Hans-Hermann Hoppe/Intimidation by Argument—Once Again
http://www.libertyunbound.com/sites/files/printarchive/Liberty_Magazine_November_1989.pdf
Intimidation by Argument--Once Again
- Liberty*, Volume 3, Number 2, November 1989
Loren Lomasky was intimidated and angered by my book A Theory of Socialism and Capitalism. The book is more ambitious than its title indicates. "It is," he laments, "no less than a manifesto for untrammeled anarchism." So be it. But so what? As explained in my book--but conveniently left unmentioned by Lomasky--untrammeled anarchism is economy, then, should never come up nothing but the name for a social order of untrammeled private property rights; of the absolute right of self-ownership, the absolute right to homestead unowned resources, of employing them for whatever purpose one sees fit so long as this does not affect the physical integrity of others' likewise appropriated resources, and of entering into any contractual agreement with other property owners that is deemed mutually beneficial. What is so horrifying about this idea? Empirically speaking, this property theory constitutes the hard core of most people's intuitive sense of justice and so can hardly be called revolutionary. Only someone advocating the trammeling of private property rights would take offense, as does Lomasky, with my attempt to justify a pure private-property economy.
Lomasky is not only enraged at my conclusions, however. His anger is further aggravated because I do not merely try to provide empirical evidence for them, but a rigorous proof "validated by pure reason and uncontaminated by any merely empirical likelihoods." It is not surprising that an opponent of untrammeled private property rights, such as Lomasky, should find this undertaking doubly offensive. Yet what is wrong with the idea of apriori-theorizing in economics and ethics? Lomasky points out that failed attempts to construct apriori theories exist. But so what? This only reflects on those particular theories. Moreover, it actually presupposes the existence of apriori reasoning in that the refutation of an apriori theory must itself be a proof. For Lomasky, however, nothing but intellectual hyperbole can possibly be responsible for "eschewing the low road of empiricism, soaring instead with Kant and von Mises through the realm of a priori necessities."
A book on political philosophy or economy, then, should never come up with unambiguous conclusions as to what to do, what rules to follow. Everything should be left vague and at a non-operational stage of conceptual development. And no one should ever try to prove anything, but instead follow the forever open-minded empiricist approach of trial and error, of tentative conjectures, refutations and confirmations. Such, for Lomasky, is the proper path, the low and humble road along which one is to travel. And sure enough, most contemporary political philosophers seem to have wholeheartedly followed this advice.
