Notes from Frederick Bastiat’s Essays on Political Economy
Copyright 2013 by Catherine McGrew Jaime
Introduction
I had read much of Bastiat’s essay, The Law, many years ago, and remembered it as being well written, but I was still surprised when I recently stumbled upon his Essays on Political Economy (written shortly before his death in 1850). I was looking for a few nuggets, a few good quotes or ideas, to help finish up an economics book I was working on. Instead I felt like I had stumbled into a political and economic gold mine. It was difficult to believe these words were written in France over 160 years ago. I was frustrated that I had never read them before, never had the opportunity to share them with my students, or discuss them with friends. As I worked through page after page of his thoughts, I was impressed, I was uplifted, and I was motivated to share them with others. I have selected highlights from his essay to share with interested readers. I hope you enjoy his insight on government and politics, interrupted only occasionally by my own limited commentary. (Please Note: My comments are in italics and I have bolded a number of Bastiat’s extremely significant points along the way.)
What is Government?
What is the Proper Use of Government?
Bastiat pulled no punches when he described government and what it can and cannot accomplish: “I should be glad enough, you may be sure, if you had really discovered a beneficent and inexhaustible being, calling itself the Government, which has bread for all mouths, work for all hands, capital for all enterprises, credit for all projects, oil for all wounds, balm for all sufferings, advice for all perplexities, solutions for all doubts, truths for all intellects, diversions for all who want them, milk for infancy, and wine for old age-- which can provide for all our wants, satisfy all our curiosity, correct all our errors, repair all our faults, and exempt us henceforth from the necessity for foresight, prudence, judgment, sagacity, experience, order, economy, temperance and activity…Indeed, the more I reflect upon it, the more do I see that nothing could be more convenient than that we should all of us have within our reach an inexhaustible source of wealth and enlightenment-- a universal physician, an unlimited treasure, and an infallible counselor, such as you describe Government to be…For no one would think of asserting that this precious discovery has yet been made, since up to this time everything presenting itself under the name of the Government is immediately overturned by the people, precisely because it does not fulfill the rather contradictory conditions of the program.” Can it be better put than the way Bastiat put it? And 160 years later Government is no more successful than it was then!
He continued, “…But let us go to the root of the matter. We are deceived by money. To demand the co-operation of all the citizens in a common work, in the form of money, is in reality to demand a concurrence in kind; for every one procures, by his own labour, the sum to which he is taxed. Now, if all the citizens were to be called together, and made to execute, in conjunction, a work useful to all, this would be easily understood, their reward would be found in the result of the work itself. But, after having called them together, if you force them to make roads which no one will pass through, palaces which no one will inhabit, and this under the prefect of finding them work, it would be absurd, and they would have a right to argue, ‘with this labour we have nothing to do; we prefer working on our own account.’”
Public vs. Private
Bastiat continued: “Society is the total of the forced or voluntary services which men perform for each other; that is to say, of public services and private services.” We are often taught that public services are somehow better than private ones, and yet if we remember that public services actually only come by force, we may be in a better position to evaluate the difference.
Bastiat explained more about these public enterprises: “Then you will understand that a public enterprise is a coin with two sides. Upon one is engraved a laborer at work, with this device, that which is seen; on the other is a laborer out of work, with the device, that which is not seen.” Bastiat understood, even if we don’t, that labor done by a “public servant,” is not being done by a private one! He spoke often in his writings of the importance of not just what is seen, but also what is not seen. Too many political decisions are made primarily based on what is seen – but what is not seen because it happens below the surface, in the longer term, or is actually something that doesn’t happen as a result – those are often even more important than the short term, visible results of a new policy or law.
The Introduction of Plunder
As he continued, Bastiat was moving closer to the idea of government plunder. “…Man recoils from trouble--from suffering; and yet he is condemned by nature to the suffering of privation, if he does not take the trouble to work. He has to choose, then, between these two evils. What means can he adopt to avoid both? There remains now, and there will remain, only one way, which is, to enjoy the labor of others…This is the origin of slavery and of plunder, whatever its form may be--whether that of wars, impositions, violence, restrictions, frauds, etc.--monstrous abuses, but consistent with the thought which has given them birth. Oppression should be detested and resisted--it can hardly be called absurd.”
Plunder and the Government
He goes on to show that when socialists get control of Government, plunder becomes legalized: “…The oppressor no longer acts directly and with his own powers upon his victim. No, our conscience has become too sensitive for that. The tyrant and his victim are still present, but there is an intermediate person between them, which is the Government--that is, the Law itself. What can be better calculated to silence our scruples, and, which is perhaps better appreciated, to overcome all resistance? We all, therefore, put in our claim, under some pretext or other, and apply to Government. We say to it, ‘I am dissatisfied at the proportion between my labor and my enjoyments. I should like, for the sake of restoring the desired equilibrium, to take a part of the possessions of others. But this would be dangerous. Could not you facilitate the thing for me? Could you not find me a good place? or check the industry of my competitors? or, perhaps, lend me gratuitously some capital, which you may take from its possessor? Could you not bring up my children at the public expense? or grant me some prizes? or secure me a competence when I have attained my fiftieth year? By this means I shall gain my end with an easy conscience, for the law will have acted for me, and I shall have all the advantages of plunder, without its risk or its disgrace!’” But is plunder by the government really so different than that by outlaws? Other than that it is harder to fight against!
Bastiat goes on to show so clearly that wealth redistribution through high taxes is merely legalized plunder: …Government is the great fiction, through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else….Government is not slow to perceive the advantages it may derive from the part which is entrusted to it by the public. It is glad to be the judge and the master of the destinies of all; it will take much, for then a large share will remain for itself; it will multiply the number of its agents; it will enlarge the circle of its privileges; it will end by appropriating a ruinous proportion.”
“But the most remarkable part of it is the astonishing blindness of the public through it all. When successful soldiers used to reduce the vanquished to slavery, they were barbarous, but they were not absurd. Their object, like ours, was to live at other people's expense, and they did not fail to do so. What are we to think of a people who never seem to suspect that…plunder…is no less criminal because it is executed legally and with order; that it adds nothing to the public
good; that it diminishes it, just in proportion to the cost of the expensive medium which we call the Government?…It is radically impossible for it to confer a particular benefit upon any one of the individualities which constitute the community, without inflicting a greater injury upon the community as a whole… Thus, the public has two hopes, and Government makes two promises--many benefits and no taxes. Hopes and promises, which, being contradictory, can never be realized …These two promises are forever clashing with each other; it cannot be otherwise. To live upon credit, which is the same as exhausting the future, is certainly a present means of reconciling them: an attempt