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Property, Freedom and Society: Jeff Tucker Interviews Hans-Hermann Hoppe

by Stephan Kinsella on September 29, 2011

Professor Hoppe taught five classes at the Mises U 2011 in Auburn, Alabama, this past July, including his great speech The Science of Human Action, which kicked off Mises U (his other Mises U 2011 lectures are here). In this speech, Professor Hoppe discusses his intellectual biography and relationship with Rothbard, as well as the Austrian approach and methodology. While he was in town, Jeff Tucker conducted a fascinating interview with him (see video below). In this wide-ranging interview, Professor Hoppe discusses in more detail the history of his intellectual odyssey from leftist to Misesian-Rothbardian, his various books, various topics such as German reintegration, the centralizing effects of constitutions (including the US Constitution and EU), why states with more liberal economies are more imperialist, the interesting and heretofore undisclosed story of exactly how communist policies in East Germany led him to discover Mises, and more.

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2025 Annual Meeting of the PFS

As noted here, the 2024 Annual Meeting of the Property and Freedom Society was held from Thursday, Sept. 19, 2024 (arrivals) to Tuesday, Sept. 24, 2024 (departures), in Bodrum, Turkey, at the Hotel Karia Princess. Details about the 2025 meeting will be announced presently.

Those interested in attending should contact Dr. Hoppe or Mr. Thomas Jacob (jacob@pfs-zurich.ch) (Administrative Secretary/Membership), regarding conditions, availability, and requirements.

Speakers and topics for previous Annual Meetings may be found here.

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“Property does not exist because there are laws, but laws exist because there is property.” — Frédéric Bastiat

“Because the concept of property, for instance, is so basic that everyone seems to have some immediate understanding of it, most people never think about it carefully and can, as a consequence, produce at best a very vague definition. But starting from imprecisely stated or assumed definitions and building a complex network of thought upon them can lead only to intellectual disaster. For the original imprecisions and loopholes will then pervade and distort everything derived from them. To avoid this, the concept of property must first be clarified.” —Hans-Hermann Hoppe, TSC, ch. 2

The Property and Freedom Society (PFS; Facebook) stands for an uncompromising intellectual radicalism: for justly acquired private property, freedom of contract, freedom of association—which logically implies the right to not associate with, or to discriminate against—anyone in one's personal and business relations—and unconditional free trade. It condemns imperialism and militarism and their fomenters, and champions peace. It rejects positivism, relativism, and egalitarianism in any form, whether of "outcome" or "opportunity," and it has an outspoken distaste for politics and politicians. As such it seeks to avoid any association with the policies and proponents of interventionism, which Ludwig von Mises identified in 1946 as the fatal flaw in the plan of the many earlier and contemporary attempts by intellectuals alarmed by the rising tide of socialism and totalitarianism to found an anti-socialist ideological movement. Mises wrote: "What these frightened intellectuals did not comprehend was that all those measures of government interference with business which they advocated are abortive. ... There is no middle way. Either the consumers are supreme or the government."

(A more complete statement of our Principles can be found here.)