10. A Student’s Appreciation of Professor Hoppe

Jeffrey Barr

Like German engineering, Professor Hans Hermann-Hoppe’s worldview is orderly, robust, and ultimately compelling.

Yet, I came to discover (and then embrace) this worldview by accident. Though I was generally a good student, I miserably failed the first microeconomics class I ever took. The class was a morass of neoclassic incantations and mathematic models of human behavior that had no grounding in reality. Indeed, at the time, economics looked like Carlyle’s “dismal science,” and the experience was so bad that I vowed never again to set foot in another economics class. But because I had failed, I had to make up the class. Fortuitously, Professor Hoppe’s microeconomics class happened to fit within my schedule in the following semester. My advisor counseled against taking Professor Hoppe, stating, “Many students find him to be . . . unorthodox.”

Having had my fill of economic orthodoxy, I ignored my advisor and happily signed up for Professor Hoppe’s class. Professor Hoppe did not disappoint. In contrast to the dismal science, Professor Hoppe refreshingly professed praxeology: the science of human action. The subject matter made intuitive sense, and Professor Hoppe delivered crisp and articulate lectures, always punctuated with his dry wit and German accent. He eschewed standard economics textbooks; instead, his students read Henry Hazlitt’s Economics in One Lesson¹ and Lew Rockwell’s The Free Market Reader.² Even Professor Hoppe’s exams poked subversive fun at mainstream economics.

Though I attended many of Professor Hoppe’s lectures in several different classes, I was particularly fortunate to enroll in an unforgettable seminar entitled, “Marxism and Its Critics.” Professor Hoppe devoted the first half of the seminar to indoctrinating the class in traditional, unadulterated Marxism. He insisted that his students be able to recite tenets of socialism better than any Soviet university student. The Good Professor then devoted the second half of the semester to systematically refuting each fundamental socialist contention. In session after session, Herr Hoppe methodically demolished the logical underpinnings of the communist system, attacking the rotten philosophy at its core. It was also this time that I devoured Professor Hoppe’s first English-language book, A Theory of Socialism and Capitalism.³ This treatise and the Marxism-and-Its-Critics course solidified Hoppe’s brilliance in my mind. I also realized that I might be in the presence, ironically enough, of Marx’s most formidable critic.

Despite all of the formal coursework with Professor Hoppe, I cherish his informal classes most. At the beginning of each semester, Professor Hoppe would announce that he would meet with students who were interested in joining the Political Economy Club at a local pub. He invited everyone in his classes, though few had the fortitude to attend. Those who did enjoyed long hours of debates on the many issues of the day—and what issues there were to discuss! The late-1980s/early 1990s were exciting times. Murray Rothbard was at the zenith of his prestige. Communism’s fall had vindicated Mises, and the so-called “grassroots Republican revolution” of the early 90s exuberantly confirmed the theories I was learning in university. These events provided much fodder for late-night, smoky meetings of the Political Economy Club. The sessions were less like meetings, and more like Professor Hoppe holding court. A bit detached, Professor Hoppe would often listen to the deliberations, sip his drink, put his hand to his chin, look into the air in deep contemplation, and finally, after gathering his thoughts, he would respond with a, “Ja, Ja, but, you see . . .” Much of the time, I would simply listen to these discussions, daring not to ask an unintelligent question because Hoppe’s genius intimidated me. After knowing Professor Hoppe for nearly twenty years, I confess that I remain in awe of his brilliance so much so that I still feel a bit awkward addressing him as anything but “Professor Hoppe.”

I am proud to be a part of this “festive-writing,” honoring the remarkable career of Hans-Hermann Hoppe. Few individuals have had a more profound influence on my life. In an odd way, I will be forever grateful to that awful neoclassical economics professor whose microeconomics class I flunked. Without that failing grade, I might never have had the privilege to call Hans Hermann-Hoppe friend, mentor, and, most of all, professor. Congratulations, Professor Hoppe!

Jeffrey Barr (BarrJ@cityofnorthlasvegas.com) practices law in Las Vegas, Nevada. He studied under Murray Rothbard and Hans-Herman Hoppe in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

¹Henry Hazlitt, Economics in One Lesson, rev. ed. (New York: Manor Books, [1962, 1974]; reprint New Rochelle, N.Y.: Arlington House, 1979).

²Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr., Ed. The Free Market Reader: Essays in the Economics of Liberty (Auburn, Ala.: Ludwig von Mises Institute, 1988).

³Hans-Hermann Hoppe, A Theory of Socialism and Capitalism (Boston-Dordrecht-London: Kluwer, 1989).