Classic Hoppe on the Realistic Right vs. the Egalitarian Left

by Stephan Kinsella on June 9, 2026

One of my favorite Hoppe pieces: “A Realistic Libertarianism,” LewRockwell.com (Sept. 30, 2013). I have never agreed that libertarians are left or right, that we are “orthogonal,” yet I have always sensed a closer affinity between conservativism and libertarianism than between modern American leftist/liberal/progressives and libertarianism.

Of course, all non-libertarians are in a sense statist and socialist (see quotes below). And as I noted in “What Libertarianism Is,” Hoppe, in his treatise A Theory of Socialism and Capitalism (chapters 3–6), provides a systematic analysis of various forms of socialism: Socialism Russian-Style, Socialism Social-Democratic Style, the Socialism of Conservatism, and the Socialism of Social Engineering. In fact, recognizing the common elements of various forms of socialism and their distinction from libertarianism (capitalism), Hoppe incisively defines socialism as “an institutionalized interference with or aggression against private property and private property claims.” Ibid., p. 2 (emphasis added).¹

But this does not mean that libertarianism is equidistant, so to speak, between left and right. In the past, I have described the modern American left and right this way: “liberals” are soft socialists. Conservatives are an incoherent hodgepodge of three mostly unrelated groups: moral majority/cultural conservatives, neocon warmongers/muscular Americanism, and free enterprise “Chamber of Commerce” types–the best of the bunch. In the era of Trump this may have shifted a bit but the point is the left seemed somewhat coherent but evil, socialism-lite; the right was an incoherent agglomeration of different factions, with some loose admiration of traditional and classical values, respect for free markets and capitalism, wariness of big government and respect for the Founders and the Constitution and its supposed limits on state power.²

But in his 2013 speech and article Hoppe notes that the right is essentially realistic, as libertarianism must also be, while the left is unrealistic and egalitarian.

As summarized for me by Grok:

The Right recognizes natural human inequalities and differences—physical, mental (cognitive abilities, talents, dispositions like intelligence, diligence, impulsivity), and social—as facts arising from both environmental and biological/physiological factors. People are also bound by blood, language, religion, customs, and geography. The Right accepts that different inputs naturally produce different outcomes (e.g., wealth, status, influence) and views this as normal. It generally favors laissez-faire—letting these differences play out without forced rectification.
The Left asserts fundamental human equality (“all men are created equal”). It downplays or denies significant mental differences, attributing observable disparities mostly to environment (which could be equalized) or luck. Any resulting inequalities in outcomes are seen as undeserved. The Left demands rectification—equalizing “stations in life” through compensation by the “lucky” to the “unlucky.” This requires ongoing intervention, as new differences constantly emerge.
Compatible with the Right: Libertarians can (and must, based on evidence) accept the Right’s empirical view of natural inequalities in abilities and outcomes. They endorse laissez-faire regarding voluntary, property-respecting interactions. The key caveat: Libertarians distinguish “natural” inequalities (from peaceful rules) from those stemming from aggression, fraud, or state privilege—the latter require restitution to victims, not egalitarian redistribution. This can sometimes increase inequality but restores justice.
Incompatible with the Left: The Left’s empirical denial of mental differences is refuted by experience and research—inequalities re-emerge despite interventions. More critically, its normative push for enforced equality violates private property (in body and goods) and requires a coercive power elite to perpetually “equalize,” creating a ruling class and unending conflict. This is anti-libertarian at its root, as true equality of outcome demands suppressing voluntary cooperation and property rights. Hoppe notes the Left’s egalitarianism serves as ideological cover for totalitarian control by elites and intellectuals.

Viewed this way, it is easy to see why we libertarians have more affinity for the right than with the unrealistic egalitarian left, which denies reality and real human differences. If only the right would learn their economics and value consistency a bit more… As Hoppe noted in The Property And Freedom Society—Reflections After Five Years:

This, then, was the ultimate reason for the breakup of the libertarian-conservative alliance accomplished with the John Randolph Club: that while the libertarians were willing to learn their cultural lesson the conservatives did not want to learn their economics.³

Thus, I tweeted recently,

I used to hate the left-right classification, esp. for libertarians, as we are neither left nor right and in the end, all non-libertarians are one type of socialist-statist or another. However, there is a reason we have more affinity to the right than the left, and that is that the left is more egalitarian and unrealistic, and the right is more realistic in recognizing natural distinctions, hierarchies, and so on. So the left-libertarians tend to be libertines and hostile to rules and authority in general and are more egalitarian, and many of them are perhaps libertarians, if they really are, for wrong reasons: because they focus on personal “liberty” and “freedom from” restrictions even those imposed by private authority and hierarchies, custom and tradition etc. But in truth a private law would not be one where there is no law and no rules, just one where the state would not be permitted to coopt the natural order and where natural hierarchy, discrimination, laws, rules, elites, authority could re-emerge.

