Property and Freedom Podcast, Episode 298.

This talk is from the recently-concluded 19th annual PFS 2025 Annual Meeting (Sep. 18–23, 2025, Bodrum, Turkey).

Anthony Daniels (Dalrymple) (England): The Worldly Adventures of a Skeptical Doctor. Shownotes and transcript below.

Other talks appear on the Property and Freedom Podcast. Other videos may also be found at the PFS 2025 Youtube Playlist.

Theodore Dalrymple – Snapshots of a Life (20th Anniversary Conference Talk)

In this reflective lecture, Theodore Dalrymple (pen name of psychiatrist Anthony Daniels) shares personal anecdotes instead of a formal intellectual biography, emphasizing how formative experiences shaped his worldview.

Key Themes & Stories:

Closing Reflection:

Citing Dr. Johnson’s Rasselas (“The Conclusion in Which Nothing Is Concluded”), Dalrymple offers no life prescriptions—only that reading and lived experience must dialectically inform each other to avoid pedantry or shallowness.

A candid, contrarian meditation on human nature, civilization’s fragility, and the unintended consequences of ideology.

Opening Thanks and Personal Authority

0:00

[Applause]

Well, ladies and gentlemen, first as ever I should like to thank Hans and Gulchin for their very gracious hospitality, and second I should like to congratulate them on the 20th anniversary of this conference. I have never organized anything in my life and so I admire organizers, especially people who organize something that is as pleasant as this conference.

But I have a third reason to thank Hans this year, because I think I have been to maybe 10 or 12 of these conferences—I do not remember how many—because he has at last asked me to speak on a subject on which I am a world authority, namely myself.

Limits of Truth in Autobiography

0:58

This does not mean of course that I will tell you the whole truth about myself for two reasons. First, no one knows everything about himself, and secondly everyone has something to hide.

But as a Victorian English novelist, Anthony Trollope, said in the introduction to his autobiography, I shall not tell the whole truth, but everything that I say shall be true.

Snapshots of Influential Events

1:28

I thought that instead of presenting what might rather grandiosely be called my intellectual development—assuming that there has been any—I would give you a few snapshots of events and processes that have been important to me. The effect of some of these events takes years to develop because the mind can be like a frying pan or it can be like a slow cooker or anything in between.

Childhood Friend with Polio and Rejection of Victimhood

1:57

When I was about six years old, my closest friend, from whom I was inseparable, was one of the last people in the country to suffer from polio. He was left paraplegic.

His mother was a Christian Scientist, and Christian Scientists have a rather peculiar view of illness, as if it were an illusion. My parents, who had been very worried that I might contract polio myself, were in my recollection very, very good to my friend and took a matter-of-fact view of his problem, encouraging him to do everything that he could do and encouraging us to encourage him.

His mother, who alas died very early of cancer—I am not sure whether her religious belief and rejection of medicine shortened her life; I cannot say that—and my parents, both she and my parents emphasized what my friend could do rather than what he could not do. I think that this at least in part accounted for the fact that he had a very distinguished career, in fact including travel in Africa, which at the time was not easy even for the able-bodied.

The memory of my friendship with him had, I think, a subliminal effect on my rejection of the modern cult of the victim and of victimhood. To reduce people to their victimization, to their difficulties, is to do them a great disservice and is far from flattering to them.

Blind Accordionist and Insight into Cruelty

3:47

When I was 11, I thought in common with most boys that sport, and in particular football and cricket, were important. There was what I thought was a very important cup match in which the team I favored was playing, and unusually for that time admission was by advanced ticket purchase only, and I joined a very long queue to buy the ticket.

Along the queue walked an old blind man playing an accordion and singing. The song he sang I remember was “The Man Who Broke the Bank at Monte Carlo.”

As he passed a group of young toughs ahead of me, they who had a portable radio with them turned up the volume of that radio and drowned out that man’s voice, and he was extremely confused by this. He was an old man and of course he could not see what they were doing, and I shall never forget the look of bewilderment on his face and the laughter of the toughs as they mocked him. Even at the age of 11 I was appalled by this.

This was a very small incident, of course, of no historical importance, but it gave me a sudden insight into the potential for gratuitous cruelty that lurks, if not in every human heart, at least in many human hearts. I also learned from this experience the limits of my own courage. I did not intervene in any way. Of course, such intervention would probably have been useless in any case, but that was not the reason for my failure to intervene. It was fear and cowardice.

Death of a Scholarly Friend

5:53

When I was about 15, I went to the house of a friend of mine who was 16, whom I had not seen for two weeks. He was a very clever boy destined for a life of scholarship to which I think he would have made a very valuable contribution, and he was also a very nice and a very good boy. In fact, he was a much nicer boy than was I.

He suffered terribly from both asthma and eczema, which gave him a pigeon chest and a skin whose scaling I can still see in my mind’s eye. Bear in mind this is more than 60 years ago.

His mother answered the door and I asked to see him. She told me that he had died and then described the manner of his death. He had had a very severe attack of asthma and told his mother to call an ambulance. As she did so, he wheezed that he was dying.

The ambulance controller insisted on taking details in a highly bureaucratic manner and in contacting his own doctor and so forth. It took several minutes just this bureaucratic procedure. The ambulance arrived a minute after he died.

It is possible that the bronchodilator that he used at that time, which again I can still see in my mind’s eye as he clutched it like a lifeline, which was called isoprenaline, played a part in his death. That was not appreciated at the time that it was slightly dangerous.

But what his mother then said startled me. I think she was a single mother, which was unusual at the time. Certainly there had never been any talk of a father. He had an older brother who I think was actually a half-brother. In those days one did not inquire into such things. We were much more sophisticated. We understood the virtues of silence. He was a handsome and charming youth who was probably destined for finance or prison or possibly both.

The mother said with unmistakable bitterness, “Why could it not have been the other one?” It was as if she believed that one of her two boys was destined to die. I fled from the house and never returned, though I feel that I perhaps should have done.

Lessons from the Death: Complexity, Bureaucracy, and Unfairness

8:46

This death, now more than 60 years ago, affected me in more than one way and affects me still when I think about it. First, in the depth of her grief and bitterness, the mother revealed to me the unstraightforwardness and the complexity of the human heart and the hiddenness of much that it contains that can under certain circumstances be suddenly revealed.

Her account of the death gave me a permanent hatred and contempt for unnecessary bureaucracy. Of course, the life of my friend might not have been saved had the ambulance come a few minutes earlier, but that is not the point, which is that it might have been saved.

I learned from his death also that human existence does not hand out its rewards like medals to deserving soldiers. If anything, this boy, my friend, was more deserving than I, and yet he was deprived of life undeservedly and far too early.

A little reflection on the unfairness of it all demonstrated to me that unfairness was ineradicable from human existence. By further reflection that attempts to eradicate it might lead to worse unfairness and indeed brutal injustice, and the attempt to produce what Thomas Sowell calls cosmic justice ends in disaster.

I came to the conclusion that it always required judgment to distinguish the ineradicable from that which can be eradicated much less rationally. I still feel a slight guilt that I survived him when I did nothing to deserve having survived him.

Medical Work in Rhodesia

10:49

When I qualified as a doctor, I went for six months to what was then called Rhodesia. It had been Southern Rhodesia, then Rhodesia, and it is now called Zimbabwe. Apart from the urge to travel, I wanted to see what was then clearly the end of European colonialism in Africa.

To my surprise, I found the country was very well organized, though of course it was not in a completely just way. An ethnic minority of three to 4% of the population had inherited half the land and the better half of the land at that as a result of colonial expropriation. However, as a result of this, the country was the breadbasket of the region.

The regime which was fighting for its life against the hostility of the whole world was obliged to be efficient. Sanctions against it called forth new industries and provoked much ingenuity in getting around them. A lesson which I think no one has subsequently learned.

The hospital in which I worked was the best administered that I have ever worked in, perhaps because there were no people to spare for unnecessary positions.

Salary Disparities and Social Obligations in Rhodesia

12:12

There was an interesting phenomenon which puzzled me for a time. Unlike in South Africa, in Rhodesia, young black doctors—who were not very many but they existed—were paid exactly the same as young white ones such as I.

Yet, while I on my salary lived as a prince, perhaps in a way that was more agreeable to me than any way of life I have had since, the young black doctors lived in near squalor, not quite squalor, but near squalor. The question was why they received the same money.

The answer really was obvious. While I had only myself to please with my salary, the young black doctors had social obligations to impoverished extended families, also to villages and so forth. These obligations were so strong that they could not escape them. This was far from dishonorable. On the contrary, it was highly moral.

The problem came when using these principles, there was a modern state to administer. Naturally enough, everyone aspired to European levels of ease, comfort, and security. The colonialist was both disliked and admired. The corrupt chaos that resulted was, in my view, all too predictable, though not widely predicted. There is much, a lot more I could say on this subject but I do not have the time.

Tanzania: Failed Collectivization and Foreign Aid

14:03

I will mention three much later African experiences. The first was in Tanzania where an idealistic president called Julius Nyerere was much admired in the West, particularly by Scandinavians and the Dutch, because he talked fluent morality, and he attempted a socialization of agriculture.

That was to say agriculture was 90% of the economy of that country by collectivization and foreign aid—as I have mentioned specifically from Scandinavian countries and the Netherlands which have since recognized their mistake—paid for this experiment and made it possible, though the aid also prevented the mass starvation that would have resulted from the experiment if it had been tried without that aid.

A one-party system was instituted and you could more or less tell a party member by his girth. Everyone was thin but the party member had put on weight.

The fact that Tanzania received more foreign aid per capita than any other African country and yet produced ever less per capita suggested to me that the famous saying attributed to Peter Bauer, the development economist, that foreign aid is the means by which poor people in rich countries give money to rich people in poor countries was substantially correct.

Crossing Africa: Kindness, Corruption, and Informal Taxation

15:58

The second African experience to which I will allude is my crossing of Africa by public transport such as it was in 1986, and I went from Zanzibar to Timbuktu, and I chose those two destinations because I wanted to write a book and it sounded, I thought, Zanzibar to Timbuktu sounds quite good.

I should record that at no time as I saw Africa from the bottom up did I feel any hostility towards me as an alien, not even in those places which had experienced civil war or were about to do so. On the contrary, I met only kindness, politeness and generosity.

This suggested to me that there are two types of hostility. The rarer which is spontaneous and the second which unfortunately has become more common is programmed and indoctrinated.

On the border between Niger and Mali I saw the worst example of corruption in my entire journey. You may be interested to know that in 1986 when I was in Niger the population was 6 million and today it is 24 million.

For three days and nights, I slept by the side of the road, which was actually extremely pleasant, but I slept by the side of the road because the other passengers had been imprisoned successively by the customs officials, the police and the army as they extracted bribes from the passengers. I was excluded from this treatment eventually.

Although it was quite pleasant sleeping in the open air, I got exasperated and I shouted “Bribes, bribes, bribes.” A Malian soldier took me aside and said very kindly, “But what you have to remember, Monsieur, is that we have not been paid for three months.”

I have come to see bribery in such circumstances as this as an informal form of taxation. Once at Lagos airport landing there for the first time, the customs officer said to me, “Have you brought any presents?” “No,” I replied. I was very naive even though I had been across Africa. “No,” I replied, “I do not know anyone in Nigeria.” “For me,” he said.

I gave him a small amount of money and we had a good laugh. But had I expressed moral outrage saying this is corrupt and so forth, I probably would still have been in Lagos airport today.

Monrovia During Civil War: Destruction of Civilization

19:07

The third African experience to which I will allude is a brief stay in Monrovia, which is the capital of Liberia, during a lull in the city’s civil war there that killed a quarter of a million people—a tenth or a twelfth of the population—and displaced a much higher percentage of the population.

