Discursive Rationality and the Division of Labour: How Cooperation Emerges

American Journal of Economics and Sociology, The, Oct, 1999 by Jorg Guido Hulsmann

Now, discursive rationality is not a hierarchically equal companion of instrumental rationality, but its superior. It is more fundamental than any instrumental considerations because the very terms of instrumental reasoning--that is, the concept of ends and means--can themselves only be established by discursive reasoning. Nobody can deny that acting man employs means to attain ends because in denying this he would himself use a means (an argument) to attain an end (persuading another person or himself that ends and means are not given in every action).

That acting man employs his private property in his actions is hardly a new or surprising insight. However, as Hans-Hermann Hoppe has demonstrated, discursive reasoning can also be used to establish normative propositions about private property (even though it does not enable us to derive an "ought" from an "is"). In his book A Theory of Socialism and Capitalism, Hoppe delivered an ethical justification of private property that starts with the statement that any proposition must be made in the form of an argument. Then he goes on:

In order to recognise [the positive norms implied in argumentation], it is only necessary to call three interrelated facts to attention. First, that argumentation is not only a cognitive but also a practical affair. Second, that argumentation, as a form of action, implies the use of the scarce resource of one's body. And third, that argumentation is a conflict-free way of interacting. Not in the sense that there is always agreement on the things said, but in the sense that as long as argumentation is in progress it is always possible to agree at least on the fact that there is disagreement about the validity of what has been said. And this is to say nothing else than that a mutual recognition of each person's exclusive control over his body must be pre-supposed as long as there is argumentation (note again, that it is impossible to deny this and claim this denial to be true without implicitly having to admit its truth).... Indeed, anyone who would try to justify any norm would already have to presuppose the property right in his body as a valid norm, simply in order to say, "This is what I claim to be true and objective." [11]

Or, we might add, what does he who makes an argument necessarily presuppose? He must assume that his argument may change the decision of someone else, for otherwise there would be no reason to argue at all. In other terms, he must assume that there is someone else who, as a matter of fact, controls some material thing (his body, for example). Most importantly, he recognises and respects this factual control or ownership by the very fact that he addresses an argument to the other person. For the purpose of the argument is to make the other person exercise his control in a way the arguer wants him to do it. Nobody can argue against private self-ownership without contradicting himself. It would be absurd to say, "I don't own myself" or "you don't own yourself" because in making this very statement one recognises that oneself or the other person is a self-owner.