The Ludwig von Mises Institute
The Cruel Wreckage of Socialism
by Frederic Bastiat
Socialism, like the old policy from which it emanates, confounds
government and society. And so, every time we object to a thing being
done by government, it concludes that we object to its being done at
all. We disapprove of education by the state — then we are against
education altogether. We object to a state religion — then we would have
no religion at all. We object to an equality which is brought about by
the state then we are against equality, etc., etc. They might as well
accuse us of wishing men not to eat, because we object to the
cultivation of corn by the state.
How is it that the strange idea of making the law produce what it
does not contain — prosperity, in a positive sense, wealth, science,
religion — should ever have gained ground in the political world? The
modern politicians, particularly those of the Socialist school, found
their different theories upon one common hypothesis; and surely a more
strange, a more presumptuous notion, could never have entered a human
brain.
They divide mankind into two parts. Men in general, except one, form
the first; the politician himself forms the second, which is by far the
most important.
In fact, they begin by supposing that men are devoid of any principle
of action, and of any means of discernment in themselves; that they
have no initiative; that they are inert matter, passive particles, atoms
without impulse; at best a vegetation indifferent to its own mode of
existence, susceptible of assuming, from an exterior will and hand an
infinite number of forms, more or less symmetrical, artistic, and
perfected.
Moreover, every one of these politicians does not hesitate to assume
that he himself is, under the names of organizer, discoverer,
legislator, institutor, or founder, this will and hand, this universal
initiative, this creative power, whose sublime mission it is to gather
together these scattered materials, that is, men, into society.
Starting from these data, as a gardener according to his caprice
shapes his trees into pyramids, parasols, cubes, cones, vases,
espaliers, distaffs, or fans; so the Socialist, following his chimera,
shapes poor humanity into groups, series, circles, subcircles,
honeycombs, or social workshops, with all kinds of variations. And as
the gardener, to bring his trees into shape, needs hatchets, pruning
hooks, saws, and shears, so the politician, to bring society into shape,
needs the forces which he can only find in the laws; the law of
tariffs, the law of taxation, the law of assistance, and the law of
education.
It is so true, that the Socialists look upon mankind as a subject for
social experiments, that if, by chance, they are not quite certain of
the success of these experiments, they will request a portion of
mankind, as a subject to experiment upon. It is well known how popular
the idea of trying all systems is, and one of their chiefs has been
known seriously to demand of the Constituent Assembly a parish, with all
its inhabitants, upon which to make his experiments.
It is thus that an inventor will make a small machine before he makes
one of the regular size. Thus the chemist sacrifices some substances,
the agriculturist some seed and a corner of his field, to make trial of
an idea.
But think of the difference between the gardener and his trees,
between the inventor and his machine, between the chemist and his
substances, between the agriculturist and his seed! The Socialist
thinks, in all sincerity, that there is the same difference between
himself and mankind.
No wonder the politicians of the 19th century look upon society as an
artificial production of the legislator's genius. This idea, the result
of a classical education, has taken possession of all the thinkers and
great writers of our country.
To all these persons, the relations between mankind and the
legislator appear to be the same as those that exist between the clay
and the potter.
Moreover, if they have consented to recognize in the heart of man a
capability of action, and in his intellect a faculty of discernment,
they have looked upon this gift of God as a fatal one, and thought that
mankind, under these two impulses, tended fatally toward ruin. They have
taken it for granted that if abandoned to their own inclinations, men
would only occupy themselves with religion to arrive at atheism, with
instruction to come to ignorance, and with labor and exchange to be
extinguished in misery.
Happily, according to these writers, there are some men, termed
governors and legislators, upon whom Heaven has bestowed opposite
tendencies, not for their own sake only, but for the sake of the rest of
the world.
Whilst mankind tends to evil, they incline to good; whilst mankind is
advancing toward darkness, they are aspiring to enlightenment; whilst
mankind is drawn toward vice, they are attracted by virtue. And, this
granted, they demand the assistance of force, by means of which they are
to substitute their own tendencies for those of the human race.
It is only needful to open, almost at random, a book on philosophy,
politics, or history, to see how strongly this idea — the child of
classical studies and the mother of socialism — is rooted in our
country; that mankind is merely inert matter, receiving life,
organization, morality, and wealth from power; or, rather, and still
worse — that mankind itself tends toward degradation, and is only
arrested in its tendency by the mysterious hand of the legislator.