Monrovia was very difficult to get to. It was an enclave surrounded completely by rebels. I went on a boat from the Ivory Coast by a buccaneering Welsh captain called Monty Jones.

On board was an American ex-Marine known only as Rambo who kept watch for pirates from the deck and seemed to be disappointed that none appeared for him to blow out of the water. There was also a French mercenary soldier who found France unbearably bourgeois and boring and had come to train a militia in Liberia.

Monrovia had been destroyed with a thoroughness that beggared description. It was not just the destruction of war. It was not that bombs had fallen on buildings or shells had fallen on buildings. It was much, much worse than that.

It was that almost every vestige of civilization or of Western civilization at any rate had been destroyed with a minuteness that bespoke real hatred of it. For example, at the university hospital which was very large—it was called the John F. Kennedy Hospital where open-heart surgery had been performed not long before and was now utterly deserted—was a complete shell.

Every last piece of equipment had not so much been destroyed as dismantled beyond hope of repair. So that for example the wheels had been sawn off every trolley at the cost of considerable labor. This was not the work of just a bomb or a shell. People had gone through destroying every last piece of equipment.

In the Centennial Hall where presidents were inaugurated and other national ceremonies performed, a Steinway piano, probably the only Steinway piano in the country, had had its legs sawn off, its body lying on the ground, and piles of human excrement were placed neatly rounded in a kind of necklace. It was not so much gang rape as gang defecation.

I showed this to two young British journalists who had braved difficulties like I suppose I had really to come to the city, and they saw absolutely nothing significant in the fate of the piano and found it odd that I did find it significant. Why worry about such a thing in the middle of a civil war?

Civilization is fragile and not valued by many, including by intellectuals and including by people who benefit from civilization. People nowadays find many things more important than the preservation of civilization.

Nauru: Sudden Wealth Without Effort

22:51

Now referred to another couple of experiences, one from the central Pacific and one from Central America. The little island of Nauru in the central Pacific was once the richest place on earth per capita. It was about 10 miles round and its population was 4,000.

It was given independence in 1968 when it gained control of the valuable phosphate rock that was mined until then by the British Phosphate Commission that amalgamated British, Australian and New Zealand interests. Suddenly this people who had lived essentially at subsistence level were very rich.

Almost everything became free to them. There was nothing for them to do except import. They were not very sophisticated importers. They imported huge quantities of rice, tinned meat, Fanta which they drank 24 cans at a time, and chatter.

They became enormously fat consuming on average more than twice as much in calories as a Canadian lumberjack working in a freezing forest. No doubt as a result partly of genetic predisposition, half of them came to suffer from type 2 diabetes and their life expectancy was not more than the late 40s.

There are lessons to be drawn from this. An Australian professor, Paul Zimmet, came to study the medical situation. At the time, I thought that this was a typical example of absurd academic concern with arcana. But in fact, what he was studying was an important aspect of the future of the whole world.

Furthermore, this experience—and I went several times to this island—it convinced me that wealth without any effort to produce it was not an unmixed blessing.

Guatemala: Educated Discontent and Revolution

25:15

I stayed a few months in Guatemala during the era of the Central American peninsula civil war. There was a civil war in El Salvador at the time as well. All the literature on the subject at the time—and there was a great deal of it; people have lost interest in Central America since—was favorable to the guerrillas who were of course communist.

The so-called revolutions were treated by academics as if they were spontaneous uprisings of impoverished, oppressed and downtrodden peasantry—and the peasantry was indeed often impoverished, oppressed and downtrodden. But it was obvious to me that such people were incapable of more than jacquerie and that revolution required a discontented educated and intellectual class. This was precisely what I found.

The ancient University of San Carlos in Guatemala was in effect an armed revolutionary camp at that time. Oddly enough, the traditional extraterritoriality of the university by which it is meant that the agents of the state were not allowed to enter it—and it was known as autonomy—was respected but it was tempered by abduction and extrajudicial execution once the students left the university.

Rapid expansion of the class of educated people led to bitter disappointment that the society and economy was not able automatically to offer them elite status that had once been the automatic reward of attendance at the university. No doubt this has lessons for us all, not just for Latin Americans.

I should add that the worst of all the Latin American guerrilla movements, the Sendero Luminoso of Peru, began when the government of Alan García decided to resuscitate the University of Ayacucho in Ayacucho, which was a poor area of Peru, poor even by Peruvian standards. He attempted to revive it. It had become defunct at the end I think at the end of the 17th century.

The professor of philosophy appointed there, Abimael Guzmán who wrote a thesis on Kant, had founded a political movement that I am convinced from what I saw in Ayacucho—and it seemed at the time that the Sendero Luminoso might actually overthrow the Peruvian government—that I became convinced that Peru if that happened would have become a Cambodia on a much larger scale.

North Korea: Literature as Sole Joy

28:31

I will just also briefly mention perhaps the most extraordinary conversation—if you call it conversation, perhaps communication—I have ever had in my life, and this was in North Korea. I went to North Korea as a member of the British delegation to the International Festival of Youth and Students although by that time I was neither a youth nor a student. But they wanted—even communists want a doctor. So, I went to North Korea.

The only conversation or the only insight I had from something that a North Korean said was when I left the Great People’s Study House, which was a kind of cross between a pagoda and a fascist mausoleum, into an enormous urban area outside which reminded me of what de Custine said about St. Petersburg. De Custine who wrote a famous book on Russia in 1839. He said in Petersburg a crowd would be a revolution. Which is exactly right.

Anyway, as I was walking across this enormous urban space which was practically empty, a North Korean went by me and said surreptitiously, “Do you speak English?” So I said, “Yes.” And he said, “I am a student at the Foreign Languages Institute. Reading Dickens and Shakespeare is the greatest, the only joy of my life.”

I understood exactly, I think I understood exactly what he meant because in Dickens and Shakespeare and of course in other literature, even the poorest person speaks with his own voice. But in North Korea, that was completely impossible. So this was the only time he ever heard or read speech that actually came from the person, from inside the person who was speaking.

I do not think you would find many students of English literature in Anglophone countries who would say their greatest joy was reading Dickens and Shakespeare. Recently I think there was an article that I read about English students in Harvard who found even a single page of Dickens too difficult for them. So I think that tells you something about our decadence.

British Prisons and Slums: Poverty of the Soul

31:16

Well, enough of foreign parts. They are foreign that is to me. One must always remember of course that exotic countries are not exotic to those who live in them.

Somehow I managed while doing all this traveling to pursue a medical career though not a very distinguished one despite my peregrinations. I was for many years a doctor and psychiatrist in a large British prison and psychiatrist in the general hospital next door and what I saw and learned there actually shocked me for avoidable degradation.

There is nothing to beat a British slum where the poverty is not so much economic—though of course the people are relatively poor by comparison with other people in the society—but a poverty of culture, of intellect and in a wider sense of spirit.

The reasons for this are no doubt complex or as we say when we are not sure of the causes of something multifactorial. But at any rate, I came to the conclusion that ideas, the ideas that people had, their conception of the world as it was and as it ought to be, is very important and that any kind of explanation of their behavior that did not include the nature and content of people’s ideas was deeply flawed and inadequate.

In other words, you cannot treat people or you cannot explain people without the concept of meaning in their lives. I was much struck by the way in which obviously false conceptions of the problem of addiction existed particularly addiction to heroin and how an obviously false idea—and it was not difficult to establish that it was a false idea—became orthodoxy amongst decent, intelligent and well-educated people and indeed became, if I might say so, an institutional orthodoxy.

I came to the conclusion that a rather toxic combination of sentimentality and self-interest accounted for this. However, if I remember rightly, I devoted a whole talk to this subject some years ago. I cannot tell you how many. So I shall not repeat myself.

Conclusion: No Firm Conclusions

34:10

You might say, you might ask what does all this amount to, all this experience. One lesson I have drawn is that I think that reading and experience should be in dialectical relationship as it were that the one without the other leads either to pedantry or shallowness.

But I have nothing to say to you about how life should be lived, how you should live your life. I have no firm conclusions and I refer to the last chapter of Dr. Johnson’s great philosophical fable Rasselas which was published in the same year as Voltaire’s Candide which is Candide is much less profound and therefore more widely read.

The title of the last chapter of Rasselas is “Conclusion in which nothing is concluded” and that is my conclusion. Thank you.

[Applause]

35:21

Property and Freedom Podcast, Episode 297.

This talk is from the recently-concluded 19th annual PFS 2025 Annual Meeting (Sep. 18–23, 2025, Bodrum, Turkey).

Stephan Kinsella (USA): “Where The Common Law Goes Wrong.” Also podcast at KOL474 | Where The Common Law Goes Wrong (PFS 2025), which contains the transcript and shownotes. See also Sebastian Wang, “Stephan Kinsella on the Common Law: Lessons from Bodrum 2025,” Libertarian Alliance [UK] Blog (Sep. 19, 2025).

Other talks appear on the Property and Freedom Podcast. Other videos may also be found at the PFS 2025 Youtube Playlist.

Property and Freedom Podcast, Episode 296.

This talk is from the recently-concluded 19th annual PFS 2025 Annual Meeting (Sep. 18–23, 2025, Bodrum, Turkey).

Sean Gabb (England): Roman Law and Contractual Slavery [Sebastian Wang, “Roman Slavery: Horror and Paradox – Sean Gabb in Bodrum,” Libertarian Alliance [UK] Blog (Sep. 20, 2025)] Transcript and shownotes below.

Other talks appear on the Property and Freedom Podcast. Other videos may also be found at the PFS 2025 Youtube Playlist.

Show Notes: “Ancient Slavery: A Very Peculiar Institution”

Speaker: Unnamed (invited by Hans and Gulchin)

Source: YouTube lecture (Nov 2025 transcript)

TL;DR

Ancient slavery was overwhelmingly brutal—most died young under the lash—but a significant minority repurposed the institution for social mobility: voluntary enslavement, manumission after 7 years, and instant Roman citizenship upon freedom. Evidence: thousands of 2nd–3rd century AD gravestones of ex-slaves who married their former owners or rose to elite status.

Key Sections & Takeaways

Slides / Visuals Mentioned

Speaker offers slides via email.

Further Reading

Final Quote

“The past is a strange place and the more you look at it the stranger it is.”

Introduction and Thanks

[0:01]

Good morning everybody and it’s good to look around the room and see so many old friends and new friends as well. But I’d like to begin by thanking Hans and Gulchin for their great goodness in having invited me back here again and again. Do we have a little feedback from the microphone? No. All well, very well.

Title and Historical Views on Slavery

[0:25]

Today I’d like to talk about ancient slavery and I’ve called it a very peculiar institution. I think it was Thomas Jefferson who said that history is a nightmare from which we are continually trying to wake up, or Voltaire who said that history is nothing more than a catalog of the vices, follies and crimes of mankind. There is some truth in those sayings. And if you look at the institution of ancient slavery, you do seem to see a very good example of those observations.

Modern Perspectives on Ancient Slavery

[1:13]

We’ve always known about ancient slavery. Of course, for the past several hundred years, we have always deplored it. Since the 1970s, however, ancient slavery has moved to something like one of the center points of classical studies. So much so that I have spoken to people who’ve told me, “I cannot appreciate ancient literature anymore.” Because whenever I read Livy or Tacitus or Polybius or Herodotus, all I can think of is the slaves who made the lives of those writers comfortable, who made it possible for them to write their works. And I’ve seen people tell me that they’re unable to appreciate ancient architecture because it was almost universally constructed with slave labor.

