„Dlaczego rządzą źli”. O krytyce demokratycznych„zarządców” w filozofii politycznej Hansa-Hermanna Hoppego

Abstract

The author of this article aims at presenting a particular aspect of the political philosophy of Hans-Hermann Hoppe, an Austrian school economist and anarchocapitalist philosopher. The purpose of this article is to present and analyse the part of his thinking concerning a ruler, as known as “caretaker” and “trustee”. The critique of democratic ruler is one of the most important, or even the most important part in the Hoppe’s critique of democracy. It is mostly based on a comparison of an essence of a democratic caretaker and a private ruler – a classical monarch. The author presents an intellectual profile of Hoppe, being a German who decided to emigrate to United States of America. In the USA he used to work as a scientist and studied along with Murray Rothbard – one of the leaders of Austrian school economists and libertarian. The author also presents the methodological view of Hoppe, which is based on an a priori knowledge. The Hoppe’s critique of democratic caretaker consists of two ways of argumentation. The first one is based on the critique of public ruler per se. Hoppe states that a private-owned government is better than a publicowned one. To prove this statement, Hoppe uses an apparatus of economics. He proves that a democratic caretaker has a higher time preference than a king. It has a bad influence on the ruled people. According to Hoppe, public ruler must to concentrate on consuming and not taking care about a capital values of the resources of the government. The only thing which is profitable for him is to be taking care about current income of the government. The author of this article states such an apriorical portrait of a public ruler is not valid and presents arguments on his point of view. The most important part of the author’s argumentation is that the Hoppe’s view is correct only on a condition that a basic purpose of a democratic ruler is to get rich. When it is not valid, Hoppean deductive portrait becomes useless. The second line of Hoppe’s argumentation is based on bad effects of general election. As the philosopher claims, it causes that the highest political function can be held practically only by bad persons who inter alia desire the property of others. The author of this article claims that this sort of critique is less radical, but a better one. The critique of democratic ruler in political philosophy of Hoppe seems to be a substantialistical one, when the thinker bases on an apriorical essence of caretaker. However, the philosopher approaches to accidental sort of critique, as he stays in a field of his second way of argumentation.