There’s a new mini-reivew of Hoppe’s new book at Target Liberty:
Massive movements often are accompanied by the written word in the form of very short books that can be easily grasped by the masses. Thomas Paine’s short book, Common Sense, played an important role in fueling the fire of the revolutionaries during the American Revolution.
The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and The Little Red Book by Mao helped fuel mass movements of a different nature. To be sure, these last two books helped launch horrific movements, but it is the case that the books were there to support the movements.
Libertarianism now has this type of short book that can support a movement. A book that could fuel a trend toward the good, an anracho-capitalist movement, a private society movement, if you will. It is a small book, only 4 inches wide and 6 inches tall, and only 74 pages. But it is brilliant.
I am referring to Hans-Hermann Hoppe’s new book From Aristocracy to Monarchy to Democracy: A Tale of Moral and Economic Folly and Decay.
The book is a powerful discussion of the nature of the development of government. Hoppe examines, in a manner that any clear thinking person can understand, how wise men settlers of disputes, evolved into feudal lordships, then constitutional monarchies and finally into democratic governments. He examines each step of this evolution and why things moved from good to bad to worse.
He points his finger at democratic governments and explains why they are the worst of the lot.
He writes:
What then has been the moral of my story? I have tried to make the current world intelligible, to reconstruct it as a predictable result of a series of successive and cumulative moral and economic errors.
Also, you can download the book for free on Mises.org.