The Harsh Reality for Most Slaves

[2:12]

I don’t want to minimize the effects. I don’t want to minimize the nature and extent of ancient slavery, for in the overwhelming majority of cases it was a veil of tears. It was a terrible thing. If you were a slave in the ancient world, the overwhelming likelihood was that you would spend your life under the lash working in a chain gang in a field or in a quarry and you would die in your late 20s or early 30s from overwork and general maltreatment.

Not All Human Behavior Is Cruel

[2:53]

However, having said that, we do need to bear in mind that although human beings can often behave very badly to each other, this is not a universal tendency. And it is possible to see ancient slavery sometimes in a more positive light than shown in that 19th-century French painting of a slave market. Please.

Slavery as a Universal Institution

[3:20]

Now, slavery is or has been or was a universal institution until about 200 years ago. It is very difficult to find a society which did not to some extent rely on the compelled labor of the lower classes. Slavery was a universal institution in ancient civilization. It is very difficult to think of a single civilization which did not rely to some extent on the compelled labor of the lower classes.

Greek and Roman Justifications for Slavery

[3:51]

What makes the institution of slavery among the Greeks and Romans different is that these people had both a highly rational view of life and a certain obligation to justify what they regarded as an unnatural institution. They always did so with a certain discomfort. They recognized that it was unnatural. They recognized that it was a violation of universal rights, but it existed. They couldn’t think of any alternative. And so they tried to justify it on various perhaps spurious grounds that some people were fitted for slavery and some people were not. Please.

Horrific Examples of Slave Treatment

[4:51]

Now the treatment of slaves. It is possible to construct an entire volume showing the gross horrors of ancient slavery. Here is one. Oh, there was Vedius Pollio. He was a very wealthy Roman, a very wealthy Roman aristocrat, and he had a pond filled with flesh-eating fish. Any slave who displeased him got thrown into it and he’d stand watching the slave eaten alive. There is a story that one day Pollio was entertaining the emperor Augustus to dinner when a slave dropped one of his prized glass vessels. Pollio snapped his fingers, said, “Take him to the fish.” The slave grabbed hold of the emperor’s knees and said, “Please, please, sir, not the fish. Just kill me here. Cut my throat, crucify me, but not the fish.” And Augustus turned to Pollio and said, “You’re not serious about this. You’re not going to feed him to your fish, are you?” And Pollio said, “Oh, yes, I am. He’s my property, and I can do with him as I please.” The story then goes off in two directions. According to one, Augustus managed to stop the feeding. According to the other, he couldn’t. And Augustus could only put the word round: anyone who entertains this man to dinner again is not my friend. But although this didn’t happen very often because it is rather inventive to have a pond filled with fish, you could do whatever you wanted to your slaves.

Galen’s Views on Disciplining Slaves

[6:28]

And there is a story from Galen. When I was a young man, I imposed upon myself an injunction which I have observed through my whole life. Namely, never to strike any slave of my household with my hand. And you think, “Oh yes, well, the greatest medical writer of the ancient world.” And the room does contain a number of medical personnel. Of course, you would expect a certain degree of humanity which is lacking among the other upper classes of the age. But you read on, “My father practiced the same restraint. Many were the friends he reproved when they had bruised a tendon while striking their slaves in the teeth. He told them that they deserved to have a stroke and to die in the fit of passion which had come upon them. They could have waited a little while, he said, and used a rod or a whip to inflict as many blows as they wished and to accomplish the act with reflection.” You find that in the collected works of Galen. It is a reflection which I don’t think any of us would like to see our names set to, but well, different times, different morals. Please, please.

Additional Examples of Slave Exploitation

[7:51]

And again, as I said, you can construct a whole volume of horrors. That’s it: enslaved prostitutes in the brothels of Rome and Pompeii and Herculaneum. The gladiators—not always slaves, mind you. Some of them were free, some of them were women. But mostly they appear to have been slaves forced to fight each other, sometimes to death, for the entertainment of the masses. You have the general violence used against slaves. You have the use of human beings as instruments of somebody else’s will for somebody else’s enjoyment and profit. And I’ll repeat that was the overwhelming experience of slavery, but it was not the universal experience of slavery.

A More Typical Experience of Slavery

[8:50]

It is possible if you look around to find a slight offset to the general catalog of horror that was ancient slavery. Can I have another slide please? Thank you. Oh, there’s a painting by Lawrence Alma-Tadema. That is probably more the general experience of slavery than the horrors I’ve shown. Just the straightforward boredom and despair of being somebody else’s property. But let’s move on. I’ll come back to that later on. I’ll come back to that as well. You’ll notice that French painters—you know, the French—in the 19th century, they used Roman slavery as an excuse for showing large amounts of bare flesh. They could always tell people, “It’s not porn, it’s culture.” But that’s the French for you.

Manumission as a Control Mechanism

[9:56]

Slavery. Can we go back a bit? That’s it. There was the possibility—there was always the possibility in any slave society of freedom for slaves: manumission. And indeed, you can look on the possibility of freeing your slaves as an entirely rational means of keeping control. If you have 400 or 5,000 slaves in your household, you really have two ways of keeping control. One is you do it with a threat of violence, and that can work, but you will have to lock your bedroom door at night and sleep with a sword under your pillow, which is not the way that most people have preferred to manage their households. The other way of keeping control is to make it plain to all your slaves: if you serve me well and faithfully for seven years, let’s say, I’ll free you.

Roman Manumission and Citizenship

[11:01]

Manumission of slaves has always been an option. But in the Roman Empire, it was a general custom—not a general custom with your field slaves; they worked under the lash until they died and then they were replaced. But among household slaves, the possibility of freedom was always dangled in front of the slaves. You do my wife’s hair for 5 years, seven years, 10 years. You put up with her whims, smile at her stupid jokes, and if she comes back to me and says, “I have no complaints against this maidservant,” I will free you. It’s quite a way of making sure that you get prompt and willing obedience from your slaves. But one of the differences between Roman slavery and slavery among the Greeks and other peoples is that if you were the slave of a Roman citizen and you were freed, you yourself immediately became a Roman citizen with most of the rights and liberties of a Roman citizen. Oh, if you were a freed slave, you couldn’t join the Senate—not unless the emperor made a dispensation, and the emperor could and often did. You couldn’t stand for office. But you had the rights and liberties of a Roman citizen in most respects. And your children had all the rights and liberties of a Roman citizen.

Social Mobility for Freed Slaves

[12:39]

The father of Horace, the great Roman poet, was a slave. A number of emperors had grandfathers who had been slaves and so it was possible if you were a freed slave to rise very high in Roman society. It was not a meritocracy in the way that we understand meritocracy during the past few hundred years but it was rather more meritocratic than most societies have been. And the fact that you were once a slave or your father or grandfather were slaves did not seem to hold people back in itself.

Gravestone Evidence in Museums

[13:23]

I will make the slides available. If you send me an email, I’ll send you the slides and you can look at them yourself. It’s a shame because when I was in the British Museum a few weeks ago giving some lectures, I did go about taking photographs and there is a large number of gravestones in the British Museum and if you go to any museum—any of the great museums—you will see similar gravestones. You’ll see similar inscriptions. Ah, there we go. Can we go back a bit to the Dasumius inscription? That’s it.

Dasumius Inscription: Master Marries Freed Slave

[13:56]

This is the Dasumius inscription in the British Museum put up in the second century by a man called Dasumius. He put it up to his wife who had predeceased him. And what you see on that inscription is that she had been his slave. She had been his slave and he had taken a fancy to her. Now you may think of Roman slavery as this: Oh, she or he looks rather pretty. You take your clothes off. You help me out of my clothes. And then you do the wicked act and it’s back to scrubbing the floors for the slave. And that may have been the case very often, but also very often a master would fall in love with his slave. He would then free her and marry her. And here is a gravestone from the second century in which Dasumius explains that he had freed this woman. He’d married her and now he is heartbroken because he’d always assumed that he would die first. Unfortunately, she died first. And what makes it rather sad is that the space that was left for him is blank. And you can speculate on the reasons.

Prevalence of Master-Slave Marriages

[15:26]

And you can say, well, yes, of course, the Roman Empire was a large place. It existed for a long time. Of course, these strange things do happen. But do you believe that this was a very common institution? And my answer is yes, it was. Can we have another look? Another one. There we are. There’s another one. Another man who’s freed his slave woman and married her. And he himself had been a slave. And I’ll come back to that. It may be that Dasumius, who put up the previous gravestone, was a freed slave. Next one. Next one. There is another one: a slave who’s been freed and he’s freed his own slave and married her. And again, there is another one. Oh, can— Yes, this is an important one. This is a man from the upper classes. Quite an important priest. Fell in love with his slave woman, freed her and married her. Okay.

Humble Sailor’s Gravestone

[16:39]

There’s a fairly humble sailor’s gravestone from again the 2nd century. He was an Egyptian who had been a sailor at the naval base in Misenum in central Italy. Again, he’d fallen in love with a slave woman, freed her and married her, and she had put up the gravestone. Next. So this is just a random trawl of the British Museum which is one of the great—it’s one of the great museums of the world. But if you go to the Metropolitan Museum, if you go to the Vatican, the Capitoline Museums in Rome, if you go to the Louvre in Paris, you’ll see the same. You’ll see gravestones which record one of two things, sometimes both of two things: that a master has freed his slave woman and married her. And quite often the master had himself been a slave and then he had possessed slaves of his own and married one. There are hundreds, maybe thousands of these gravestones dug up from all over the Mediterranean world.

Sources of Slaves Beyond War

[17:50]

Now, that shows you a different side to slavery. Again, you mustn’t assume that it was general. Most slaves, I’ll repeat, lived and worked under the lash until they stopped living. But there is an important subset of these slaves who did not die in slavery. And a further question arises. Many of the gravestones that we’ve dug up from all over the Mediterranean world were put up by or to freedmen. They were freed slaves who had done well enough to afford a grave, to afford a funeral with a gravestone. And one question is: where did these slaves come from? The general belief is that Roman slavery overwhelmingly was put together from prisoners of war. And yes, there is a great deal of evidence for that. And the slaves who are working in the fields and the quarries, they were mostly prisoners of war.

Statistics on War Captives as Slaves

[19:03]

And there’s some statistics on that slide. Scipio Aemilianus when he finished off Carthage in 146 BC flooded the market with 60,000 Carthaginian slaves. Marius in about 100 BC when he saw the first Germanic invasions: he took 140,000 prisoners who ended up in the slave markets. Pompey and Caesar together enslaved more than a million Asiatics and Gauls. And there were times when slaves were very cheap and when slaves were freely available. They were in abundant supply.

Mystery of Later Greek Slaves

[19:42]

But many of the slaves, many of the former slaves whose gravestones we now—you can now see in museums—these were Greeks. And they’re from the second and third centuries AD. That is several hundred years after there had been any wars fought by Rome in Greece or the East. There were no Roman campaigns in Greece in 100 AD or in 200 AD. Where did all of these Greek slaves come from? Sometimes they may have been imprisoned for debt. Sometimes they may have been enslaved for debt or for something else. But the very large number of Greek former slaves from the more peaceful days of the Roman Empire, they could not possibly have been prisoners of war. And there’s a limit to the number of people who can have been enslaved for debt. So where did they come from? And here can we move on please?

Contractual Slavery for Social Mobility

[20:44]

Here we come to the idea of contractual slavery. There is limited evidence but then our evidence from the ancient world is limited. There is limited evidence that selling yourself into slavery was an instrument of social mobility. There were many occupations in the ancient world which were only open to slaves. If for example you wanted to be a vilicus, the head of a large household, or a dispensator, or if you wanted to be one of the head accountants in a wealthy household, those positions were closed to free people. They had to be undertaken by slaves for various customary and legal reasons. And so if you wanted to be eligible for a number of rather well-paid, rather generally rewarding occupations, you had to be a slave. And it does seem to be the case that many people sold themselves into slavery for the purposes of social advancement.

