Institutul Ludwig von Mises - România: A Theory of Socialism and Capitalism

A Theory of Socialism and Capitalism

Hans-Hermann Hoppe - Teoria socialismului şi capitalismului
romanian

Translation from english: Emanuel-Mihail Socaciu *

1. Introducere

2. Proprietate, contract, agresiune, capitalism, socialism

3. Socialismul în stil rus

4. Socialismul în stil social democrat

5. Socialismul conservatorismului

6. Socialismul ingineriei sociale şi fundamentele analizei economice

7. Justificarea etică a capitalismului şi de ce este socialismul moralmente inacceptabil

8. Fundamentele socio-psihologice ale socialismului sau teoria statului

9. Producţia capitalistă şi problema monopolului

10. Producţia capitalistă şi problema bunurilor publice

[*]Titlul original: A Theory of Socialism and Capitalism, Boston, 1989.

The Misesian position can only help us avoid some elementary mistakes, Professor Hoppe once remarked. With this caveat in mind, his Theory of Socialism and Capitalism is indispensable to all people seeking to figure out a sound alternative to the post-Soviet mess. Along with Rothbard's What Has Government Done to Our Money, it reads as the ideal Austrian law and economics introductory set for our ex-communist part of the world. Marxist-conversant readers will note Professor Hoppe's masterful critical grasp of comparative socialist systems, reflecting to some extent his early academic experience with J. Habermas, of the Frankfurt School. Austrians will appreciate his discerning economic subjectivism and robust emphasis on real-world applicability in the treatment of monopoly and public goods.

On the epistemological-ethical front, no reader will fail to notice Professor Hoppe's thoroughgoing use of the "performative contradiction" type of argument, or the "boomerang principle" (as Rothbard had called it, following R.P. Philips' Modern Thomistic Philosophy), to indicate that certain things cannot argumentatively be cast away, for they "return" to us, in the form of uncircumventable assumptions, implied in the very act of argumentation. It shows how Misesian rationalism works, while empiricism fails, as a self-refuting intellectual cover for cognitive relativism and social engineering.

Carefully applied to the common parlance assumption that peaceful bilateral argumentative agreement and violent conflict are mutually exclusive, indeed that peaceful dialogue is universally distinguishable from war (as in Pope John Paul II's "It is my ardent hope that Muslim and Christian religious leaders and teachers will present our two great religious communities as communities in respectful dialogue, never more as communities in conflict"), it reinforces the intuitively plausible conclusion that all alleged socialist ethics is no ethics at all, but mere self-cotradictory noise, to cover brutish acts of exploitation and disturbance of the natural order.