Distributivism: Property, Liberty, and the Common Good
Sebastian Wang
Libertarian Alliance (UK), 10 June, 2026
Distributivism is one of those doctrines that is usually dismissed before it is understood. To the modern liberal, it sounds like nostalgia for a vanished world of small farms, local tradesmen, village workshops, and parish life. To the socialist, it appears too timid, because it does not abolish private property. To the more doctrinaire libertarian, it can look too moralising, too Catholic, and too willing to talk about the common good. Yet these dismissals tell us more about the limits of modern political imagination than about distributivism itself. The real question raised by distributivism is not whether we can return to a world of blacksmiths and thatched cottages. We cannot. The question is whether a society can remain free, humane, and morally serious when productive property is concentrated either in the hands of the state or in the hands of a comparatively small class of corporate owners. [continue reading…]
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[continue reading…]
AI data centers. The very phrase makes some folks shudder and others leap for joy. As these mega-developments proceed, more and more people are growing concerned about their energy and water requirements. [continue reading…]
Translation of René Scheu and Hans-Hermann Hoppe, “Hans-Hermann Hoppe im Gespräch” [Hans-Hermann Hoppe in conversation], Schweizer Monat Issue 982 (Dec. 13, 2010) (pdf), a German-language interview on the topic of democracy and private law society, with the Swiss monthly Schweizer Monatshefte (Dec. 2010).
Interview
Issue 982 – December 2010
Hans-Hermann Hoppe in conversation
Hans-Hermann Hoppe is one of the most controversial libertarian intellectuals of the present day. He offers in his books a radical critique of democracy. It is for him that form of state in which a majority skillfully helps itself at the expense of a minority. René Scheu met Hans-Hermann Hoppe in Zurich and Lech am Arlberg. After the preliminary talks, the exchange of ideas took place in a classic-binding manner via e-mail.
by René Scheu and Hans-Hermann Hoppe
12/13/2010
Mr. Hoppe, with friends in Brazil I recently led an intensive discussion about the advantages and disadvantages of direct-democratic models. When I explained to them the political system of Switzerland, in which the people have the last word, their spontaneous answer was: “That is indeed the purest communism!” We see that differently in Switzerland and are proud of our direct-democratic tradition, for which many Europeans envy us. How do you see that?
Hans-Hermann Hoppe: Yes, of course democracy, whether direct or indirect, is a form of communism. A majority decides about what belongs to me and what belongs to you and what I and you are allowed to do or not. That has nothing to do with private property, but very much with the relativization of property, thus with common property, thus with communism. [continue reading…]
Henry Nowak and the Selective Morality of the Left
The death of Henry Nowak was a terrible crime. A young man was stabbed to death. The police response appears to have been grossly inadequate. His killer, Vickrum Digwa, was arrested, prosecuted, convicted, and sentenced to life imprisonment. Nothing that follows should obscure these facts. Nor should anything that follows diminish the grief of Henry Nowak’s family, whose dignity in bereavement has been evident throughout.
At the same time, there are events that refuse to remain private. They illuminate wider truths about the society in which they occur. They reveal assumptions and habits of thought that extend far beyond the immediate circumstances. The reaction to Henry Nowak’s death has become one of those events.
Particularly revealing has been the response of the left-wing blogging collective Sodium Haze. Their statement deserves careful attention, not because it is especially unusual, but because it is representative. It expresses with unusual clarity a habit of thought that has become hegemonic throughout much of the contemporary left. [continue reading…]
It’s AI this and AI that on Wall Street everyday. “AI-related equities constitute no less than 40% of current equity market cap,” reports the latest Grant’s Interest Rate Observer, citing Bank of America strategists. This year’s bubble in stocks means the Austrian Business Cycle Theory will be ignored again until it all comes tumbling down. This all starts with the highest order good, land. Bisnow.com tells us,
Nationally, sales of land earmarked for future data center development totaled roughly $3.3B in the first three months of 2026, up 141% from the same period in 2025, according to data provided to Bisnow by Avison Young. Roughly 30% of all spending on development sites in the first quarter went to data center land deals, up from about 19% in 2025.