Slavery as Ancient Equivalent of Education Financing

[22:09]

Indeed, I could go a little further. Nowadays, if you are poor and young and bright and you want to be a doctor or a lawyer or an accountant or something like that, there are scholarships. There are student loans. There are all sorts of provisions for bright young people from the poorer classes to rise. None of this existed in the ancient world. There was no means of borrowing to invest in your own human capital. There were no apprenticeships. It does look as if the institution of slavery was twisted and repurposed in those cases to do the work that nowadays is done by scholarships, by student loans, and by apprenticeships. And so what you could do is you could sell yourself into slavery to a master who would then oversee your training. You would repay your master’s investment in you by working as his slave for a certain length of time. Seven years appears to have been the customary time. And then you’d be freed. And although you wouldn’t just walk away from your master, you would remain tied to him through the bonds of patron and client, but you would now be a free and independent Roman citizen, and you could get on with your life, and when you died, you could afford one of the gravestones that we’ve seen in the British Museum.

Legal Evidence for Voluntary Enslavement

[23:58]

And so it does look as though contractual slavery existed and that it was not simply an eccentricity but it performed a vital economic function. If you can move on. If you could move on. Move on. Ah, I don’t seem to have the—I don’t seem to have the references from the Roman lawyers on this, but you’ll find all through the various commentaries on Roman law produced by lawyers the observation that it is possible for free people to sell themselves into slavery. The main concern of the authorities was that the contracts were freely entered into and that they were not fraudulent or coerced. You could sell yourself into slavery in the Roman world.

Slave Markets and Voluntary Sales

[25:02]

Indeed, although a slide I haven’t shown you is a rather—again a rather risqué French painting with lots of bare flesh in it—I have—there is a slide on there showing a Roman slave market. It doesn’t look as though Roman slave markets were entirely places to which people were dragged and sold under threat of the lash. It does seem that sometimes people would voluntarily stand on the block and say, “I want to sell myself into slavery so that I can become a hairdresser and be set up a business in Alexandria or Rome or Carthage. Who will undertake the expenses of transporting me to these rather lush cities and the expense of training me?” And it does look as though a bidding process went on and that the winner would get a slave for a contracted length of time, a contracted length of service.

Example of Antonius Felix

[26:11]

Oh, and there’s a—there’s a nice picture. Acts of the Apostles. When Paul got himself into trouble in Jerusalem and went off to Caesarea, he stood trial before Felix. Now Felix, the procurator of Judea, had been one of the slaves of the emperor Claudius. He was freed. He became an important member of the government of the emperor Claudius and he continued to do well under the reign of Nero and he was given a dispensation. He was allowed to become a knight. He was allowed to become a senator and he was eventually sent out as procurator of Judea. That is a very senior governing position in the Roman Empire. He was rather corrupt, but then who wasn’t? And he is the man who tried St. Paul. Indeed, he married into the family of King Herod. So here is a Greek slave who went from slavery right up to the top and his family is still evidenced in Rome 300 years later. So it was a very successful family. How did Felix become a slave in the first century AD when the Greek world was in total and long-term peace? A good question. Had he sold himself into slavery so that he could get a head start in life? Very difficult to say because we don’t have enough evidence. But we do have enough evidence to say that this does seem to have happened in a certain number of cases and it may have been much more general.

Gaining Citizenship Through Brief Enslavement

[28:18]

And the last thing I would say is that—again it’s—we know that it happened but it’s hard to put your finger on exact cases. Remember if you are the slave of a Roman citizen and you are freed, you become a Roman citizen. Now, until the edict of 212, when every free inhabitant of the empire was given Roman citizenship, getting Roman citizenship was rather difficult. It was a rather random process. And so if you were a provincial in Syria, in Egypt, in Gaul, in Spain, wherever, and you wanted Roman citizenship which carried a number of very important privileges, how could you get it? You couldn’t apply for it. You might be able to bribe it out of somebody, but there was a much easier way to get it, and that is to sell yourself into slavery to a Roman citizen who would immediately free you, thereby making you a Roman citizen. There are some surviving writings by Roman lawyers who say this is a most disreputable practice and Cicero sneers at it but it happened. How often it happened we can’t say.

Conclusion: Nuanced View of Ancient Slavery

[29:42]

So what would I say as a conclusion? It is this: that when you make judgments about the past, it’s probably best not to make them blanket judgments. I’m not defending ancient slavery. I’m not saying that it was a just institution. I would never minimize the horrors of ancient slavery. I’ll say for the fourth time, if you were to be a Roman slave, the overwhelming likelihood is that you would work under the lash until you died in your late 20s or early 30s. Beside that, however, you must accept that there is something about human nature that is able to turn the most awful institutions into instruments of self-advancement and that the institution may serve an important economic function. It is possible for the worst institutions to be repurposed into something that is useful and something that is seen as advantageous to the people who are within those institutions. And whenever you think of ancient slavery, you should bear in mind that there was an important subset of the population of the Roman Empire for whom voluntary enslavement was a vehicle of social advancement. In the case of Felix, who ended as procurator of Judea, it was like winning the lottery. He went from being a nobody in some provincial Greek town to procurator of Judea to membership of the Senate and to the establishment of a family which was still wealthy and important and respected 300 years after his death. So the past—the past is a strange place and the more you look at it the stranger it is. I don’t think there’s anything very libertarian about that but that is what I have to say this morning. So thank you very much everybody. [Applause]

[32:11]

Property and Freedom Podcast, Episode 295.

These introductory remarks are from the recently-concluded 19th annual PFS 2025 Annual Meeting (Sep. 18–23, 2025, Bodrum, Turkey).

Gülçin Imre Hoppe (Turkey) & Hans-Hermann Hoppe (Germany/Turkey): Welcome and Introductions. Transcript and shownotes below.

Other talks appear on the Property and Freedom Podcast. Other videos may also be found at the PFS 2025 Youtube Playlist.

Show Notes: PFS 20th Anniversary Opening Remarks

Video: Property and Freedom Society 20th Anniversary – Opening

Speakers: Gülçin Imre Hoppe & Hans-Hermann Hoppe

Location: Bodrum, Turkey

[0:00 – Introduction and Sound Check]

[0:22 – Welcoming the Audience]

Gülçin Imre Hoppe warmly greets attendees:

[1:44 – Celebrating 20 Years of PFS]

[2:50 – PFS as a Labor of Love]

Hans-Hermann Hoppe reflects:

[3:49 – Hotel Operations During the Conference]

[4:37 – Practical Announcements]

[5:25 – Reception Correction and First Speaker]

Key Takeaway:

The Property and Freedom Society’s 20th conference is a grassroots, volunteer-driven tradition — sustained by passion, not profit — bringing together a global community in Bodrum for ideas, fellowship, and (hopefully) no onion-aubergine mix-ups.

Next: Sean Gabb’s opening lecture.

[0:00 – Introduction and Sound Check]

Gülçin Imre Hoppe: Are you seeing us? Some more test, test.

Gülçin Imre Hoppe: Can you look at us? Can you hear us?

Gülçin Imre Hoppe: Quiet, please.

[Music]

[0:22 – Welcoming the Audience]

Gülçin Imre Hoppe: So, who first?

Gülçin Imre Hoppe: Oh, okay. So dear old friends, dear new friends,

we have here people who come from very far places. They have to travel very long hours. We have you from Thailand. We have some very young couple from Guatemala.

We have—

Where are those? Okay, that kind of thing can happen. So you have to forgive me.

I also have to overlook the kitchen and so on. So mistakes can happen. So be happy that you don’t eat onions instead of aubergines—it could also happen. So welcome.

We are very happy to host you this year as well. And also some far traveler from Japan. I forgot you and everybody. It is always difficult to travel and here this is your second stop. So thank you for going through all the difficulties and arriving in Bodrum at our conference.

[1:44 – Celebrating 20 Years of PFS]

Gülçin Imre Hoppe: We are doing this since 20 years

[Music]

[Applause]

and you can see I stayed beautiful and energetic and everything as usual. Women tend to stay always beautiful. But when we started, this was my husband.

[Applause]

[Music]

[Applause]

[2:27 – Handover and Grandkids’ Reaction]

Gülçin Imre Hoppe: So I leave you with my—

I should mention that when we showed that to my grandkids, they said, “That’s not my opa.”

So you can continue.

[2:50 – PFS as a Labor of Love]

Hans-Hermann Hoppe: I wanted to mention that in these 20 years of course the PFS has become some sort of institution. And we have acquired a brand name I would think, but we have no institute behind us. We have no offices. We have no employees.

This is not a money-making operation for us. We don’t get any compensation for this. This has been just a labor of love as far as we are concerned. We just had a few little helpers help out here and there, but as I said, this is a shoestring operation.

[3:49 – Hotel Operations During the Conference]

Hans-Hermann Hoppe: You should also be made aware of the fact, for instance, that the hotel operates normally more as a bed-and-breakfast hotel with a small kitchen staff. For a conference such as this, we have to hire a substantial number of people from outside who you see standing around helping you, serving you and all the rest of it. So this is for the hotel a very unusual time because things like this only happen once a year. The normal operations of the hotel are far more modest than what you will be offered here.

[4:37 – Practical Announcements]

Hans-Hermann Hoppe: In any case, I hope you enjoy this week here—close to a week—in Bodrum. And I should also make you aware, very importantly, that you have to enlist on the boat tour list. Write down your name and how many people participate on the boat trip in order for us to charter the right amount of boats for the boat trip on Monday. So please do that as soon as possible because that sometimes causes certain complications to hire the appropriate boat number. So, thank you very much.

[5:25 – Reception Correction and First Speaker]

Hans-Hermann Hoppe: And with that, I give the word to Sean Gabb as our first speaker. Huh. Oh, I should mention that on the program somehow a slight screw-up happened. The reception will be tonight, not on Saturday, but tonight we have a reception at the pool area. So thank you again and please, Sean.

[Applause]

Property and Freedom Podcast, Episode 294.

Hans-Hermann Hoppe, Concluding Remarks, Tributes, and Announcements.

This lecture is from the 2012 meeting of the Property and Freedom Society. PFS 2012 Playlist.

It was not included previously in the podcast since the video had been lost and I had assumed the audio had also been lost. However, I recently discovered the audio files for two of the speeches as well as Professor Hoppe’s Introductory and Concluding remarks had been preserved, namely those listed below. They are podcast here for the first time.

Property and Freedom Podcast, Episode 293.

Benjamin Marks (Australia), On H.L. Mencken as a Libertarian Model.

This lecture is from the 2012 meeting of the Property and Freedom Society. PFS 2012 Playlist. Text of article on which the speech was based is below; docx; pdf. Speech. Transcript also below.

Grok summary of article: H.L. Mencken’s conservatism, as explored in Benjamin Marks’ essay, is a defining trait that sets him apart as a libertarian thinker who held low expectations for societal reform. Unlike typical conservatism, Mencken’s brand is rooted in a deep skepticism of government and religion, viewing them as historically optimistic overreaches that clash with true conservative doubt. He saw many societal problems as insoluble or unlikely to be addressed due to human folly, yet found entertainment in the pretentiousness of events and the futility of reform efforts. His libertarianism was not driven by a desire to convert others but by a commitment to truth, expressed through sharp, clear prose that prioritized self-expression over activism.

It was not included previously in the podcast since the video had been lost and I had assumed the audio had also been lost. However, I recently discovered the audio files for two of the speeches as well as Professor Hoppe’s Introductory and Concluding remarks had been preserved, namely those listed below. They are podcast here for the first time.

Grok summary of transcript:

by Benjamin Marks, Economics.org.au editor-in-chief

Why did H.L. Mencken, the most eloquent and popular of libertarians, have the lowest of expectations for libertarian reform?

