How Hans Hoppe Helps Us Understand What’s Going On
October 24, 2022
Last September 18, the great philosopher, social scientist, and Rothbardian Hans-Hermann Hoppe gave a vitally important talk to his Property and Freedom Society. This talk gives us vital clues to what is going on in today’s world. You won’t find some of Hans’s material anywhere else. It’s a very long talk that I published in two parts on LRC. Part 1 and Part 2.
Because of the talk’s length, probably many readers won’t get through the whole thing. In this week’s article, I’m going to summarize some of Hans’s points and comment on them. Murray Rothbard would have called this talk “epochal.” By the way, here is an example of PC censorship. When I published the articles, both parts included a YouTube video of Hans delivering his talk. The video for Part I has been removed “for Violating YouTube’s Terms of Service.” The video for Part 2 is still up.
People usually contrast Communist East Germany (the DDR) with “capitalist” West Germany. Of course Hans is a strong critic of the DDR. “There were excruciating border controls, also internal controls within East Germany. You always had to register with the police. Stores were empty, and there was a near total lack of many normal goods, normal in the West.
There were always long lines that you could observe. There were huge waiting times. Sixteen years, for instance, you had to wait to get a car. And all people engaged in hoarding activities. As well, you could observe miserable work ethic and lousy service in restaurants, stores, and workplaces, constantly recurring shortages of supplies—we would call now supply chain disruptions—and much standstill and idleness. Overall, you got the impression of stagnation or even decay. There existed black markets and a black currency market. With Western money, you could buy in special stores, but without Western money, you couldn’t.
I learned also how affirmative action DDR style worked. The children of workers and peasants were given preference over those from bourgeois backgrounds, apart from the general preference given to party members, which was the Socialist party. On TV, the Socialist party leaders—they were like Proles in suits—were droning on for hours about the glorious achievements of which there was nothing to see. You experienced a climate of suspicion, standing under constant surveillance, and you had to be careful about what you said and to whom you said things, at any time.
Most depressing of all things in the DDR was, of course, that after 1961, it was nearly impossible to leave, and any attempted republic flight, as it was called, was punished with long prison sentences. My judgment on the DDR was decidedly negative even then, about 60 years ago.”
But Hans doesn’t accept the conventional view of West Germany (the BRD). “The BRD was an example of mild or soft socialism. Private property existed only in name. It was, so to speak, fiat property. It was private—until it would be taken away by the State. The system was called social market economy or social democracy, and its basic assumption was—as before, during the Nazi time—public welfare and public well-being trumps private welfare and private well-being, and also as much market as possible, and as much State as necessary, with the State determining what is possible and what is necessary.
All political parties were united in sharing all basic elements of the Communist manifesto. There should be a central bank. There should be progressive taxation. There should be inheritance taxes. There should be the social security Ponzi scheme, which you’re all familiar with. There should be ‘free’ compulsory state education, and of course, there should be democracy—majority rule—which most manifestly is a form of communism. All property is ultimately Gemeineigentum—property of all. That is, the property of all and none, and in effect, the property of the State.
Still, West Germany had a good start before the entire system even started to begin to work. Ludwig Erhard—who was at that time economics minister—abolished all price and wage controls that he had inherited from the Nazi time—against the advice of American smarties like John Kenneth Galbraith, for instance. And this led to what is referred to frequently as the German economic miracle, and this German economic miracle then explained to me, of course, also why I had this early experience as a child that everything is always getting better.
But then it happened, what had to be expected: steady state growth and the successive erosion of private property rights. In addition, democracy, or majority rule, did its work. Instead of politbureau coups, as under orthodox socialism, there was now peaceful rotation of government leadership. Opposition parties were included and participated in government loot. And on this basis—that you all participate in government loot—it became possible that every party could form coalitions with any other. The result was, of course, steady growth of party politics, of politicians, and of political instead of productive activity and participation. It was a politicization of society.”
