Getting Libertarianism Right

Introduction by Sean GabbThe writings collected in this book are mostly addresses given in Bodrum to the Property and Freedom Society, of which Professor Hoppe is both Founder and President. I was fortunate to hear them read out to the gathering, and I am deeply honoured to have been asked to provide an Introduction to the published versions. I will divide my Introduction into three sections. First, I will give a brief overview of Hoppe’s early life and intellectual development. Second, I will write at greater length about the academic work that has placed him at the head of the international libertarian movement. Third, I will discuss the main theme or themes that emerge from the present collection. Hoppe: Child of the West German SettlementHans-Hermann Hoppe was born on the 2nd September 1949 in Peine, a town in the British Sector of occupied Germany. After attending various local schools, he first went to the University of Saarland in Saarbrücken and from here moved to the Goethe University in Frankfurt, where he studied under the notable neo-Marxist Jürgen Habermas, who also served as the principal advisor for Hoppe’s doctoral dissertation in Philosophy on David Hume and Immanuel Kant. In those days, Hoppe was himself a Marxist, and had no serious differences with his master. He said later: “What I … liked about Marxism is that it made the attempt to provide a rigorous, deductively derived system.” To any external observer, he was following a path followed by many thousands of his generation. It should, in the normal course of things, have ended in a tenured post in which his duty, under cover of spreading disaffection, was to preach conformity to the new order of things in West Germany.