One might think that grappling with this question would be a prerequisite of libertarian activism.

One might also think that libertarians would show Mencken — whom they hold in high regard — the respect of dealing with his reasoning, just as they do to statists — whom they do not hold in high regard.

Mencken found such situations amusing, predictable and inoperable.

This essay emphasises Mencken’s conservatism above his other characteristics, as it is his primary distinguishing feature and the main reason he is misunderstood. His libertarianism — which overlaps with his conservatism — is also misunderstood, but plenty of literature is available defending libertarianism, whereas there is comparatively little intentionally defending conservatism.

Rarely is conservatism even acknowledged as having anything to do with reason, as something that could be right or wrong, justified or unjustified, probable or improbable. Usually it is uncritically dismissed as skeptical, iconoclastic, irreverent, curmudgeonly, eccentric, outspoken, opinionated, independent, sardonic, pessimistic, cynical, bitter and dated. Mencken is described in those terms — which are more comparative and superficial than descriptive and explanatory — far more often than he is described as correct and critical, or, for that matter, as incorrect and uncritical.

Mencken is not just different. He does not merely have a valid point of view. His conservatism is not a blind faith in pessimism; it was not of immaculate conception. It is not pessimystic. His viewpoint can be analysed, not only to compare his conclusions with your own, but to compare his reasoning too.

Mencken was a conservative. He doubted the goodness, honesty and truth of all government and any religion. Despite the difference between this and what is usually called conservatism, this is the true conservatism. After all, government and religion, being proactive, hope-fuelled and high-expectation responses to whatever the situation happened to be at the time of their founding, are merely examples of historical anticonservatism.

In addition to a critical predisposition and lack of faith, Mencken’s conservatism is also an unashamed appreciation of the entertainment provided by: (1) the pretentiousness of both historical and current events; and (2) the hollowness of attempted improvements, including those that will fail due to irrevocable economic laws — that is, socialistic interventions into the market —, and those that will fail due to unpopularity — that is, reforms that would work, if only the populace were not so stubbornly stupid.

To rephrase and reframe, Mencken believed: (a) that many problems are insoluble; (b) that many other problems have solutions that would work, but are unlikely to be adopted; (c) that “problems” are often misidentified, or exaggerated in both severity and urgency; (d) that “solutions” are rarely as useful as their believers claim; (e) that if people have free will, they rarely use it wisely and are predictably corruptible, gullible and unreflective; (f) that there will always be “do-gooders” who try to do the impossible and unlikely, and are blindly enthusiastic about their chances; (g) that these “do-gooders” often sink to the level they try to get others to rise above; (h) that not much can be done about these “do-gooders,” and it is usually best not to; (i) that all this has been the case in the past and will be so in the future; and (j) that all this is fun to witness and proclaim.

Mencken’s fervour was this-worldly. His cynicism was light-hearted and deeply-felt. His pessimism was upbeat and vigilant. His paranoia was fuelled by neither hope nor fear. His crusade against error and injustice was devoid of envy. He was passionate and questioning and resigned and satisfied.

This position is almost always confused with what it is not. Even those who hold such beliefs often find explaining themselves, or keeping silent, too difficult and inconvenient, requiring more intelligence than they possess or independence than they can muster. Acceptance concerns them more than honesty or education. They categorise their behaviour using categories and clichés they have come across, rather than their own immediate sincere reflections. Lacking the language necessary to express themselves or the discipline necessary to be silent until they find the right words, they either cease interest altogether in what gave them these difficulties, or classify themselves as something they are not. If they do the latter, they often change their beliefs until they share all the views of the group that they, originally incorrectly, classed themselves with. Consider, for example, the descriptions in the previous paragraph, how rarely you find the terms therein collocated, your initial reaction — which may have been that they are contradictory – and your reappraisal — which may be that it actually makes surprisingly good sense.

Mencken’s inventive language, ducking and weaving of unhelpful idioms, and enlarged vocabulary, do much to explain why his beliefs go beyond, say, the professed faith in democracy, whatever that means, of others; and why his prose is, as he said, “clear and alive.” For example:

The imbeciles who have printed acres of comment on my books have seldom noticed the chief character of my style. It is that I write with almost scientific precision — that my meaning is never obscure. The ignorant have often complained that my vocabulary is beyond them, but that is simply because my ideas cover a wider range than theirs do. Once they have consulted the dictionary they always know exactly what I intend to say. I am as far as any writer can get from the muffled sonorities of, say, John Dewey.[1]

In this essay, I quote many passages from Mencken’s writings, not despite their similarities, but because of them. Where I find different eloquent passages where he makes the same point, I include them all, because that itself makes many a point. Specifically, it provides evidence for these controversial and unpopular beliefs: (1) that a critical, cynical and pessimistic person can sincerely enjoy holding and expressing critical, cynical and pessimistic beliefs; (2) that such beliefs need be no disincentive to productivity or obstacle to satisfaction; (3) that a low opinion is justified of the reading public, including attempts to educate them; and (4) that a low opinion is also justified of the government the reading public is part of and supports.

Mencken was published prolifically in popular places, yet most of his beliefs were still misunderstood. Even if his aim was not primarily to educate the masses, critics will have a tough time finding where his low opinion of the masses is wrong and what he could have done better to educate them — for example, could his prose have had more appeal, bite, clarity, directness or eloquence, and could he have repeated his viewpoint more?

Mencken believed that readers didn’t only need to be given a message once, but that it was unlikely they would get it at all. He repeatedly made the same observations simply for the sake of art, habit and amusement. He wrote on pedagogical, political and moral issues without any pedagogical, political or moral purpose. He was a critic of novels, but he never wrote one. He was a critic of America’s defence policy, but he was not a German spy. He was a critic of Presidents, but he never became one. His objectivity made him suspect, because reason is rarely comprehended, and is not represented by any political party, job description, university qualification or cultural group. It also explains why many people failed to see that, despite never writing a novel, running for office or launching a revolution, he still had many good ideas for those who did.

Leading by example means your followers are looking at the back of your head. Mencken faced up to people, and told them what he was thinking.

Mencken was a libertarian theorist of the highest rank, but only an incidental activist. He did not believe that he could be a successful activist, and it was not one of his primary aims. He advocated libertarianism because that was what he believed to be the truth, not because he thought it was attainable, or something people wanted to, needed to or should hear. More than an academic, activist or job-holder, he considered himself an artist or animal, someone “diseased” with the thirst for truth and aesthetic sense.[2]

Here is some autobiographical insight from Mencken:

[A]n author, like any other so-called artist, is a man in whom the normal vanity of all men is so vastly exaggerated that he finds it a sheer impossibility to hold it in … Such is the thing called self-expression … The vanity of man is quite illimitable. In every act of life, however trivial, and particularly in every act which pertains to his profession, he takes all the pride of a baby learning to walk. It may seem incredible but it is nevertheless a fact that I myself get great delight out of writing such banal paragraphs as this one.[3]

I have never tried to convert anyone to anything. Like any other man bawling from a public stamp I have occasionally made a convert; in fact, in seasons when my embouchure has been good I have made a great many. But not deliberately, not with any satisfaction … I am, in fact, the complete anti-Messiah, and detest converts as much as I detest missionaries. My writings, such as they are, have had only one purpose: to attain for H.L. Mencken that feeling of tension relieved and function achieved which a cow enjoys on giving milk.[4]

In perhaps the best distillation of Mencken’s conservatism, he suggested everyone live not quite sober and not quite drunk, but “gently stewed.” He explained what this solution entails:

Putting a brake upon all the qualities which enable us to get on in the world and shine before our fellows — for example, combativeness, shrewdness, diligence, ambition —, it releases the qualities which mellow us and make our fellows love us — for example, amiability, generosity, toleration, humor, sympathy. A man who has taken aboard two or three cocktails is less competent than he was before to steer a battleship down the Ambrose Channel, or to cut off a leg, or to draw a deed of trust, or to conduct Bach’s B minor mass, but he is immensely more competent to entertain a dinner party, or to admire a pretty girl, or to hear Bach’s B minor mass.[21]

[1] H.L. Mencken, Minority Report (Baltimore, Maryland: The John Hopkins University Press, 2006), p. 293.

[2] H.L. Mencken, A Mencken Chrestomathy (New York: Vintage, 1982), pp. 442-49; see also H.L. Mencken, Prejudices: Fourth Series (New York: Octagon Books, 1985), pp. 269-77. A note on my referencing of Mencken: Much, but not all, of his work has been reprinted in many different essay versions and compilations. I only reference one location for each specific passage, based on my estimate of: (1) its most popular current location; and (2) where the best relevant discussion is. The Chrestomathies often include only part of a larger discussion, sometimes excising the best bits. I may reference and quote multiple locations for where Mencken makes the same point, but only ever one location when he makes the same point in the same way, as per the two criteria explained in the previous sentence.

[3] A Mencken Chrestomathy, p. 466; and H.L. Mencken, A Second Mencken Chrestomathy, ed. Terry Teachout (New York: Knopf, 1995), p. 489; see also H.L. Mencken, In Defense of Women (New York: Knopf, 1927), pp. 77-78.

[4] A Second Mencken Chrestomathy, pp. 483-84, 491. The second half of the paragraph Mencken wrote for use in his obituary.

[21] A Mencken Chrestomathy, pp. 388-89.