Hans’s criticisms of democracy are well-known. He wrote about them in his definitive book Democracy: The God That Failed. There’s another danger to civilization, though, the Greens. Hans hates environmentalists and he excoriates the Greens: “If you look at the Green start, the Greens started as tree huggers and frog kissers, as environment and climate protectors. In their view, animals, plants, nature are our equals, with equal rights. That reveals, basically, their fundamental attitude, namely, anti-human and anti-private property. For them, to protect the environment means to override private property rights. And against the biblical order that we are supposed to dominate the world, for them, Man is not to rule the world—indeed, he is a menace and it would be best if he would do nothing and just die out, because it is us humans who deplete the resources, expend energy, alter the environment, influence the climate, the atmosphere or whatever, and we have not asked the resources, the energy, and the climate if this is all right that we do it.
I consider this, of course, outrageous. Basically the Greens want, and claim to know how, to protect nature from human intervention. And how to do that? You reduce production. You reduce industry. You reduce consumption and all human comforts until you get poorer. You realize, I consider this one of the nuttiest ideas of all times, far worse than traditional socialism, which claimed to be the path to greater wealth. They chose the wrong means to do that, but of course, that was their goal. This goal the Greens don’t even have. And as I would judge, only a rich society can afford this Green nonsense, and even that only for a short time.
Not enough with that nonsense, next to equalizing humans with animals and plants and so as to impoverish people, the Greens are also champions of equalizing all people, all humans and human lifestyles and characters—assuming that you cannot get rid of humans altogether. Now, according to Greens, the drastic observable differences between different people—sexes, demographics—are the result of discrimination, of white male privilege, of exploitation, of imperialism, of colonialism, of sexism, and so on and so on. You know all this stuff. And never are they the result of different natural shapes and forms of different talents and different achievements.
In particular then, the obvious fact that the most successful societies, the highest development, the pinnacle of human civilization in all of human history are western, white, heterosexual, male-dominated societies with traditional father-mother-children family structures. This—the basis of civilization—this is incredulously considered scandalous by the Greens.
Accordingly, Greens are eager to disadvantage and punish these people and such social structures, and instead, as best as they can, award all sorts of benefits, privileges, quotas, brownie points, to everything and everyone less successful, less talented, less normal, or even and indeed abnormal and perverse. Black trannies with five extramarital children from six binary people are the most worthy specimen.” As you can see, Hans is definitely not PC. He’s also very funny.
If you think that is explosive, what till you hear what Hans says next. Germany is under US control. And this is not control by people with American values. It is control by a global elite. “Now, I concentrate just on the West here, and it’s because of its takeover of the East. West Germany was the result of defeat, of military occupation, and remains a US vassal essentially to this day. There are a massive amount of American troops stationed in Germany. There is no peace treaty, and based on the legal fine print, Germany lacks complete sovereignty until today.
There are hard indicators of this US domination. The constitution of West Germany and now of all of Germany had to be okayed by the occupying forces. Parties, newspapers, media, schoolbooks required a license by the occupiers. There was an implementation of de-Nazification programs and campaigns, a so-called Charakterwaesche, character wash. There was a promotion of a new orthodox history. Victors always write the history. . .
The leading men in these largely overlapping elitist circles were mostly Americans. Unsurprising, of course, as the US is the world’s greatest military and economic power. But not nationalists—America-firsters like Trump were despised by these folks—but internationalists, anywheres rather somewheres, all of them pursuing a globalist-internationalist agenda. . . Now, the next push towards globalization, the transfer and concentration of power into the hands of an international elite centered in and led by the US, and just as the global climate crisis still with us today, came with the so-called Covid pandemic. The origin of the virus is still somewhat in dispute, but there is increasing evidence that it was the result of an exceptional reckless American biowarfare attack on China and Iran. In any case, health and the prevention of illness or infection are also individual problems falling into the realm of individual responsibility and the distinction between a healthy and a sick or infectious person was made on the basis of symptoms or hard indicators.
During the Covid pandemic, the global elites, in intimate cooperation with the pharmaceutical-industrial complex, discovered that you can literally manufacture a global health crisis and a panic based not on hard indicators such as symptoms, serious disease, or even death, but solely and merely based on some artificial test that had at best only minimal predictive power as regards serious illness or death. And without these tests, most people would not even have noticed that they were sick. Without tests, there would have been no health crisis, because in actuality, Covid did not have any more serious consequences than a severe flu. Except now, on the basis of Covid tests, the economy was damaged. Actually, a central-command economy was established. The test results were used by the powers that be to restrict human liberties and property rights in an unprecedented way. Totalitarian powers and measures were assumed and taken by them to allegedly avert an impending catastrophe. House arrests, curfews, business closures, bans of work, production, travel, movement and association were enforced, and people were compelled—even forced—to subject themselves to an injection with a so-called vaccine that was untested, the producers of which had been exempted from any liability for side effects, and that turned out largely ineffective.”
