Preface to the Second Edition

The first edition of The Economics and Ethics of Private Property, published in 1993, has been out of print for several years. For some time and from many sides I have been urged to prepare a new edition, and Llewellyn Rockwell has graciously offered the Ludwig von Mises Institute to serve as its publisher.

The Economics and Ethics of Private Property was dedicated to my teacher and mentor, Murray N. Rothbard, with whom I had been closely associated during the last ten years of his life, first as a visiting scholar at the Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute in New York City and after 1986 as a colleague at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. The year 2005 marks the tenth anniversary of Rothbard’s death. Thus, it seemed a most appropriate time to honor Murray anew with this second edition.

The present edition of The Economics and Ethics of Private Property is enlarged. It adds four articles written after the original publication of the book but related thematically to its central subject matter Of the economic and ethic rationale of the institution of private property—chapters 6, 7, 8, and 15. The opportunity of a new edition has also been used to make significant editorial improvements and revisions.

Hans Hermann Hoppe

Las Vegas, Nevada, 2005