***

TRANSCRIPT

looking through the amazing list of

speakers for this conference the only

name I don’t recognize is my own So it’s

a great privilege to be here Um and

thanks also to the late Neville Kennard

who was a big supporter and fan of the

Propriy and Freedom Society Um and died

in June this year Uh for a while at the

end he was bedbound at his country

property He was quite weak and frail and

surrounded with sheets and blankets But

when I came in he set up to see me and

the blankets fell away and he was

wearing his Rothbard enemy of the state

shirt Um Nev had to cancel his

attendance at last year’s PFS meeting

for medical reasons So the morning after

I arrived back in Australia after last

year’s PFS I drove down to his country

property to tell him what he missed Um

he invited me for breakfast but you know

we had so much to talk about that I

stayed for lunch and dinner and uh you

know all talking about all of you and he

was very interested and so now that he

has an even better excuse not to be here

I I guess I will have to report back to

him at even greater length Um also I’m

very sorry that Richard Lynn could not

be here I was uh very much looking

forward to his speech

Now the title of my talk is HL Menin as

a libertarian model What makes Menin as

a libertarian model so different from

other libertarian models like Rothbart

is that Menin had no expectation

whatsoever of being

influential But this did not in any way

stunt Menin’s productivity and passion

as a libertarian theorist and

stirer Because to quote Menin quote “An

author like any other so-called artist

is a man in whom the normal vanity of

all men is so vastly exaggerated that he

finds it a sheer impossibility to hold

it in such as the thing called

self-exression The vanity of man is

quite illimitable In every act of life

however trivial and particularly in

every act which pertains to his

profession he takes all the pride of a

baby learning to walk It may seem

incredible but it is nevertheless a fact

that I myself get great delight out of

writing such banal paragraphs as this

one End quote So men considered politics

a genre of entertainment and he

considered the corruption of politics

merely as ad breaks He thought

government pathetic obscene and criminal

but not hideous intolerable or in

unsightly As Menin said of his

libertarianism quote “My business is not

prognosis but diagnosis I am not engaged

in therapeutics but in pathology I am

not in fact protesting against anything

I am simply describing something not

even in sorrow but simply as a

specialist in human

depravity.” Such spectacles do not make

me indignant They simply interest me

immensely as a pathologist say is

interested by a beautiful gastric ulcer

It is perhaps a strange taste that is in

a country of reformers but there it is

end quote So the phrase specialist in

human depravity is quite brilliant I

think I mean think back to all the

speakers we have heard over the past few

days I think it is more descriptive to

call them all specialists in human

depravity rather than historians or

economists or journalists or or whatever

Um so Menin’s low expectations are I

think are much more justified than

Rothbart’s high expectations of future

long-term libertarian revolution uh or

pro progress In the 1965 essay The

Prospects of Liberty in the first issue

of Rothbard’s journal Left and Right

Mari Rothbud writes quote “While the

short-run prospects for liberty at home

and abroad may seem dim the proper

attitude for the libertarian to take is

that of unquenchable long-run optimism

For the libertarian the main task of the

present epoch is to cast off his

needless and debilitating pessimism to

set his sights on long run victory and

to set out on the road to its

attainment.” Now to me this is the most

cliched romantic rubbish It is just like

saying that positive thinking helps cure

cancer In fact it’s even worse than that

because Rothbart is saying that things

will get better in the long run even

though they won’t in the short term And

even worse it shows that Rothbide

totally ignored the fact that Menin’s

pessimism was entirely based in reason

It was not a baseless attitude Um

incidentally as an aside all men’s

biographers have failed to acknowledge

this central fact

Also however what Rothbud said makes

perfect sense If your aim in being a

libertarian activist is

exclusively to persuade and influence

others if persuading and influencing is

your exclusive aim then you must be

optimistic that you will persuade and

influence Otherwise you would not be a

libertarian activist But why would you

be optimistic that you can persuade and

influence

others here are some common answers that

many romantic libertarians use

accompanied by manennian

response responses Um so romantic

libertarians like to say that the

internet age is different because now

everyone has everyone has such easy

access to libertarian

propaganda But menians think that is

more than canceled out by there also

being easy access to status

propaganda Um romantic libertarians like

to say that government inter

intervention has become so extreme that

the economic situation will result in

people finally seeing the light and

becoming libertarians But menians think

it is more likely that hyperinflations

and depressions result in increased

government intervention and more

misplaced blame on on capitalism Um

romantic libertarians like to say that

slavery was abolished even though the

so-called realists said we should just

regulate the slave trade So they use

this to show that we should be radical

in abolishing taxes government

departments etc as they amount to forced

labor which is slavery But do you know

what this argument also says it admits

that actually we still have slavery

So

uh and like um so the radicals did not

succeed Um but I still like to use that

argument I think it’s a you know great

argument But

just in fact in the latest edition of

capitalism.hk which is on the book table

I uh I feature Robert Higgs using that

argument Um

uh and romantic libertarians like to say

that the minimum wage is a great example

of economic reasoning and the best way

to to successfully introduce people to

libertarian thought But what the case of

the minimum wage also proves is that an

ever growing number of countries all

around the world are implementing and

increasing the minimum wage including

Hong Kong which has just introduced the

minimum wage So in light of the

widespread and growing popularity of so

obvious a calamity as the minimum wage

how can anyone be optimistic for any

libertarian progress in more complicated

areas like surely minimum wage reform

would be the first place we’d see it if

it was a if it was coming Also Ron Paul

has attracted huge passionate and

growing following which is leading many

people to take to make all sorts of

romantic predictions But if Ron Paul is

so likely to s succeed how is it that

someone who owes Ron Paul so much as a

son does his father and has been

subjected to more of Ron Paul’s

arguments than anyone else namely his

most political child Randpaul is far

less principled than his father and many

of his supporters who have such high

expectations of of where the Ronpor

movement will lead Um libertarians often

show one one more example

of libertarian romanticism

uh libertarians often show that

governments of the past that are today

considered to be tyrannical and

unpopular even by the establishment

share the same characteristics with

popular governments today that are

considered to be free and popular With

this argument romantic libertarians hope

to bring about a widespread

enlightenment enlightenment which will

lead to a more just free and prosperous

society But their observation also

teaches something quite different which

libertarians often fail to acknowledge

As men can point it out quote “The fact

is that some of the things that men and

women have desired most ardently for

thousands of years are not near a

realization today than they were in the

time of Rammeses and that there is not

the slightest reason for believing that

they will lose their coiness on any near

tomorrow Plans for hurrying them over

have been tried since the beginning

Plans for forcing them overnight are in

copious and antagonistic operation today

And yet they continue to hold off and

elude us and the chances are that they

will continue holding off and eluding

us To further communicate that Menin’s

pessimism was justified I think the most

effective thing would be for us to see

that Albert J No did not believe in the

remnant

Speaking to the remnant is long-term

romanticism which in a way is the most

extreme form of hopefilled romanticism

And Albert J No is the author of

Isaiah’s job the most referenced essay

pointing putting forward being

influential in the long term and

expecting that people will find you and

they will be convinced by what you say

eventually Um but before I quote no to

show that he himself did not believe in

the remnant no fa favorite author Marcus

Aurelius offered the best criticism of

those libertarian romantics like Murray

Rothbard who believed in the remnant and

are optimists for long-term libertarian

progress

Quote they are misunderstood by their

contemporaries the people whose lives

they share but they expect to be

understood by post posterity people

they’ve never met and never will that’s

what they set their hearts on You might

as well be upset at not being a hero to

your great-grandfather End quote And uh

Menin made a very similar comment to

Marcus Aurelius in a kind of a different

context but it’ll it’ll be clear Quote

“There is a notion that judgments of

living artists are impossible They are

bound to be corrupted we are told by

prejudice false perspective mob emotion

error The question whether this or that

man is great or small is one which only

posterity can answer a silly begging of

the question for doesn’t posterity also

make mistakes end quote So because of

how popular among libertarian circles

the myth of no as optimist and reformer

he is like even if it’s very long term I

will now read out several passages

showing that no himself did not believe

in Isaiah’s job To start with it is

worth noting that no himself in the

essay Isaiah’s job itself said “If I

were young and had the notion of

embarking in the prophetical line I

would certainly take up this branch of

the business aiming aiming at long-term

influence and expecting that those who

appreciate your work will eventually

find you and eventually lead to progress

in a libertarian direction And therefore

I have no hesitation about recommending

it as a career for anyone in that

position So anyone who’s young and

prophetical Um but no was not young when

he wrote it and he was not interested on

embarking on a career in the prophetical

line So when people talk of no’s remnant

they do not talk of a remnant that no

wrote intentionally for So here are some

more passages showing that no was

thoroughly pessimistic about the

prospects for

liberty Quote the only thing that the

psychically human being can do to

improve society is to present society

with one improved unit Very few among

mankind have either the force of

intellect to manage this method

intelligently or the force of character

to apply it constantly Hence if one

regards mankind as being what they are

the chances seem to be that the

deceptively easier way will continue to

prevail among them throughout an

indefinitely long

future It is easy to prescribe

improvement for others It is easy to

organize something to institutionalize

this or that to pass laws multiply

bureaucratic agencies form pressure

groups start revolutions change forms of

government tinker at political theory

The fact that these expedients have been

tried unsuccessfully in every

conceivable combination for 6,000 years

has not noticeably impaired a credulous

unintelligent willingness to keep on

trying them again and

again This being so it seems highly

probable that the hope for any

significant improvement of society must

be postponed End quote Here’s another

not paragraph quote “If it were in my

power to pull down its whole structure

overnight and set up another of my own

devising to abolish the state out of

hand and replace it by an organization

of the economic means I would not do it

for the minds of Americans are far from

fitted to any such great change as

this.” End quote Here’s another knock

paragraph Quote taking the sum of the

state’s physical strength with the force

of powerful spiritual influences behind

it one asks what can be done against the

state’s progress in self

agrandisement simply nothing So far from

encouraging any hopeful contemplation of

the unattainable the student of

civilized man will offer no conclusion

but that nothing can be done End quote

and another quote “Even a successful

revolution if such a thing were

conceivable against the military tyranny

which is statism’s last expedient would

accomplish nothing The people would be

as thoroughly indoctrinated with statism

after the revolution as they were before

and therefore the revolution would be no

revolution but a coup d’eta by which the

citizen would gain nothing but a mere

change for

presses There have been me many

revolutions in the last 25 years and

this has been the sum of their history

They amount to no more than an

impressive testimony to the great truth

that there can be no right action except

there be right thinking behind it As

long as the easy attractive superficial

philosophy of statism remains in control

of the citizen’s mind no bene bene

beneficent social change can be affected

whether by revolution or by any other

means End quote And one one last one

quote “Sometimes people who knew my

politics have wondered that I do not

crusade for it or even say much about it

but much more than a sound economic

system is necessary You have to have

sound people to work it.” The wise

social philosophers were those who

merely hung up their ideas and left them

hanging for men to look at or pass by as

they chose Jesus and Socrates did not

even trouble trouble to write theirs out

and Marcus Aurelius spoke his only

encrabed memoranda for his own use never

thinking anyone else would would see

them.” End quote So this passage

mentions Marcus Aurelius whom we quoted

earlier and no was

like no knock often said it’s his

favorite author Um so here’s another

Marcus Aurelius passage Quote evil the

same old thing Whatever happens keep

this in mind It’s the same old thing

from one end of the world to the other

It fills the history books ancient and

modern and the cities and the houses too

familiar transient Look at the past

Empire succeeding empire and from that

extrapolate the future the same thing No

escape from the rhythm of events Which

is why observing life for 40 years is as

good as a thousand Would you really see

anything new end

quote So that knock like Men enjoyed the

spectacle and was not disappointed by it

Here is one more knock passage Quote

“The war was detestable enough but the

anthropoid job holders who engineered it

and the masses whom they coerced and

exploited were doing the best that the

limitations of their nature admitted of

their doing and one could expect no more

than that There was even a certain grave

beauty such as one obser observes in a

battle of snakes or sharks in the

machinations which they continued which

which they contrived in order to fulfill

the law of their being One regarded

these creatures with aor ahorance Yes

Sometimes with boredom and annoyance yes

But with dis despondency and

disappointment no So yes sometimes as no

said pol politics fills meenians with

boredom Um but there aren’t many forms

of entertainment that don’t have

occasional slow patches and off days But

really I think everyone here can find

enough enjoyment in being a libertarian

theorist and stirer without needing

to think that they are helping people

and being

influential I don’t think I need to tell

anyone here how amu am amusing

government is I mean government does not

tax our our enjoyment It subsidizes it

Did Jeffrey Tucker look miserable in his

speech earlier today when he was

describing how tough government makes

his life you know as the title of his

speech seemed to hint um have any of the

PFS speakers appeared sad about

government i don’t think so Everyone

here appears to enjoy the absurdity of

government and to enjoy enjoy speaking

against

it Uh but I understand that many people

here need to believe that they can make

a difference by influencing others And

of

course being a man I I don’t expect to

change your minds So to offer you people

something from this talk um I recommend

that you learn all you can about the

Western Australian mining magnate Gina

Reinhardt Being the richest woman in the

world she is getting increasing

international media attention and many

uh news reports predict her becoming the

richest person in the world in the not

too distant future She is now an even

bigger prospect for bringing on the

libertarian revolution than Ron Paul I I

discovered an interview in an Australian

women’s magazine in

1975 where she said that she listed her

occupation on her passport as

secessionist Her father was not afraid

to call Australia’s political parties

public servants industry groups

university students and journalists all

a bunch of socialists And Mrs Reinhardt

is is definitely a big fan of her

father’s politics Moreover she is

spending hundreds of millions of dollars

trying to get media influence although

none of that’s come to me Um so I hope

all you uh I hope you all you optimists

out there feel that you’ve got something

out of this talk Um in

conclusion menians might hope that

libertarian progress will be made even

if that will unfortunately compromise

our gargantuan enjoyment watching the

greedy and gullible passionately support

people who will be betray them in our

gloriously corrupt and unprincipled

commonwealth of morons for a manin

phrase So we can hope manians can hope

for libertarian progress but we don’t

expect any progress but to repeat that

does not mean that there are not many

other reasons for being a libertarian

theorist in shitster and uh one of the

best of those reasons would be to enjoy

yourself at hoppers property and freedom

society Thank you

[Applause]

Property and Freedom Podcast, Episode 292.