Nationwide, the public has had it with data center development, making it hard to find large available tracts that can be zoned for data centers. Local politicians listen to the neighbors who vote and the entrepreneurial process is squelched by the Not-in-my-backyard gang. But, as CRG Chief Operating Officer Steve Schnur told Bisnow, “If you’re in a state that is a business-friendly state and you have access to power and you have a large piece of land, oh, my gosh, you’re sitting on a gold mine.” [continue reading…]
The military defeat of the United States in the Iran War is only the beginning. Military defeats matter, of course. They destroy reputations. They expose incompetence. They reveal weaknesses that enemies had previously suspected but could not prove. Yet military defeats are often survivable. Great powers have lost wars before. Britain survived the American Revolution. Russia survived the Crimean War. France survived the humiliations of 1815 and 1870. The danger for the United States is that this defeat strikes at the foundations of the system that has sustained American predominance for half a century.
For thirty years, American politicians, generals, intelligence officials, journalists, and academic experts have repeated the same claim. The United States was not merely the strongest country in the world. It was the indispensable nation. It possessed an unmatched military. It controlled the world’s financial system. It maintained alliances on every continent. It could intervene almost anywhere and dictate outcomes. The Iran War has exposed this as fantasy. [continue reading…]
The Worst Form of Government Except for All the Others
David Dürr / October 31, 2024
Time and again I hear: You in Switzerland surely have the perfect political system. You are, after all, the country with the world’s best form of government. You have precisely that which the French Revolution had set out to achieve, namely a system in which the people are governed by laws that they themselves have made. Just recently, a journalist from Poland told me this again in an interview. With the political conditions in his own country, he did not seem all too happy, while Switzerland for him was something like a democratic paradise.
I then unfortunately had to disappoint him: Even from a purely statistical standpoint, direct popular votes in Switzerland do not amount to much. Of the currently existing roughly five thousand enactments at the federal level, far less than one percent have ever been submitted to the people for a decision. And when it is further taken into account that in each case no more than 15 to 20 percent of those subject to the law have agreed, then the true democracy rate sinks into the per mille range. [continue reading…]
The first two chapters—my “Preface” and Hans’s “Introduction”—were published the week of Rothbard’s birthday here on the Property and Freedom Podcast (PFP315 and PFP314). The other main chapters will be released sequentially weekly on Mondays. The next in the queue:
From the vault: this classic, heroic piece by Sean Gabb of the Libertarian Alliance (UK): “The Enemy Class and how to Destroy It: A Manifesto for the Right (2001),” originally published at Political Notes 170, Free Life Commentary No. 47 (Jan. 22, 2001) (a hundred years exactly since the death of Queen Victoria) (pdf).
A hardcover Gedenkschrift commemorating the 100th birthday of Murray N. Rothbard (1926–1995), edited by Stephan Kinsella and Hans-Hermann Hoppe. Featuring personal reflections and substantive essays from an international array of Property and Freedom Society scholars — including Hoppe, Doug French, Tom DiLorenzo, Jeffrey Tucker, Jeff Deist, Lee Iglody, Jeff Barr, and an essay by Saifedean Ammous.
Hans-Hermann Hoppe, “Debatte: Small is Beautiful,” Schweizer Monat (04.06.2026): “Der wirtschaftliche Erfolg Europas ist eng mit seiner politischen Zersplitterung verbunden. Der Wettbewerb zwischen Staaten begrenzte staatliche Eingriffe und begünstigte Innovation und Wachstum. Aktuelle Tendenzen bedrohen diesen Mechanismus zunehmend – auch in der Schweiz.” [Europe’s economic success is closely linked to its political fragmentation. Competition between states limited government intervention and promoted innovation and growth. Current trends are increasingly threatening this mechanism – including in Switzerland.] Original English submission below.
The village fountain in the church square and the house “Zum Sternen” (17th century) in Thayngen. Image: Joachim Kohler Bremen/ Wikimedia Commons.
