Professor Hoppe was previously interviewed on Australian Broadcasting Corp. Radio, on the topic “Anarcho-capitalist libertarianism: What is it?” (approx. 25 minutes). It was aired on Jan. 23, 2012; audio is available here. As described on the ABC site, “What is anarcho-capitalist libertarianism? Hans Herman Hoppe explains the idea behind it and why it’s a very different and quite radical way to think about government, society and the economy.”
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A recent NPR feature, The Secret Document That Transformed China (h/t Vijay Boyapati), tells the fascinating story about one of seminal events at the dawn of the modern Chinese experiment in their version of capitalism.
In 1978, the farmers in a small Chinese village called Xiaogang gathered in a mud hut to sign a secret contract. They thought it might get them executed. Instead, it wound up transforming China’s economy in ways that are still reverberating today.
The contract was so risky — and such a big deal — because it was created at the height of communism in China. Everyone worked on the village’s collective farm; there was no personal property.
“Back then, even one straw belonged to the group,” says Yen Jingchang, who was a farmer in Xiaogang in 1978. “No one owned anything.”
At one meeting with communist party officials, a farmer asked: “What about the teeth in my head? Do I own those?” Answer: No. Your teeth belong to the collective.
Because of communism, “In Xiaogang there was never enough food, and the farmers often had to go to other villages to beg. Their children were going hungry. They were desperate.”
So the farmers agreed to a form of personal property, where each farmer could keep some of his own crop, above a certain threshold. This would give them incentives to work harder and the ability to keep some of the fruits of their labor. However,So, in the winter of 1978, after another terrible harvest, they came up with an idea: Rather than farm as a collective, each family would get to farm its own plot of land. If a family grew a lot of food, that family could keep some of the harvest.
This was done in secret for fear of reprisal by the state. Their agreement “recognized the risks the farmers were taking. If any of the farmers were sent to prison or executed, it said, the others in the group would care for their children until age 18.”
Their new pact was a success: “At the end of the season, they had an enormous harvest: more, Yen Hongchang says, than in the previous five years combined.”
[Keep reading…]
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Last year I presented four Mises Academy Mises Academy courses:
The audio and slides for the first three courses listed can be found in those links; those for the Hoppe course are appended below. The Hoppe course is discussed in my article “Read Hoppe, Then Nothing Is the Same,” translated into Spanish as “Tras leer a Hoppe, nada es lo mismo“; see also Danny Sanchez’s post Online Hoppe Course Starts Tomorrow. I enjoyed all four courses but my favorite was the Hoppe course. Hoppe has been the biggest intellectual influence of my life, as I detail in “How I Became A Libertarian” (published as “Being a Libertarian” in I Chose Liberty: Autobiographies of Contemporary Libertarians). I agree with Sanchez that “Hans-Hermann Hoppe is the most profound social theorist writing today.” This is one reason I worked with the brilliant Austro-libertarian theorist, and one of my best friends, Jörg Guido Hülsmann, and one of the greatest guys in the world, to produce the well-received and well-deserved festschrift, Property, Freedom, and Society: Essays in Honor of Hans-Hermann Hoppe (Mises Institute, 2009).
The experience of teaching the Mises Academy classes was amazing and gratifying, as I noted in my article “Teaching an Online Mises Academy Course.” This and similar technology and Internet-enabled models are obviously the wave of the educational future. The students received an in-depth, specialized and personalized treatment of topics of interest to them, with tests and teacher and fellow student interaction, for a very reasonable price, and judging by their comments and evaluations, they were very satisfied with the courses and this online model. For example, for the Hoppe course, as noted in A Happy Hoppean Student, student Cam Rea wrote, about the first lecture of the course:
Move over Chuck Norris, Hans-Hermann Hoppe is in town! The introduction to “The Social Theory of Hoppe” was extremely thorough. I, a relative newcomer to the Hoppean idea, was impressed by Stephan Kinsella’s introduction to the theory. Mr. Kinsella hit upon all of those who came before Hoppe, and how each built upon another over the past two centuries. In other words, as Isaac Newton stated, “If I have seen further it is only by standing on the shoulders of giants.” Hoppe is the result thus far of those who came before him in the ideals of Austrian Economics and libertarian principles. Nevertheless, Hoppe takes it much further as in the Misesian concept of human action and the science of “praxeology”, from which all actions branch in life.
Overall, the class was extremely enjoyable, the questions concrete, and the answer provided by Mr. Kinsella clear and precise. Like many others in the class, I look forward to more. So tune in next Monday at 7pm EDT. Same Hoppe-time, same Hoppe-channel!
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