Karl-Peter Schwarz (Austria), Between Restitution and Re-Expropriation: Desocialization in Eastern Europe.

This lecture is from the 2012 meeting of the Property and Freedom Society.  PFS 2012 Playlist.

Transcript and Grok shownotes/summary below.

It was not included previously in the podcast since the video had been lost and I had assumed the audio had also been lost. However, I recently discovered the audio files for two of the speeches as well as Professor Hoppe’s Introductory and Concluding remarks had been preserved, namely those listed below. They are podcast here for the first time.

by Professor Hoppe to speak here in this uh delicious

temple of knowledge and liberty of wisdom and

delight i was not only I didn’t only feel very honored but I also felt a

little bit uneasy because I considered various negative options not to be able

to uh come to your expectations but also I considered uh

marginal things for instance I thought whether it would be appropriate to cover my head talking

here because as you know the Romans when they went to the temples to worship the gods they covered the

head and they did it with every god and the meaning of this gesture was obvious

no so you you hide your weaknesses and you hide your sins from the gods but

there was one god a temple one temple in which they did not cover their heads and

this was the uh temple of Kronos the god of time and Blut in his fragments about

Roman customs explains why because he says time brings to light everything

sooner or later the truth comes out so it’s completely useless to cover your

head in the front of time uh time we need time to

understand and we know that developments uh occur in time and they show

themselves they reveal their real nature in time uh my argument touches time because it’s

about crimes historic crimes and uh the way how these crimes were redressed or

not redressed afterwards i came in 1990 a few weeks a few months

after the velvet revolution in Prague from Italy to uh to Czechoslovakia and

to work as a foreign correspondent in several uh postcommunist countries

when I came to Prague I still shared the common belief that nationalization

expropriation confiscation was a specific more or less

exclusive feature of communism it is not it is just one of

three possibilities of governmental theft the first one the easiest one is

inflation almost without violence it allows the state to steal money

continuously and in relatively small amounts from almost from everybody until

withering confidence in the currency dies the second method is taxation

this is a little bit more difficult and potentially dangerous for the government

because it’s under the direct threat of violence and it provides much money from

a majority of people so if you overdo it you will have a rebellion and it’s difficult to to get to get away with

this and the third way is mass mass expropriation and confiscation

it takes all property from a minority which before has to be outlawed and

completely deprived of domestic or foreign protection it’s possible only under

exceptional circumstances basic basically during a revolution which

transforms a society in a in the gulak or after a war it is necessarily violent

and it’s very often linked to forced population

transferes and it’s by no means an exclusive feature of

communism the whole uh history of the uh of the uh 20th century could be told as

a history of confiscation and mass deportation

let’s start with the Parkhan wars in 1912 1913 uh between 1913 and 19 23 about 3

million people fell victims of population transfers and confiscations in Europe alone

approximately 900,000 Muslims from the Barkans Greeks and Bulgarians during the

Parkhan Wars about 160,000 Bulgarians and Greeks after the first war after the treaty of

Na about 1.6 million Turks and Greeks after the treaty of

Losan and there was an interesting case uh which is not so so well known in

Western Europe as well and it regarded the Germans mostly uh very much

assimilated Germans in the French province of Alsus under the presidency of George

Clemens about 150,000 Germans were selected by governmental commissions

they were called driage and had to leave als if they were

detected Germans and in order to speed up this whole process anybody who denounced his

neighbor as German could apply to get his

property the list of this I what I what I mentioned those three millions is

probably incomplete it’s a very conservative estimation

population transfer is understood in the most strict sense of the

definition not included in this uh three millions are people of uh uh who left

the their country and their homestead after the formation of new national

states it was about 800,000 Germans who left Poland about

425 mill,000 Hungarians uh who left Slovakia Romania and

Yugoslavia that means that in the new Wilsonian democratic national order

about four to 5 million people lost their homestead and their property

this uh let’s say democratic prelude to the forced population transfers of

millions of people under the totalitarian regimes of Stalin and Hitler between 1938 and

1944 affected then probably more than 7 million people it’s obvious that in this

figure uh the five to six million victims of the Holocaust are not

included the far biggest population transfer in Europe occurred at the end

and after second world war until 48 and it affected more than twice as many 12

million Germans from Eastern Europe 4 million among Fins Poles Ukrainians

Serbs Croats Sloines Hungarians Slovaks Italians about two million died during

those transfers all thing after the war communists contributed to these

crimes but they were by no means the only perpetrators in the case of Czechoslovakia they were they were even

rather reluctant with the democratic president Edward Benes presented his

plan to expel roughly 3 million Germans a quarter of the population of his

country and to confiscate their property the so-called banish decrees or

presidential decrees initiated the ethnic cleansing and the socialization

immediately after the war the national and social revolution

in Czechoslovakia was nearly accomplished when the communists ousted the

democratic parties in February 48 about 80% of the Czechoslovak economy

had been nationalized in 1945 and 1946 immediately after the war Banishes

ordered the nationalization of all banks of all insuranceances about and of about

3,000 companies in all industrial branches the expert Germans left about

5.68 68 million acres of fields and forests behind the major part of their

confiscated property was first divided between uh among Czech and Slovak

settlers then collectivized after the communist takeover from the 50s until

89 even groceries and flower shops in Czechoslovakia were run by government

why is it so important to understand that nationalization and confiscation were not an exclusively communist

feature because the restitution laws in the postcommunist countries after the

fall of communism set arbitrary and magical time limits in the case of the

Czech Republic and Slovakia this magical threshold is a 25th of February 48 the

day of the coup de Prague if your property had been robbed by communists

after this day you get it probably back it’s not sure but you have good chances

if it was robbed by Democrats the day before you have no chance at all

instead of giving it back to its legitimate owners most of this property was not

restituted it was privatized uh I want to quote uh

whenever I talk about restitution I quote Mor Rothbart from the ethics of

liberty i like this very much how he put it let us say he writes Roritania is ruled

by a king who has grievously invaded the rights of persons and the legitimate

property of individuals and has regulated and finally seized their property

a libertarian movement develops in Loritania and come to persuade the bulk of the populace that this criminal

system should be replaced by a truly libertarian society with the rights of

each man to his person and his fountain and created property are fully

respected the king seeing the revolt to be imminent immen imminent imminently

successful now employs a cunning strategy he proclaims his government to

be dissolved but just before doing so he arbitrarily parcels out the entire

kingdom to the ownership of himself and his relatives he then goes to the

libertarian rebels and says “All right I have granted your wish and have

dissolved my rule there is now no more violent intervention in private property

however myself and my relatives now own Ruritania and if you disturb us in this

ownership in any way you should be infringing upon the sanctity of the very

fundamental principle that you profess the inviability of private

ownership rosbart wrote this in 82 a few years later the communist kings in

Eastern Europe dissolved their governments and gave up their political

monopoly but at the same time they declared themselves the relatives and their cronies private owners of the

former nationalized property rothbart’s answer to this imaginary kings was the following we are

sorry but we only recognize private property claims that are just that

emanate from an individual’s fundamental natural right to own himself and the property which he has either transformed

by his energy or which has been voluntarily given to him by such

transformers the only way to red address the

injustice committed against private property would have been the restitution of stolen property to the legitimate

owners or their heirs a real and fair restitution without

restrictions regardless of nationality ethnicity language religion or

whatsoever instead the postcommunist states excluded the broad majority of owners

and the hairs from restitution and divided the property among a new class of nuvoish mostly from the rank and file

of the former nomenclatur the European Union in the process of

integration of those countries excluded the monitoring of the legislation on

property and restitution from the political criteria there was and is still

complicity in the behavior of the European institutions it is obvious that all this

happened against the rule of law as John Loach put it government can never have a

power to take to themselves the whole or any part of the subject’s property

without their own consent confiscation by the way is also

prohibited by international law in 1938 uh the US Secretary of State Corell

Hull demanded the prompt compensation for lands seized from West Farmers and

Ranchers in Mexico hull underlined I quote that under every rule of law and

equity no government is entitled to expropriate private property for

whatever purpose without provisions for prompt adequate and effective payment

thereof this is called the hal formula and it became since then part of many bilateral

and multilateral treaties and it’s nearly always respected when the United

States and their citizens in are in the game in international law the taking of

someone else property without compensation is simply theft

when the taking of the property is considered as an unlawful expropriation then compensation should also cover the

lost future profits in addition to the loss actually suffered nothing of this

happened in the postcommunist countries of post of of Eastern Europe and I want to to say all this was

also covered up by uh the American and the British government uh in the

agreement of Botam so the very same people who stated the principles

international law and codel uh were not so uh uh were not going to did not

respect it after 45 16 years ago there was a rare bright

moment in the history of the Assembly of the Council of Europe it adopted resolution resolution number

1,096 in which it warned against the dangers of a biased desolic

desocialization process that could lead to oligarchical power structure to state

capture increasing corruption and organized crime had at so you can read

in this uh resolution at worst the result could be the velvet restoration

of a totalitarian regime regarding restitution the Council

of Europe therefore advised I quote that property including that of the churches

which was illegally or unjustly seized by the state nationalized confiscated or

otherwise expropriated during the reign of communist authoritarian systems in

principle be restituted to its original owners in integr if this is possible without violating

the rights of current owners who acquired the property in good faith or the rights of tenants who rented the

property in good faith in cases where this is not possible just material

compensation should be averted the denial and the restriction

of restitution causes many negative consequences in the postcommunist

countries first of all it breaks the rule of law and undermines the legal

order the acquisition of robbed and stolen assets from the government in the course of privatization is not a

legitimate transaction it is fencing for a low cash price theft and fencing were already

punished in the same way in Roman law as property is not given back to the

legitimate owners or their hairs it ends in most cases in the hands of the old

boys networks former communists who easily compensate their loss of formal

political power with state capture and economic dominance this leads to still greater

distortions of competition and still more graft and corruption communists are still in power everywhere

in Eastern Europe sometimes they call themselves socialists or social democrats sometimes liberals or

conservatives only the old communist relationship between state and

corporations has been inverted before it was the party and the state which

organized the economy now the network of oligarchs control the state the

government the judiciary and the political parties this is together with with with

big government the corrupting effect of mass democracy and the increasing burden of the welfare state the most serious

limitation of liberty in postcommunist societies both communist oligarchies represent a

collective security risk as well because they can be used and they are used by

Russia which tries to regain the influence it once had in this part of Europe but let us return to the Czech

experience the lack of redress for countless illegal property confiscations that took

place in the wake of the second world war has been documented by the United Nations human rights committee so far

with can’t response from Prague big or small land owners businessmen

professionals members of the nobility or the Jewish community all of them Czech citizens are still denied their

ownership rights there was the case of Mrs elisa Fabriova born in

1916 her father was murdered by the Nazis in the concentration camp of Awitz

his property was aronized as the Nazis calledist mrs fabiova’s restitution case

has been denied by Czech courts one of the arguments that her father was that

her father was not only a Jew but a German as well and a traitor because I

quote he had lived in a German way there are only very few examples of

restitution in favor of the aristocracy which opposed Nazism during the war

a former Czechoslovak socialist minister of culture Pab Rishetski explained this

once in the following way i quote him “The current aristocracy in this country

is basically an occupying force they all arrived after the Battle of the White

Mountain.” Well the Battle of the White Mountain occurred in November 1620

during the 30 years war the Catholics defeated the Protestants and aristocrats

from Catholic countries settled in Bohemia accordingly the descendants of

the Norman conquerors should be regarded as an occupying force in England too

the late prince Kinsky born in 1936 was a child as he inherited the

entailed fid is the exact legal title for it as he inherited the entailed

fortune of his family his father who right who died in

1938 before the arrival of the Germans at the Nazis had only been the trustee

the administrator and limited beneficiary of the entail but not its

owner his mother immigrated in 1940 with her children to

Argentina among her papers after her death Prince Kinsky found his Czechoslovak children’s passport based

