The starting point of praxeology, i.e., the logic of human action, is a self-evident truth. As economist Ludwig von Mises noted, this truth is “the cognition of the fact that there is such a thing as consciously aiming at ends.” Praxeology describes the invariant features and implications of human action, independently of time and place. For example, the actor’s unavoidable need to choose and the fact that his subjective valuations determine the means and ends of his actions.
Mises’ axiom of action—the fact that men act—means that action is intentional behavior. It means that men act by changing things in their perceived environment with the aim of moving to a state of greater satisfaction than before such action. Accordingly, human action is always linked to the desire to affect the course of events. And since the actor always prefers one outcome over another, he is also naturally inclined to be unneutral to the constellation of events happening around him outside his control. In fact, one of the reasons why man seeks explanations for the events surrounding him comes from his own mind, which has a deterministic bent. As Mises wrote:
“Man cannot even conceive the image of an undetermined universe. In such a world there could not be any awareness of material things and their changes…Nothing could be identified and distinguished from anything else. Nothing could be expected and predicted… No action could be designed, still less put into execution. Man is what he is because he lives in a world of regularity and has the mental power to conceive the relation of cause and effect.”
Nonetheless, it is impossible for man to attain every single end he sets for himself. Man is not omnipotent and can never reach a state of total and lasting satisfaction. Likewise, man can be mistaken about events and their causes. In this regard, as Jörg Guido Hülsmann points out in a book paying tribute to Mises, the causal chains by which ideas and value judgments are connected with action are contingent, and giving light to these chains is the task of historical research:
“Social analysis…must explain all social phenomena as resulting from individual action, and the causal chain of events must start and end with the ideas and value judgments of individuals…[History] is the discipline that (1) describes value judgments from the point of view of the acting person and (2) describes how individual actions and other relevant factors combine with one another in a given objective context to produce a definite outcome. History describes in retrospect how the acting person perceived the situation in which he had to act, what he aimed at, what he believed to be the means at his disposition. And it uses the general laws provided by economics and the natural sciences to describe the objective impact that the acting person had through his behavior.”
Mises emphasized that the characteristics of individuals, as well as the actions guided by their ideas and value judgments, cannot be traced back to anything beyond the fact that they did what they did because they were such people. In other words, individuals’ characteristics and actions are ultimately given, as they cannot be traced back to anything that they would appear to be the required consequence of. And yet, through experience and interpretive understanding, it is possible to identify the characteristics of certain groups of men, since the only way to know these groups as such is by analyzing their members’ actions. Accordingly, these specific groups exist only to the extent that their members are driven by specific ideas and value judgments to act similarly. When it comes to conspiracies, it means that two or more individuals secretly join together against one or more people to cause some kind of harm or disadvantage and benefit from it, thus acting for the same purpose.
Certainly, no group of people can completely control everything that happens, as events depend not only on their actions but also on how others act. Even so, conspiracies have always existed. As philosopher and praxeologist Hans-Hermann Hoppe says, conspiracies are “an ever-present feature of social reality.” Indeed, wars, bank robberies, and other particular events are nothing more than stories of conspiracies or events that originated with some conspiracy.
Since conspiracies as such can only be attributed to the fact that some people did what they did because they were conspirators, any conspiracy involves not only common preferences among the corresponding conspirators but also similar personality traits. Because these traits, and more generally the character of individuals, must ultimately be considered as given in the context of their actions. However, given that character remains virtually unchanged in people most of the time, it is possible to classify them according to the similarity of their character or personality. To explore this idea further, this is how Hoppe discusses the matter while quoting Mises:
“…if we are concerned about the future behavior of groups of individuals (rather than only a single one), we cannot but classify individuals according to the similarity or dissimilarity of their character or personality; that is, we cannot but form ideas of group characters—ideal types—and sort individuals according to their membership in such types. ‘If an ideal type refers to people,’ explains Mises, “it implies that in some respect these men are valuing and acting in a uniform or similar way.'”
Furthermore, following Mises, based on a defined way of understanding the course of events, ideal types are constructed and used to predict the future or analyze the past. But since conspiracies take place in a context that no one can completely control, both intended and unintended consequences may arise.
