothbard and Hoppe), and naturally hate the libertarianism of these two. Plus both are very prolific, giving speeches, talks, writing books, all the time; having people audit their classes 2 and 3 times just to hear them lecture, getting voted favorite professor of the year, etc. These statist f*ckers just hated ‘em, and tried to block Hoppe’s tenure a few years ago, in a blatantly political move, which was defeated upon appeal to the provost etc.
Now Hoppe has assumed Rothbard’s mantle in economics and political theory, is now editor of the J. Lib. Stud. (of the Center for Libertarian Studies) and the Review of Austrian Economics (of the Mises Institute), both of which Rothbard founded and was editor of.
Anyway, what a long way to answer your question about the line of succession—Mises, Rothbard, Hoppe, ….” Actually I have drawn out a “family tree” sort of chart before, showing ideological influences among important libertarian thinkers, and I immodestly have my (potential) place in there, if my ideas ever go where I hope them to. This “family tree” is for my own interest, and also because I think it might make a good article or product to publish one day. A big intellectual poster/chart. But I’m not an economist, so that aspect of it’s out, as far as my succeeding Hoppe in Austrian innovations (however I am not sure of this: I am learning more and more Austrian economics on my own, and, who knows, may even go for a Ph.D. in economics some day, though I seriously doubt it); but Mises, Rothbard, and Hoppe were all also political theorists, so that branch of their thinking I can fit more comfortably into. There really are dozens of good, bright young Austrian grad students rising through the ranks nowadays, heavily influenced by Mises and Rothbard, which is a great sign, I think.
Back to this game, I don’t know how tight I am with Hoppe. I still call him “Prof. Hoppe” on the phone, even though others call him “Hans,” and I don’t think he’d mind if I would, and I might start doing this. I am very cautious asking for favors, because I don’t want to be a pest or ingratiate myself, etc. I only want to go where my merit takes me, where I’m really wanted. So I think what happened was, here’s Hoppe, he publishes this blockbuster political/economic theory (his “argumentation ethics” rights theory) in 1988, 2 and many in the libertarian movement scorned it, ridiculed it, although it to my mind is to date the most powerful and rigorous argument made in defense of rights. Maybe that’s why he’s gotten such hostile treatment—though Scott Kjar tells me it was an academic best seller outside the U.S., translated into like a dozen languages, and just being re-issued in a second edition—but it’s probably also because of Rothbard’s break with the Libertarian Party, which he helped to found. So right about then I published my estoppel article, which did not derive from Hoppe’s theories, but from a realization I had in law school contracts class, although Hoppe’s work was useful in clarifying some related issues. 3 Hoppe really is ideologically a descendent of Habermas (a famous neo-Kantian philosopher in Germany, but a socialist, his teacher) and Mises/Rothbard—he took their ideas and extended them to new areas. Mine is not so much an extension or development of Hoppe’s, as it is complementary to it. I did praise his theory in a footnote, though. Which probably pleased him because it was published acclaim for his theory, probably very welcome in light of the hostile defense he’d gotten.
Then Hoppe in 1993 published a second book further elaborating his ideas, and I wrote that detailed review essay for St. Mary’s Law Journal. I sent him a copy, and surely it was welcome—mainstream, respectable, scholarly/academic acclaim for his theory. 4 I think that made me somewhat of a hit among the small group of Hoppe-supporters, including Rothbard, his mentor. Hoppe wrote me a nice letter telling me he thought the estoppel piece was brilliant and beautifully complemented his argumentation ethics, in Aug. 1994 after I sent him the published review. I actually (mildly) criticized some of Hoppe’s ideas in the review, but still he liked it, because it was favorable, and in a mainstream publication.
Then I went to the John Randolph Club meeting in November 1994, after having spoken with Hoppe once or twice on the phone (and he urged me to go to the conference, if I recall), and after having written him several long letters about my political ideas. I met Rothbard and Hoppe there, and others but all pales beside those two in my memory. It was so cool that Rothbard knew me, said he’d read my Hoppe piece and liked it, and he autographed his book for me, that I brought there for that purpose. When I was signing in late that Friday night at the meeting—I drove in from Philly—Burt Blumert, the organizer, told me when he saw my name tag that “Oh Yes, Dr. Rothbard would like to meet you”, and I don’t know if he told that to everyone, I think probably not, but that was great. And sure enough Rothbard was very friendly and cool. I met Lew Rockwell, president of the Mises Institute, whom I had spoken with on the phone before and briefly corresponded with, and it was in this cocktail room, and Hoppe was sitting right behind me at a table, though I didn’t know yet because I hadn’t met him. Rockwell says, “Oh!—Steve, have you met Hans yet?” and taps Hoppe and says, “Hans, here’s Steve Kinsella,” as if I had been the subject of discussion among them as a Hoppe supporter. Anyway, then Hoppe and I talked for a long time, then and several other times over the next day or so in between lectures, etc.