on which his set is his Czech citizenship was confirmed and the

corresponding certificate issued the first five of 157 claims were

still successful the Czech civil courts confirmed in

2003 that the state had assumed ownership without due legal order

without due legal ground the then socialist minister of culture already mentioned sounded the alarm politicians

from all political parties got together for council about what to do to avoid

the misuse of what they called a few former discrepancies

the government created a 30-man special union called Mayate that means property

to block all property claims this specialized policy unit focusing on

aristocratic restitution investigations asked the intelligence service to collect evidence in Austrian

and German archives against Prince Kinsky czech police wire tapped not only the

prince but also his lawyer this wiretapping was approved by a Czech

court the government presented even a falsified confiscation notification in

the court it came out that the district national committee which allegedly

signed this notification in 46 did not even exist in that year because the

district was only created in 49 in the meantime the parliament passed

the so-called Kinsky law which enables the state to interfere in ongoing court

proceedings with restitution plaintiffs who dare to request pro property from

towns now the towns obtained from public funds qualified legal aid which the

adverse part doesn’t have the right to an evident preference of public entities

at the expense of private plaintiffs in order not to give back the

stolen property the state doesn’t hesitate to manipulate and undermine its

own legal order the government interferes in court proceedings it

falsifies documents it controls and observes plaintiffs and lawyers with metals which are in open contra

contradiction with the rule of law and all this does not bother the European

institutions which cover up these crimes with a wheel of silence the Czech Republic whose

president is a longtime member of the Montel Society is no exception there are

thousands of similar cases in other postcommunist countries as well

let’s have a look at tiny Slovenia a former Yugoslav republic under Tito where communism was no less communist

than Soviet communism or any other communism tito socialism is still

considered as being penny and moderate also the reign of terror in Yugoslavia

relative to its population hardly differed from Stalin’s great terror

according to various assessments between 200,000 and 300,000 youth loves were

murdered in 1944 1945 1946 between 45 and 50 at least 1

million people were caught up in the wheels of the communist judiciary and the secret police every tense inhabitant

of Yugoslavia the West rewarded Tito’s break with Stalin at the beginning of the Cold War

by overlooking his crimes elena Roosevelt in her regular newspaper

column praised I quote the dictatorship of the proletariat interwoven with

humanism and called Titoism as Yugoslavia’s last hope dito was

successful she explained to her democratic leadership because he told the people the truths from the beginning

uh by the way it’s quite interesting that um the attractiveness of totalitarian regimes was uh always

particularly uh strong in uh uh in the most bloody periods of totalitarian

history during the Stalinist purchase in the certis there were a lot of western intellectuals which were affected by

this idea that Stalinism is the this communism as the future of of mankind

this was the case during uh regarding US slavery in the 40s and it was also the

case during the the cultural revolution in China so whenever when most blood flows no uh the applause from the

western intellectuals is uh is is growing uh in

1947 Luboss now 92 years old was sentenced to

death at a short trial in Ljubljana because of his well-known anti-communist

positions and his contacts with British diplomats the secret police arrested him

on the eve of Tito’s birthday on his way home in prison he met Colonel Mitia

Riich the chief of section two of the Communist Secret Service Osna

responsible for persecution of the internal enemy ribeich directed summary

executions of actual and potential enemies of the regime he later became

Yugoslav Prime Minister and president of the central committee of the League of Yugoslav Communists

ribeich and his men interrogated Seirs into the early hours of the morning for

four weeks he was dragged from his cell each night for interrogation and was not

allowed to sleep during the day the Secret Service officer and his

victim are approximately the same age ribeich was born in Triesta in

1919 Sez in Crin in 1920 both enrolled in the law faculty at the

University of Ljubana in 1938 when Germany invaded Yugoslavia in

April 41 Sir joined the left-wing nationalist resistance group Star Taba

meaning ancient rights the communists discovered the apatriotism only two

months later namely when Hitler’s attack on the Soviet Union rendered the Hitler

Stalin pact obsolete ribbitic a political commisar with the

rank of a coloner supervised the party reliability of the partisan detachments

in German occupied northern Slovenia as Seir says his most important

task was ensuring that no non-communists would join the armed resistance the

commissiles subjected the volunteers to a strenuous interrogation including

torture forestry workers found the corpses of partisans clubed to death by

the commisars the so-called protective order of the Slovenian people’s liberation front of

uh of September 41 provided for the liquidation of those resistant fighters

who did not submit to the communist control liberation front contacts with foreigners which

Seir maintained as translator for the Yuguslav government decided his fate in

the show trials of 47 of 14 defendants three were sentenced

to death rubers’s father Frano who had no connection with the anti-communist

opposition was also sentenced to 10 years imprisonment with hard labor

because his son was an enemy of the people and he himself a class enemy

franio Sez was a successful entrepreneur until the Nazis confiscated his property

dismantled his textile factory and destroyed the buildings what was left by

the Nazis was confiscated by the communists franio Seirs died after four years in

prison luboss remained in prison for seven and a half years in

1945 he succeeded in escaping over the mountains to Italy he taught economics

economics in Dhaka in Dundee and in Glasgow and founded the center of

research into communist economists in London he has written several books on the failure of central planning and the

biography called between Hitler and Tito which is amongst the best and most vivid

descriptions of life in Yugoslavia in those times sir has tried to recover his

property for over 20 years the short trial sentence was rescindered

in 1991 he immediately applied he immediately applied for restitution and

compensation for unjust imprisonment he did recover a few scattered pieces of

his family’s property consisting of a house in crime except the business

promises on the ground floor part of the garden and 600 out of 15,000 square

meters of land belonging to his father’s textile factory in 1990 the Slovenian Parliament decided

to return all confiscated properties but restitution was dragged out and came to

a complete halt sir had to appeal adverse decisions three times eventually

Slovenia was fined with a mere €18,000 by the European Court of Human Rights

for the letter handling of the claim where the value of property involved amounts to almost€ 10 million euro

in 1998 the Slovenian leftist parties that regained power after a brief interlude

retroactively modified the property restitution law of 90 of 91 to the

detriment of the claimants the rational given was that fiscal exigence exigences

of the social state were more important than the rights to property in rejecting

in rejecting the complaint made by se of discrimination as a result of the new

law the constitutional court of Slovenia argued that public interest justified

justified the retrospective application of the law over 40% of property in Slovenia is

still owned by the government all nine judges in the Slovenian constitutional

court were still appointed by the former uh president Milan Kuchan who had also

been the leader of the communist party of Slovenia one of the nine eight were

non-communists including uh uh of the nine eight were non-communists was also

Terriil Ribbich the son of the communist bacha Mitia ribich tiel was his father’s

partisan name s’s case was supposed to be a test case but the European court of

human rights took eight years to reach a judgment in a left-leaning newspaper

called Dello in Ljubljana ostian Shupanchich the Slovenian judge in

Strasburg criticized I quote the gap between Western and Eastern thinking by

which the European Court of Human Rights is characterized uh and where Bourgeoa mentality still

prevails and he ranted against yappy legislation instead of feeling

themselves bound by as he called it legal formalism the jutsu should

according to shupangich exercise their legal power

lubocitz reports that that he had drawn the attention of Lutius Wilhabber until

2007 the president of the European Court of Human Rights to the peculiar

understanding of law by the Sloven church yet Wilt Harour could not dictect

in the Slovenian judge’s view any infringement of the unated doctrine at the Strasburg court

sir accuses the Slovenian constitutional court and the section of the European

Court of Human Rights chaired by Shupenich of bias what is involved says

is the disregard of his right to a fair and public hearing by an impartial and independent court and therefore of the

disregard of his human rights particular of his right to to own his property in

the meantime Sir has no more legal options to get his property

back for utilitarians restitutions is simply a nence it is probably much

easier to make a plan for a swift IMF compatible transition 10 years ago Tyler Cohen

wrote a paper which is quite often quoted among transition engineers in

postcommunist countries cohen argued sarcastically against

intergenerational restitution i quote “The Hopy charge that the lands were

stolen from them by the Navo if the United States government returns the land to the Navajo should it also

returned subpropy to the HPI the postcommunist and uh transition

economies should we remedy only the injustice of the communist era or should

we go much further back and try to rectify previous injustice as well

should it matter that the nobles virtually enslaved the Russian peasantry

should it matter that changes Khn sacked Baktat in two

in 124 58 now it is obvious that restitution is

only feasible where property rights are evident and verifiable i doubt whether

this is the case with the hoppy the lvahos the Russian peasantry or the victims of changenis cheap sarcasm is

not very helpful it is true Kronos the god of time devoured some of his

children and Kyros the god of the right moment is unpredictable

we do not know whether those crimes will ever be properly redressed probably not

but at least this must not blur our moral discernment thank you for your

attention

[Applause]

Property and Freedom Podcast, Episode 291.

Hans-Hermann Hoppe (Germany/Turkey), Welcome and Introductions.

This lecture is from the 2012 meeting of the Property and Freedom Society.  PFS 2012 Playlist.

It was not included previously in the podcast since the video had been lost and I had assumed the audio had also been lost. However, I recently discovered the audio files for two of the speeches as well as Professor Hoppe’s Introductory and Concluding remarks had been preserved, namely those listed below. They are podcast here for the first time.

Property and Freedom Podcast, Episode 290.

Bonus podcast episode: Professor Hoppe’s speech, The Ludwig von Mises Memorial Lecture presented at the Mises Institute’s Austrian Economics Research Conference (Fri., March 21, 2025; see Considerations and Reflections of a Veteran Reactionary Libertarian). The transcript is available at Hoppe, Considerations and Reflections of a Veteran Reactionary Libertarian (AERC 2025). In this speech, Professor Hoppe also talked a bit about what he was planning to do in in his PFS 2025 talk later in the year, “Democratic Peace and Re-Education: the German Experience,” 2025 Annual Meeting, Property and Freedom Society, Bodrum, Turkey (Sep. 20, 2025).

Note Professor Hoppe extensively comments on the reaction to his previous criticism of Milei; see Hans-Hermann Hoppe, “Javier Milei” (PFS 2024); Hoppe, “What To Make of Milei,” LewRockwell.com (Oct. 3, 2024); and Kristoffer Mousten Hansen, “Hoppe versus Milei on Central Banking: Breaking Down the Differences,” Mises Wire (Feb. 6, 2025).

He also discusses various other matters, such as the funding of the Frankfurt School by Felix Weil and its influence on Western Europe and on America (and its connection to “wokeism”); US worldwide hegemony since WWII and NATO provocations of Russia after the fall of the USSR, and its role in provoking the Russia-Ukraine conflict; the US role in the Israel-Hamas conflict and the influence of Israel over US policy and the dangerous alliance of the US and American “exceptionalism” paired with Israel’s “Chosen People” image.

Property and Freedom Podcast, Episode 289.

This panel discussion is from the 18th annual 2024 Annual Meeting of the PFS (Sept. 19–24, 2024, Bodrum, Turkey).

Ammous, Polleit, Hoppe, Kinsella, Hülsmann, Discussion, Q&A.

See also Ammous, Polleit, Hoppe, Kinsella, Hülsmann, Discussion, Q&A.

Other talks appear on the Property and Freedom Podcast. Other videos may also be found at the PFS 2024 Youtube Playlist.