The Theory of Socialism and Capitalism by Hans-Hermann Hoppe

Author:Hans-Hermann Hoppe [Hoppe, Hans-Hermann]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Ludwig von Mises Institute
Published: 2011-11-06T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 8

The Socio-psychological Foundations of Socialism or The Theory of The State

In the preceding chapters it has been demonstrated that socialism as a social system implying a redistribution of property titles away from user-owners and contractors to nonuser-owners and noncontractors necessarily involves a reduction in the production of wealth, since the use and contracting of resources are costly activities whose performance is made even more costly as compared with alternatives available to actors. Secondly, such a system cannot be defended as a fair or just social order from a moral point of view because to argue so, in fact to argue at all, in favor or against anything, be it a moral, nonmoral, empirical, or logico-analytical position, necessarily presupposes the validity of the first-use-first-own rule of the natural theory of property and capitalism, as otherwise no one could survive and then say, or possibly agree on, anything as an independent physical unit.

If neither an economic nor a moral case for socialism can be made, then socialism is reduced to an affair of merely social-psychological significance. What, then, are the socio-psychological foundations on which socialism rests? Or, since socialism has been defined as an institutionalized policy of redistribution of property titles away from user-owners and contractors, how is an institution that implements a more or less total expropriation of natural owners possible?

If an institution exists that is allowed to appropriate property titles other than through original appropriation or contract, it must assumedly damage some people who consider themselves to be the natural owners of these things. By securing and possibly increasing its monetary and/or non-monetary income it reduces that of other people—something categorically different from the situation that exists when there is a contractual relationship among people in which no one gains at the expense of anyone else but everyone profits, as otherwise there simply would not be any exchange. In this case one can expect resistance to the execution of such a policy. This inclination to resist can, of course, be more or less intensive, and it can change over time and become either more or less pronounced and pose a greater or smaller threat to the institution carrying out the policy of redistribution. But as long as it exists at all, the institution must reckon with it. In particular, it must reckon with it if one assumes that the people representing this institution are ordinary people who, like everyone else, have an interest not only in stabilizing their current income which they are able to secure for themselves in their roles as representatives of this institution but also in increasing this income as much as possible. How, and this is precisely the problem, can they stabilize and possibly increase their income from noncontractual exchanges, even though this necessarily creates victims—and, over time, increasing numbers of victims, or victims who are increasingly hurt?

The answer can be broken down into three parts which will be discussed in turn: (1) by aggressive violence; (2) by corrupting the public through letting them or

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