I also met others there, Dr. David Gordon, a very bright Misesian/Rothbardian in-house scholar at the Mises Institute, and he told me he noticed that I had cited one of his books in my Hoppe review, so I know he saw it; and I told him that I had written him a letter about 4 years before, though he might have forgotten. He said, “Oh, yes! I remember now, but I didn’t answer your question, because it was a good question and I didn’t know how to answer it.” Gordon now publishes the quarterly Mises Review, full of book reviews by Gordon on various books he reads. Anyway, the question I asked him in the letter was regarding a passage in his book—the same book I cited for another proposition in my Hoppe review—in which Gordon said one fallacy of communism was that it looked at society as the principle entity, and we are mere constituents, and are affected by society etc. He disagrees with this Marxian tenet, as do I, since he’s an individualist. But still I had just listened to David Kelley’s (the neo-Objectivist who you called an “idiot” after he responded to my recent letter about intellectual property) talk on free will, 5 and Kelley made a good point: if we have free will, it means that we are not determined, which implies that the collection of atoms etc. in our bodies are actually in part caused by, acted on by, the collection itself. There is in a sense “downward causation.” This implies that if a collection of constituent elements (like atoms) is structured together in such a fashion, and complex enough like the brain is, a new property emerges whereby the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, and the whole itself can exert causation on its constituent elements, which seems logical enough, even though it boggles my mind. But the point is that the existence of free will points to the possibility that some systems can affect their constituent elements—and for all we know society (as the Marxists say) is one of these too. Unlike free will, there is no evidence of this in the case of society, so I still think the Marxians are wrong, but I don’t think you can out of hand dismiss that possibility (though even if true I think it irrelevant). 6
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I corresponded with Hoppe occasionally after that John Randolph Club meeting (and before, too) and sent him drafts of article, and then he started suggesting to me that some of them be submitted here or there. (BTW, John Randolph, as you probably know better than me, was a Jeffersonian Virginian, very principled, anti-federalist Congressman around the beginning of the 19th century.) He had the draft of my “Irrationalism of the Civil Law” article which was then being considered by La. Law Review, and he kept track of whether it had been accepted yet by LSU—I think he wanted it to be. When Rothbard died and Hoppe took over the J.L.S., things were in disarray and he needed an article for the issue coming out any day now, he called and asked me if I could send him a version of it. 7 During the same call, he also asked me if I could do a piece on punishment for the issue after that, which is to be a Rothbard commemorative issue—he knew there was a small section in my original estoppel article on “proportional” punishment, though not very elaborated, so he thought it would be good to develop it. 8 So I’m almost done with that too, and it will fit in perfectly with my Ph.D. thesis/overall estoppel theory. The other day we talked and I mentioned an idea of a possible, paper, “The New Rationalist Direction of Libertarian Rights Theories” (i.e. his, mine, and some others) and he was intrigued and encouraged me to apply to present it as a paper at the upcoming “Austrian scholars conference” by the Mises Institute in Auburn in January. 9 So I have, but have not yet heard whether they accepted that. I also asked him to write a letter supporting my Ph.D. thesis project to turn in with my University of London application (which I’ll do in the next month or two), and he said he’d be glad to.
Anyway, that’s where things stand now. I feel like, if I were say in grad school under Hoppe or something, I could indeed be in the real inner circles etc., but I’ve pretty much done that, as sort of an outsider, anyway. Lots more running through my mind on these issues nowadays, but enough for now.