Staaten sind keine wirtschaftlichen Unternehmen. Im Unterschied zu diesen finanzieren sich Staaten nicht durch den Verkauf von Produkten und Dienstleistungen an freiwillig zahlende Kunden, sondern durch Zwangsabgaben: durch Androhung und Anwendung von Gewalt eingetriebene Steuern – sowie durch von ihnen buchstäblich aus dem Nichts geschaffenes Papiergeld. [continue reading…]
What do nation states and private companies have in common? Neither is immune to the real world constraints that govern goal-oriented human collaboration. Such endeavors require certain fundamental components: resources, knowledge, and consent. Efficiency of the organization toward achieving their ends scales with each of these. An abundance of one component may (temporarily) offset deficiencies in the others, but in the long run decline will ensue. That is, each is necessary, but not sufficient, for success.
There is truth in the maxim that “big companies suck.” Such behemoths are often more intractable to deal with than government entities (particularly in the realm of customer service when problems arise). Bureaucracy is not exclusively a creature of the state. The smaller the organization the less likely one is to encounter such rigid, brainless structures. But why should this be? How can a private (mostly) free market business devolve into this sort of structure while one’s local town council is often highly solicitous of citizen’s concerns? Size. Bureaucracy is a firm’s attempt to overcome the fracturing of knowledge with expanding size. Information is normalized into SOPs (standard operating procedure) which are then programmed into tabula rasa employees. Independent analysis or thought is actively discouraged or outright forbidden. Just pull the string in the doll’s back and you get the same result every time. The mistake is similar to the one that values legislated “law” over that of common law; the latter adjusts and adapts to each unique situation whereas the former does not, remaining rigid and inflexible. This rigidity renders the entity deploying it weaker in the long run. [continue reading…]
[Originally posted at DouglasinVegas.com, 2023/6/3]
“Ode to Billie Joe” is a haunting story tune that never leaves your head. My hand instinctively hits the volume button when Bobbie Gentry’s distinctive guitar opens the song. Just what did Billy Joe and the singer throw off the Tallahatchie bridge? And why did Billy Joe McAllister jump?
But while the song is always just a click away, the singer/songwriter has vanished. “Where is Bobbie Gentry?” It’s as stirring a question as “Who is John Galt?” She is now 80 and has never seen or heard from. Someone said to me, “who cares, she’s just a one hit wonder?” [continue reading…]
Yesterday I wrote about statism and security, remarking on two incidents of horrific police abuse over in Europe that have gone viral online recently.
Some people remarked that my complaints smacked of utopianism. Sure, policing needs reform, but to eliminate the state itself and its monopoly on violence? Surely that would lead to “Mad Max” style chaos. Who wants that?
(sigh)
We’ve lived in statist society, educated by statist schools, for so long that we can’t even imagine ourselves free. So today, folks, I’m going to do just that: imagine what being free would look like. [continue reading…]
I attended LNC2026 a couple weeks ago; what a sh*tshow. I ran for re-election for the Judicial Committee, on which I served the last 4 years; I was not re-elected. Good riddance. I’ll write up my experience with the LP over the last 4 years presently, but for now, a couple of commentaries, by PFS member Adam Haman, with Bob Murphy, and on the Tom Woods show.
Prof. Hoppe’s seminal A Theory of Socialism and Capitalism was previously translated into Spanish in 2013 as Una Teoría del Socialismo y el Capitalismo, translated and with a prologue by Juan Fernando Carpio (Editorial Innisree, 2013).1 A new edition is apparently now available: Hans-Hermann Hoppe, Socialismo y Capitalismo, Traducción de Juan Fernando Carpio (quien coordina la traducción), junto con Mariano Bas, Daniel Duarte, Dante Bayona y Gerardo Caprav. Coordinación editorial: Gilberto Ramírez. Prólogo de Jesús Huerta de Soto (Nueva Biblioteca de la Libertad 69. Madrid: Unión Editorial, 2026) (hardback; paperback).
Die Ökonomie und Ethik des Privateigentums: Studium der politischen Ökonomie und Philosophie, Zweite Ausgabe (2026), a translation of Hans-Hermann Hoppe, The Economics and Ethics of Private Property, Second Edition (Auburn, AL: Ludwig von Mises Institute, 2006) has been prepared. Text below and pdf here. Translated by Andreas Tank.
