3. What Is Indispensable for Human Action: Property

There can be no happiness without constancy and prudence.18
— LUCIUS ANNAEUS SENECA

In the indisputably true sentence that cannot be denied without contradiction, “Humans act,” something is assumed, something is presupposed, which deserves very special attention, but is all too often overlooked or even called into question, and that is property—understood as the property of everyone in his own body (self-ownership) and the property in external goods which one has acquired in a nonaggressive way. This statement will be explained and justified in more detail below, with reference to the a priori argumentation as formulated by the philosophers Karl-Otto Apel (1922–2017) and Jürgen Habermas (b. 1929).19

Arguing means asserting something with the intention of convincing the interlocutor of the correctness or falsity of a fact.20 Examples of this are “I am right about this” or “Everything is uncertain, and that is certain.” Arguing is a particular, special form of human action. The special thing about the sentence “Humans argue” is that it cannot be disputed without contradiction. It applies a priori; it is evident: whoever says, “Humans do not argue,” argues and thus contradicts what has been said.

Arguing, like every form of human action, requires the use of scarce resources. In the simplest case, anyone who argues has to use his body: to open his mouth and make his vocal cords vibrate. So anyone who argues needs at least ownership of his own body, self-ownership. Without controlling his own body, the actor cannot argue. Human action necessarily presupposes physicality.

But those who argue do not only presuppose self-ownership for themselves. They also assume it for the person with whom they argue. Anyone who argues assumes that his counterpart either shares his arguments, approves them in part, or perhaps even rejects them. The person with whom one argues must also have self-ownership, for otherwise he cannot argue—and we have already recognized that one cannot not argue.

If we cannot deny that the actor has self-ownership of his own body without falling into contradiction, then the necessity for the actor to preserve his body (as created by nature) follows directly from this. To this end, the actor must be able to acquire external goods such as food, clothing, and housing. Property—self-ownership and ownership of external goods needed to preserve one’s body—can thus be regarded without contradiction as an a priori category of human action.

At this point, another question arises: How is ownership—ownership of one’s own body and ownership of external goods—to be judged from an ethical point of view? Ethics—also known as moral philosophy—deals with the question: What is a right action and how can it be justified? It may come as a surprise, but economics has more to contribute to ethics than one might initially assume. Ethics finds its starting point in an irrevocable economic realization: that human life takes place under scarcity.

If there were no scarcity of resources to be deployed to help those actors achieve their goals, ethical questions—such as what is right, what is wrong—would not arise in the first place. In such a world there would be no interpersonal conflicts. For example, if there were no scarcity and Mr. A consumed a banana, he would not diminish his present or future banana supply. Nor would his consuming the banana limit the current and future consumption of bananas by Mr. B and Mrs. C. But human action always takes place—and this is necessarily assumed—under scarcity.

In a world of scarcity, how can the actor procure the necessary goods so that there is no conflict with the property of others? This is only possible in three nonaggressive ways: (1) domestication of natural resources that have not previously been claimed by anyone else (“homesteading”); (2) production, i.e., “mixing” one’s own labor with natural resources; and (3) voluntary exchange, including gifting. Anyone who appropriates goods in one of these three ways acquires property without violating the property of his fellow human beings.

Is human action characterized by unconditional respect for property ethically acceptable? In order to answer this question, we must first consider the requirements to be met by an ethical rule of action.21 Firstly, an ethical rule of action must apply equally to everyone at all times and everywhere. This requirement is expressed, for instance, in Kant’s categorical imperative: “Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.”22 In addition to this requirement of universality (“universalizability”), an ethical rule must, secondly, ensure that its observance preserves human existence in principle. If this were not ensured, sooner or later there would be no need for ethics. An example: the rule “Everyone drinks five bottles of schnapps a day” can in principle be made the default for everyone. But it would certainly not ensure the survival of those who follow this rule, but rather endanger it. But what, precisely, can and must an ethical rule look like?

The US economist and social philosopher Murray N. Rothbard (1926–95) dealt with this question. With reference to the natural law argumentation of John Locke (1632–1704), Rothbard develops the following train of thought. We assume that there is Mr. A and Mr. B. In the first case, Mr. A owns Mr. B. So, Mr. A is the master and Mr. B is his slave. This rule cannot be ethical. Mr. A and Mr. B may well survive under this rule. But the rule cannot be ethical, because obviously there is a different rule for Mr. A than for Mr. B.

In the second case, Mr. A and Mr. B own each other: Mr. A owns Mr. B, and at the same time Mr. B owns Mr. A. That cannot be an ethical rule either. It does indeed apply to both equally. But this rule cannot guarantee the survival of Messrs. A and B. In order to be able to do anything, Mr. A must have Mr. B’s consent. But Mr. A cannot get it, because Mr. B, so that he can himself act, must first obtain and receive Mr. A’s approval. The rule that each belongs to the other, that all belong to each other, leads to the downfall of all.

In the third case, Mr. A and Mr. B each own themselves. This rule proves to be ethically acceptable. It can be used for anyone and everyone, anytime and anywhere. It also ensures in principle the consideration of those who adhere to it. Human action, which is characterized by absolute respect for property—understood as self-ownership and property acquired in a nonaggressive way—thus fulfills the requirements of ethical action.

Rothbard derives his rational ethics from a consideration of natural law. Not surprisingly, this “line of argument” has not been without its criticism. Hans-Hermann Hoppe (b. 1949) subsequently provided Rothbard’s position, that unconditional respect for property qualifies as an ethical rule of action, with an a priori justification. It was Hoppe who—as explained at the beginning of this chapter—conceptualized property as an a priori category of human action by means of a priori reasoning. What epistemological consequences this has will occupy us in the coming chapters. Prior to that, however, we want to gain clarity about the logic of human action in the sense of a metatheory. This is done in the following chapter.

• 18Francis and Henry Hazlitt, The Wisdom of the Stoics (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1984), p. 15.
• 19See Karl-Otto Apel, “Das Apriori der Kommunikationsgemeinschaft und die Grundlagen der Ethik,” in Transformation der Philosophie, 2 vols. (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1973); and Jürgen Habermas, Moralbewußtsein und kommunikatives Handeln (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1983).
• 20On this issue, see Hans-Hermann Hoppe, “On the Ultimate Justification of the Ethics of Private Property,” in The Economics and Ethics of Private Property (Auburn, AL: Ludwig von Mises Institute, 2006), pp. 339–45, esp. 339 ff. and “The Justice of Economic Efficiency,” in The Economics and Ethics of Private Property, pp. 331–38, esp. 331 ff.
• 21See Murray N. Rothbard, The Ethics of Liberty (New York: New York University Press, 1998), pp. 45–50; see also the introduction by Hoppe, esp. pp. xvi–xvii.
• 22Immanuel Kant, Kritik der praktischen Vernunft (Stuttgart: Philipp Reclam jun., 1961), pp. 50, 54–55. Translation in Kant, Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals, trans. James W. Ellington (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company, 1993), p. 30.