Appendix: Hoppe on socialism and statism

See also: The Nature of the State and Why Libertarians Hate It

“socialism, by no means an invention of nineteenth century Marxism but much older, must be conceptualized as an institutionalized interference with or aggression against private property and private property claims. Capitalism, on the other hand, is a social system based on the explicit recognition of private property and of nonaggressive, contractual exchanges between private property owners. Implied in this remark, as will become clear in the course of this treatise, is the belief that there must then exist varying types and degrees of socialism and capitalism, i.e., varying degrees to which private property rights are respected or ignored. Societies are not simply capitalist or socialist. Indeed, all existing societies are socialist to some extent.” Hoppe, A Theory of Socialism and Capitalism, ch. 1

“We have defined socialism as an institutionalized policy of redistribution of property titles. More precisely, it is a transfer of property titles from people who have actually put scarce means to some use or who have acquired them contractually from persons who have done so previously onto persons who have neither done anything with the things in question nor acquired them contractually.” Hoppe, A Theory of Socialism and Capitalism, ch. 3

“To assure its very existence, any institution that enforces a socialist theory of property must rely on the continual threat of violence. Any such institution threatens people who are unwilling to accept its noncontractual appropriations of their natural property with physical assault, imprisonment, enslavement, or even death, and it must carry out such threats if necessary, in order to stay ‘trust-worthy” as the kind of institution that it is. Since one is dealing with an institution—an organization, that is, which performs these actions on a regular basis—it is almost self-explanatory that it refuses to call its own practice of doing things “aggression,” and instead adopts a different name for it, with neutral or possibly even positive connotations. In fact, its representatives might not even think that they themselves are aggressors when acting in the name of this organization. However, it is not names or terms that matter here or elsewhere, but what they really mean.132 Regarding the content of its actions, violence is the cornerstone of socialisms existence as an institution.

…

“It is not at all difficult to recognize the truth of this. In order to do so, it is only necessary to assume a boycott of any exchange-relation with the representatives of socialism because such an exchange, for whatever reasons, no longer seems profitable. It should be clear that in a social system based on the natural theory of property—under capitalism—anyone would have the right to boycott at any time, as long as he was indeed the person who appropriated the things concerned by using them before anyone else did or by acquiring them contractually from a previous owner. However much a person or institution might be affected by such a boycott, it would have to tolerate it and suffer silently, or else try to persuade the boycotter to give up his position by making a more lucrative offer to him. But it is not so with an institution that puts socialist ideas regarding property into effect. Try, for instance, to stop paying taxes or to make your future payments of taxes dependent on certain changes or improvements in the services that the institution offers in return for the taxes—it would fine, assault, imprison you, or perhaps do even worse things to you. Or to use another example, try to ignore this institution’s regulations or controls imposed on your property. Try, that is to say, to make the point that you did not consent to these limitations regarding the use of your property and that you would not invade the physical integrity of anyone else’s property by ignoring such impositions, and hence, that you have the right to secede from its jurisdiction, to “cancel your membership” so to speak, and from then on deal with it on equal footing, from one privileged institution to another. Again, assumedly without having aggressed against anyone through your secession, this institution would come and invade you and your property, and it would not hesitate to end your independence. As a matter of fact, if it did not do so, it would stop being what it is. It would abdicate and become a regular private property owner or a contractual association of such owners. Only because it does not so abdicate is there socialism at all. Indeed, and this is why the title of this chapter suggested that the question regarding the socio-psychological foundations of socialism is identical to that of the foundations of a state, if there were no institution enforcing socialistic ideas of property, there would be no room for a state, as a state is nothing else than an institution built on taxation and unsolicited, noncontractual interference with the use that private people can make of their natural property. There can be no socialism without a state, and as long as there is a state there is socialism. The state, then, is the very institution that puts socialism into action; and as socialism rests on aggressive violence directed against innocent victims, aggressive violence is the nature of any state.” Hoppe, A Theory of Socialism and Capitalism, ch. 8

“The state is always socialistic, and socialism always implies a state.” Kinsella, Afterword, in Hoppe, The Great Fiction