The Economics and Ethics of Private Property: Studies in Political Economy and Philosophy

"Do not steal" is an excellent principle of ethics; it is also the first principle of sound economic systems. In our time, no one has done more than Hans-Hermann Hoppe to elaborate on the sociological implications of this truth. And this is his great work on the topic.

The Austrian tradition is known for offering the most hard-core defense of private property, and the most consistent application of that principle, of any school of economics. The work of Hoppe--a leading student of Rothbard's whose books have been translated into a dozen languages--has focused heavy philosophical and economic attention on this principle.

This book, the 2nd expanded edition after a long period in which it has been unavailable, collects his most important scholarly essays on the topic.

The topics covered by Hoppe are wide ranging: employment, interest, money, banking, trade cycles, taxes, public goods, war, imperialism, and the rise and fall of civilizations. The core theoretical insight uniting the entire discussion is as consistently applied here as it is neglected by the economic mainstream: the absolute inviolability of private property as a human right as the basis of continuous economic progress.

The right to private property is an indisputably valid, absolute principle of ethics, argues Hoppe, and the basis for civilizational advance. Indeed, it is the very foundation of social order itself. To rise from the ruins of socialism and overcome the stagnation of the Western welfare states, nothing will suffice but the uncompromising privatization of all socialized, that is, government, property and the establishment of a contractual society based on the recognition of private property rights.

Hans Hermann-Hoppe is professor of economics at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and a senior fellow of the Ludwig von Mises Institute. This edition is an expansion of the original edition (1993), with new essays on epistemology, ethics, and economics.

Barron's writes:

Hans-Hermann Hoppe's dryly titled The Economics and Ethics of Private Property (von Mises Institute, 2006), is anything but dry. When Ludwig von Mises brought "Austrian School" economics to the U.S., the American Murray Rothbard became his worthy disciple. With Rothbard's death in 1995, the German-born Hoppe, a professor of economics at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, became Rothbard's most important disciple by far.

Hoppe's writings are like a laser beam. The clarity and force of his arguments seemingly can't fail to hit their targets. But be prepared for arguments that push you beyond your limits. For Hoppe is a Misesian of the Rothbardian kind: an anarcho-capitalist eager to convince you that anything useful that the state does, the market can do better -- in fact, that the state so abuses its appointed roles, there is really no contest between the two.

Preface to the Second Edition
Preface to the First Edition

Part One – Economics

• Chapter 1 Fallacies of the Public Goods Theory and the Production of Security
• Chapter 2 The Economics and Sociology of Taxation
• Chapter 3 Banking, Nation States, and International Politics: A Sociological Reconstruction of the Present Economic Order
• Chapter 4 Marxist and Austrian Class Analysis
• Chapter 5 Theory of Employment, Money, Interest, and the Capitalist Process: The Misesian Case Against Keynes
• Chapter 6 How is Fiat Money Possible?—or, The Devolution of Money and Credit
• Chapter 7 Against Fiduciary Media
• Chapter 8 Socialism: A Property or Knowledge Problem?

Part Two – Philosophy

• Chapter 9 On Praxeology and the Praxeological Foundation of Epistemology
• Chapter 10 Is Research Based on Causal Scientific Principles Possible in the Social Sciences?
• Chapter 11 From the Economics of Laissez Faire to the Ethics of Libertarianism
• Chapter 12 The Justice of Economic Efficiency
• Chapter 13 On the Ultimate Justification of the Ethics of Private Property
• Chapter 14 Austrian Rationalism in the Age of the Decline of Positivism
• Chapter 15 Rothbardian Ethics

Appendix: Four Critical Replies

• Demonstrated Preference and Private Property
• Utilitarians and Randians versus Reason
• Intimidation by Argument
• On the Indefensibility of Welfare Rights