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Bastiat's The Law, is his venture into explicit political philosophy. In its clarity and brevity it is an achievement to behold. Philosophers have conceived law as resulting from a social contract with a paternalistic sovereign (Thomas Hobbes), as designed to effect the greatest happiness for the greatest number (Jeremy Bentham and the utilitarians), or as an arbitrary convention defining right and wrong (the legal positivists). In contrast, Bastiat is squarely in the natural law camp (along with John Locke): "Life, liberty, and property do not exist because men have made laws. On the contrary, it was the fact that life, liberty, and property existed beforehand that caused men to make laws in the first place." He locates the source of law in human nature: to live, human beings need liberty and property in order to transform nature's potential into usable things. Thus law that conflicts with liberty and property is not proper law, but legalized plunder, a constant temptation since men wish to achieve their objectives with the least exertion. The result is moral chaos, oppression, and material deprivation. Bastiat concludes with a call for freedom and a rejection of all proposals to impose unnatural social arrangements on people. Click here |
Articles
* Food Prices
* Dynasty democracy
* Limits of Democracy
* Trade Union Terror
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About Basitat
Frederic Bastiat (1801-1850) was a French economist, statesman, and author. He did most of his writing during the years just before — and immediately following — the Revolution of February 1848. This was the period when France was rapidly turning to complete socialism.
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As a Deputy to the LegislativeAssembly, Mr. Bastiat was studying and explaining each socialist fallacy as it appeared.
And he explained how socialism must inevitably degenerate into communism. But most of his countrymen chose to ignore his logic. His ideas deserve a serious hearing.
Bastiat was a leader of the French laissez-faire tradition in the first half of the nineteenth century. |
He was influenced by Cobden's Anti-Corn Law League and became a convinced free trader. Joseph Schumpeter described Bastiat as 'the most brilliant economic journalist who ever lived'. Bastiat was the leader of the free-trade movement in France from its inception until his untimely death from tuberculosis in 1850. Bastiat was also a deputy in the French Legislative Assembly (1848–1850) where he opposed the rising tide of collectivist policies. He was also the editor of Free Trade, one of France's leading classical-liberal newspapers at the time. |
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Basitat's Work
The best of Bastiat writings are available in English from the Foundation for Economic Education in three volumes: Economic Sophisms (click here); Selected Essays in Political Economy (click here); and Economic Harmonies (click here).
The most popular writings of Basitat are:
Petition of candle stick makers
Government
What is Seen and What is Not Seen
More on Basitat
Frederic Bastiat, Ingenious Champion for Liberty and Peace by Jim Powell
Frédéric Bastiat as an Austrian Economist by Mark Thornton
Bastiat's Life by Sheldon Richman
Frederic Bastiat: The Primacy of Property by James A. Dorn
Claude Frédéric Bastiat by Robert F. Hébert in New Palgrave Dictionary: A Dictionary of Economics
Frédéric Bastiat, by David R. Henderson, The Fortune Encyclopedia of Economics, ed. David R. Henderson. New York: Warner Books, 1993.
Free Markets, Free Men: Frederic Bastiat, 1801-1850, by George Roche,foreword by Dick Armey. Hillsdale, Mich. Hillsdale College Press, and Irvington-on-Hudson, N.Y.: Foundation for Economic Education, 1993. Originally published as Frederic Bastiat: A Man Alone. New Rochelle, N.Y.: Arlington House, 1971, and Hillsdale, Mich.: Hillsdale College Press, 1977.
Frédéric Bastiat: Ideas and Influence. By Dean ;Russell,Irvington- on-Hudson,N.Y.: Foundation for Economic
Eduction,1965.
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