The paper version is now available for purchase here. According to the translator: “Anyone who orders from tredition (my print-on-demand provider) helps me generate significantly more revenue, also pays no shipping costs, and there it doesn’t go any faster or slower than anywhere else” [continue reading…]
From PFS member David Dürr (November 2, 2025; my translation; with permission), followed by some additional information summarized by Grok.
Lèse-majesté according to § 188 StGB
David Dürr
Robert Habeck will soon be forgotten; which is just as well for politicians who have brought so little to the country; the same probably applies to Annalena Baerbock. The only thing that might keep the two in memory a little longer is their rabid reactions to insults to their majesty. Habeck accumulated more than 800 criminal complaints, Baerbock at least more than 500 (as of today, perhaps the numbers will still rise). And accordingly, numerous criminal proceedings ensued, sometimes with police raids early in the morning at the homes of the offenders, and remarkably harsh convictions. This is because the Criminal Code is particularly strict when it comes to lèse-majesté. [continue reading…]
Interesting discussion of L. Neil Smith’s The Probability Broach by The Feral Historian, who has some interesting episodes. As my friend Rob Wicks noted, “I’ve never seen any of the review channels I watch review this.”
This is a review of and commentary on L. Neil Smith’s The Probability Broach, a libertarian/anarcho-capitalist sci-fi novel. The reviewer of course mangles things a bit, e.g. he takes patent and IP law for granted (as did Smith!),1 and he also mangles a bit the case against regulations of corporations: it is not only that if the company pollutes there might be physical retaliation; but even in a private-law society there would be law and the ability to sue for damage, as Rothbard pointed out in his classic “Law, Property Rights, and Air Pollution” (in Economic Controversies).
This past summer I joined my son in Vienna. He was there on a fellowship from his senior year at Carleton College to study architecture, in particular the work of Otto Wagner, the Secession movement, and so on. I had only been there once before, when backpacking during law school. I accompanied him on his explorations and we feasted on Viennese cuisine at places recommended by local friends.
I suggested that we take time to visit the University of Vienna, so that I could see the monuments to famous Austrian economists who had taught there.1 The lobby highlights Nobel prize winners, including Friedrich von Hayek; and in the “Colonnade,” or “arcade courtyard” (Arkadenhof, also locally referred to as the aula), there are dozens of monuments—busts, bas-relief plaques—dedicated to noted intellectuals, alumni, and professors from the University. Of particular interest to devotees of Austrian economics, there are monuments to Carl Menger2 and his two students Friedrich von Wieser and Eugen von Böhm-Bahwerk, all located near each other in the Arcade Courtyard. [continue reading…]
The “wipe Israel off the map” quote is a deliberate mistranslation—one the media has used for decades to manufacture hostility toward Iran.
It has oftenbeenclaimed by the Western news media, usually in the context of Iran’s nuclear program, that Iran has threatened to “wipe Israel off the map”. Specifically, the quote is attributed to former Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
The implication is that Iran has threatened to wage horrific acts of war against Israel to physically destroy the country and the Israeli people.
The New York Times, for example, repeated the claim in a report last month about how Israel and the US launched their join war on Iran at the end of February with a plan for regime change.
As noted here, the 2026 Twentieth Annual Meeting of the Property and Freedom Society will be held from Thursday, September 17, 2026 to Tuesday, September 22, 2026.
To donate with BITCOIN please use the address below. If you would like us to credit your payment (for dues, conference fees, etc.) please email Stephan Kinsella ([email protected]) when you make the bitcoin payment.
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“Property does not exist because there are laws, but laws exist because there is property.” — FrédéricBastiat
“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.)
I suggested that we take time to visit the University of Vienna, so that I could see the monuments to famous Austrian economists who had taught there.
Alessandro Fusillo
David Dürr
Doug French
Fernando Chiocca
Greg Morin
Hans-Hermann Hoppe
Jay Baykal
Juan Fernando Carpio
León Isidoro
Martin Cabrera
Oscar Grau
PFS
Saifedean Ammous
Sean Gabb
Sean Ring
Stephan Kinsella
Stéphane Geyres
Thomas Jacob
Tom DiLorenzo
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