As a matter of fact, what people often call “conspiracy theories” are no more than conspiracy hypotheses that try to explain specific events in terms of conspiracy attempts, assuming that they are the fruit of successful attempts. In principle, these hypotheses cannot be ruled out outright, as doing so would be contrary to reality. Hoppe clarifies this point as follows:
“…realistically speaking, most if not all historical events are more or less exactly what some identifiable people or group of people acting in concert intended them to be. Indeed, to assume the opposite is to assume, incredibly, that history is nothing but a sequence of unintelligible accidents.”
Interestingly though, for so long, the term “conspiracy theorist” has been used to discredit and dismiss virtually any claim about historical events that goes against the narrative disseminated by the powers that be. In this way, attention is diverted from the investigation and discovery of what could be true.
Murray N. Rothbard, also known as Mr. Libertarian, was a great student of Mises, and he spoke of the importance for the state of inculcating an aversion to conspiracy theories, for a search for conspiracies is “a search for motives and an attribution of responsibility for historical misdeeds.” Additionally, a conspiracy theory that vehicles truths can cause the public to doubt the ruling elites’ narrative in more stories as well. In fact, it was Rothbard who taught Hoppe never to trust official history—always written by the victors—and to conduct his research like a detective investigating a crime:
“Always, first and foremost and as a first approximation, follow the money in search of a motive. Who is to gain, whether in terms of money, real estate, or sheer power from this measure or that? In most cases, answering this question will lead you directly to the very actor or group of actors responsible for the measure or policy under consideration. Simple as it is to ask this question, however, it is much more difficult and requires often arduous research to answer it, and to unearth…the hard facts and indicators…to actually prove a crime and to identify and ‘out’ its perpetrators…And to do this detective’s work…you must go beyond…everything and everyone deemed ‘respectable’ and ‘politically correct.’ You must also, and in particular, pay attention to the work of outsiders, extremists, and outcasts, i.e., to ‘disrespectable’ or ‘deplorable’ people and ‘obscure’ publication outlets that you are supposed to ignore or not even know about.”
The general populace does not usually have goals that involve violating the rights of others or causing them distress. But conspirators do. And they have every reason to hide their activities and never face the consequences of their crimes. However, only a few have the power or money necessary to get away with it. To this end, they may murder, threaten, bribe, or blackmail individuals in the areas of society most conducive to their interests, whether in academia, the media, politics, and so on.
Although conspiracy theorists think like praxeologists when they believe that people act with purpose, this alone does not necessarily make any conspiracy theorist good at their craft. The work of both ordinary historians and so-called conspiracy theorists may require not only factual research and an understanding of the protagonists involved, but also some knowledge of other disciplines, such as economics, to avoid erroneous explanations of cause and effect. What’s more, conspirators may succeed or fail. And the likelihood of harmony among their interests decreases as the number of alleged conspirators increases, making certain conspiracies even less likely, especially since there may also be rivalry between different conspiracies. Therefore, it is unrealistic to assume the effectiveness of a single all-powerful group to rule the world on its own as part of a grand global conspiracy, as if all or almost all historical events were practically written in advance by that group. In relation to this, Rothbard stated the following:
… the bad conspiracy analyst seems to have a compulsion to wrap up all the conspiracies, all the bad guy power blocs, into one giant conspiracy. Instead of seeing that there are several power blocs trying to gain control of government, sometimes in conflict and sometimes in alliance, he has to assume—again without evidence—that a small group of men controls them all, and only seems to send them into conflict.
At any rate, making fun of people who disagree with the official narrative, as if they believed in unicorns, is not a sensible way to be right about any event. On the contrary, if there is a group of people living in a recurring fantasy, it is those who reject conspiracy theories in general, especially if they happen to be libertarians. Because if the state is a criminal organization, as most libertarians contend, this is all the reason anyone needs to believe that the ruling elites are constantly involved in all kinds of conspiracies. And, in fact, when have criminals ever informed their victims of their plans before committing a crime or told them how they have victimized them when the victims do not even know who their perpetrators are?