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[X], since typing the above, I spoke with Hoppe. I called to discuss my proposed Ph.D. project, which I’d faxed to him for his opinion. He was very open today, and I just went on and called him Hans, and he said he thought my proposal very good and ambitious, he wished others would do such work too. He said my project makes him want to get back into it, and wish he was still doing rights-theory. Now he concentrates on other economic issues, having pretty much finished with the rights-stuff a few years ago. So I actually encouraged him to, it was cool. It’s hard to explain, but let me briefly try. There are various types of defenses of liberty/freedom out there: (1) utilitarian/consequentialist/pragmatic: these people take prosperity, “greatest happiness for hte greatest number,” etc., as a given, and then support the system which will tend to produce these results. This is fairly unprincipled. (2) Natural rights theorists: like Locke, Rand, etc. These believe that man, by his nature, has certain moral rights to freedom. The prosperity that accompanies freedom is only incidental, it is not its primary justification; it is just a side-benefit. Most serious libertarians try to come up with some version of (2), but there are many of these. Some are contractarians (they imply a “contract” that all “would” agree to, like the constitution); some are just Aristotelian, they just focus on the nature of things and try to argue what is moral based on this, like Rand; some are religious (God “gave” us these rights); some are “rationalist”—like Hoppe, and me, and even Rand to some extent, arguing that we know some things as fundamental axioms, and know them to be undeniably, 100% certain to be true, and then you can build on these easily to justify rights
Now when Hoppe came out with his idea in 1988, it was not received very well even by libertarians: many accused him of being “dogmatic” and didn’t like his “rationalistic” way of arguing. I think it’s competition: they had invested their reputations and intellectual careers in other ways of justifying freedom, and so it bowled them over to think this new guy from Germany, studies under Rothbard for a few years, and comes up with the most rigorous, hard-core, and compelling argument for liberty ever made—and it’s so simple, too. So of course they have to smear it, since they are not intellectually honest or courageous enough to adapt and be inclusive. So Hoppe told me today that he was somewhat despondent at the time at the reception of his ideas, and had hoped then to sort of spark a revolution, get lots of people talking about his theory, writing about it—like I am doing now. And now I am writing this Ph.D. thing on it, and if not that then more articles and maybe a book, and also am giving the talk on “New Rationalist Direction of Libertarian Rights Theory,” so he sees a chance for me to be the one to help spark up the interest in it after all. He practically told me this today, told me he thought I was doing a good job and he expects us to keep in regular contact from now on, etc.
Anyway this is probably too much info, much of it too much insider-stuff, all jumbling out. But I was pleased. He was asking my opinion on abortion (from a philosophical standpoint) and urged me to try to handle that issue in my thesis (he’s pro-choice but wants to see a good justification of it). 10 He’s German and says “Ja ja ja!” when you mention a good point. He did that today when he was saying that one guy he’s read on the abortion question pointed out that in some cultures historically, the extended family made the decision about the appropriateness of an abortion, not the government; thus if a woman aborted her baby and the family/extended family felt it was justified and didn’t “prosecute” her, then that’s where the issue stayed, because no one from the outside had any right to interfere. Almost a jurisdictional issue. If you narrow the jurisdiction down to the woman herself, he pointed out that if someone killed her fetus by harming her, she could “inherit” the death right of her baby and prosecute/sue the aggressor on the baby’s behalf. But he said this might be a problem in the case where the mother herself kills the baby (abortion), because then she could just decide not to sue herself. See, he’s not a lawyer, and this is where legal education helps, because I pointed out that the mother wound only inherit the baby’s estate (including right to sue for its murder) as a default presumption, in the absence of a will (which a fetus could never have anyway). Normally, you would presume that the child/baby/fetus or any unmarried minor, would have wanted its estate to pass to its parents. This is the legal presumption; but of course this presumption is different when it’s the parent herself that murders the child. That insight into presumptions is useful here, and Hoppe sees the light and says, “Oh— Ja! ja ja! So, it’s the presumption …”
Anyway, you can see how excited I am about all this, and even if you don’t find all this of interest, don’t worry, I like getting it down on paper anyway, if only for my own peace of mind; and I don’t like typing impersonal journal entries! But I mean Hoppe confirmed that he is thinking of me the way I suspected and half hoped, he actually said he had hoped someone would take up the banner of rationalist, hard-core libertarianism, and he said he hopes I am able to do that, rise to prominence in these type circles, etc. So, we shall see.
- I mention this also in The Genesis of Estoppel: My Libertarian Rights Theory. [↩]
- See Kinsella, Argumentation Ethics and Liberty: A Concise Guide; Hoppe, A Theory of Socialism and Capitalism. [↩]
- “Estoppel: A New Justification for Individual Rights,” Reason Papers No. 17 (Fall 1992): 61–74; see also “Dialogical Arguments for Libertarian Rights” (1996/2019), ch. 6 in LFFS. [↩]
- “The Undeniable Morality of Capitalism (1994), in LFFS. [↩]
- See Lecture 4 in the Foundations of Knowledge playlist. [↩]
- I now completely disagree with Kelley and the possibility of downward causation. [↩]
- Legislation and the Discovery of Law in a Free Society (1995), ch. 6 in LFFS. [↩]
- “A Libertarian Theory of Punishment and Rights” (1996 & 1997), ch. 5 in LFFS [↩]
- “Dialogical Arguments for Libertarian Rights” (1996/2019), ch. 6 in LFFS. [↩]
- My forthcoming talk is finally “Abortion: A Radically Decentralist Approach,” to be presented at the 2024 Annual Meeting of the Property and Freedom Society, Sept. 2024. [↩]