In Part II of his speech, Hans talks sense about the Ukraine War. “In any case, it is hardly surprising then that Moscow would regard the expansion of the hostile gang ruling Washington all the way to Ukraine as a threat or provocation. Putin repeatedly said so and warned against any such attempts. Moscow demanded instead that the Ukraine stay neutral and not join NATO or EU. This appears eminently reasonable. Switzerland is also neutral and it is the wealthiest country in all of Europe.
But the neo-cons running the show in the US were not amenable to reason. Despite Putin’s warnings, they organized a coup – one of their infamous colour revolutions – and helped install a pro-NATO-EU and anti-Russia government-gang – with the current gang-leader or front-puppet Zelensky – and they began to arm and train its military. They ignored or even secretly supported the military attacks of ultranationalist/Banderist brigades since 2014 on its two easternmost, predominately Russian speaking provinces that were seeking some sort of autonomy status (especially after Russian had been outlawed as a second official language).
Given this background, it appears absurd and devoid of any sense of proportion to declare Putin and Russia the main or even only guilty party in the current disaster, only because he fired the first shot.
Instead, the main culprit is the ruling gang in Washington: because it could have easily avoided the current slaughter and destruction by simply telling their Ukrainian lapdogs, the clown Zelensky, to accept neutrality and grant some degree of autonomy to the Donbass region.
As US lapdogs, they would have immediately relented. But the US did not do so, and even now, the US could immediately end the war, if only they told Zelensky and his gang that the war was over and all Western support would stop tomorrow.
But no, there is none of that. US-NATO did not involve itself directly in the war, after all Russia is an atomic power, and why risk American lives (especially after the recent Afghanistan disaster). Instead, they imposed the most serious, drastic economic and financial sanctions, boycotts and embargoes on Russia. They froze and expropriated Russian assets in the West, and they supplied the Ukraine with weapons so as to continue and drag out the war and prevent any peace negotiations. They let the Ukraine be destroyed and Ukrainians die and be sacrificed, as long as this would only lead to a weakening of Russian power, all the while claiming the moral high ground for themselves, of course.”
This is well said, but then Hans comes up with something I haven’t seen anywhere else. The sanctions haven’t weakened Russia—the Russian economy is stronger than before the war began. But they have weakened Germany. And this is what the neocon elite wants: “However, from the viewpoint of the US-NATO neocon strategists, the economic damage produced, caused and done by the sanctions all across Europe, but in particular in Germany, had also some highly welcome side-effects.
True,
the measures taken also had some negative economic repercussions in the
US. But on balance, the economic power of Europe and the EU, and in
particular of Germany, was systematically weakened relative to that of
the US. The European and especially German dependency on the US was
increased. One had to buy oil, gas, etc. now at much higher prices from
the US instead of from Russia. And the massive military re-armament all
throughout Europe, and again especially in Germany, that was prompted in
tandem with the anti-Russian measures was to benefit mostly the US, as
the world’s leading weapons manufacturer, and the neocons best friends
and supporters.
With this outcome, the US had accomplished an important geostrategic goal. For, according to a highly influential school of geopolitical thought, ranging from Halford Mackinder at the beginning of the 20th century to Brzezinski in our own time, whoever, any power or powers, that would attain domination of the Euro-Asian continent, the world’s heartland, would thereby essentially, indirectly attain domination over the rest of the world also. And to prevent this from happening and to preserve the US-Anglo supremacy, then, any such power(s) had to be prevented from emerging.
And the only danger, the only potential threat in this regard to US supremacy would or could come from an alliance between Germany and Russia, which, accordingly, had to be undermined by all means.”
I urge everybody to study Hans’s magnificent articles carefully. If you do, you will see the world in a new way.
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