Classical conventionalism shows us everywhere, behind passive society, a
hidden power, under the names of Law, or Legislator (or, by a mode of
expression which refers to some person or persons of undisputed weight
and authority, but not named), which moves, animates, enriches, and
regenerates mankind.
We will give a quotation from Bossuet:
One of the things which was the most strongly impressed (by whom?)
upon the mind of the Egyptians, was the love of their country. … Nobody
was allowed to be useless to the state; the law assigned to every one
his employment, which descended from father to son. No one was permitted
to have two professions, nor to adopt another. … But there was one
occupation which was obliged to be common to all, this was the study of
the laws and of wisdom; ignorance of religion and the political
regulations of the country was excused in no condition of life.
Moreover, every profession had a district assigned to it (by whom?). …
Amongst good laws, one of the best things was, that everybody was taught
to observe them (by whom?). Egypt abounded with wonderful inventions,
and nothing was neglected which could render life comfortable and
tranquil.
Thus men, according to Bossuet, derive nothing from themselves;
patriotism, wealth, inventions, husbandry, science — all come to them by
the operation of the laws, or by kings. All they have to do is to be
passive. It is on this ground that Bossuet takes exception when Diodorus
accuses the Egyptians of rejecting wrestling and music. "How is that
possible," says he, "since these arts were invented by Trismegistus?"
It is the same with the Persians:
One of the first cares of the prince was to encourage agriculture. …
As there were posts established for the regulation of the armies, so
there were offices for the superintending of rural works. … The respect
with which the Persians were inspired for royal authority was excessive.
The Greeks, although full of mind, were no less strangers to their
own responsibilities; so much so, that of themselves, like dogs and
horses, they would not have ventured upon the most simple games. In a
classical sense, it is an undisputed thing that everything comes to the
people from without.
The Greeks, naturally full of spirit and courage, had been early
cultivated by kings and colonies who had come from Egypt. From them they
had learned the exercises of the body, foot races, and horse and
chariot races. … The best thing that the Egyptians had taught them was
to become docile, and to allow themselves to be formed by the laws for
the public good.
Fénelon
Reared in the study and admiration of antiquity and a witness of the
power of Louis XIV, Fénelon naturally adopted the idea that mankind
should be passive, and that its misfortunes and its prosperities, its
virtues and its vices, are caused by the external influence that is
exercised upon it by the law, or by the makers of the law. Thus, in his
Utopia of Salentum, he brings the men, with their interests, their
faculties, their desires, and their possessions, under the absolute
direction of the legislator. Whatever the subject may be, they
themselves have no voice in it — the prince judges for them. The nation
is just a shapeless mass, of which the prince is the soul. In him
resides the thought, the foresight, the principle of all organization,
of all progress; on him, therefore, rests all the responsibility.
In proof of this assertion, I might transcribe the whole of the tenth book of
Telemachus.
I refer the reader to it, and shall content myself with quoting some
passages taken at random from this celebrated work, to which, in every
other respect, I am the first to render justice.
With the astonishing credulity that characterizes the classics,
Fénelon, against the authority of reason and of facts, admits the
general felicity of the Egyptians, and attributes it, not to their own
wisdom, but to that of their kings:
We could not turn our eyes to the two shores, without perceiving rich
towns and country seats, agreeably situated; fields that were covered
every year, without intermission, with golden crops; meadows full of
flocks; laborers bending under the weight of fruits that the earth
lavished on its cultivators; and shepherds who made the echoes around
repeat the soft sounds of their pipes and flutes. "Happy," said Mentor,
"is that people who is governed by a wise king." … Mentor afterwards
desired me to remark the happiness and abundance that was spread over
all the country of Egypt, where twenty-two thousand cities might be
counted. He admired the excellent police regulations of the cities; the
justice administered in favor of the poor against the rich; the good
education of the children, who were accustomed to obedience, labor, and
the love of arts and letters; the exactness with which all the
ceremonies of religion were performed; the disinterestedness, the desire
of honor, the fidelity to men, and the fear of the gods, with which
every father inspired his children. He could not sufficiently admire the
prosperous state of the country. "Happy" said he, "is the people whom a
wise king rules in such a manner."
Fénelon's idyll on Crete is still more fascinating. Mentor is made to say:
All that you will see in this wonderful island is the result of the
laws of Minos. The education that the children receive renders the body
healthy and robust. They are accustomed, from the first, to a frugal and
laborious life; it is supposed that all the pleasures of sense enervate
the body and the mind; no other pleasure is presented to them but that
of being invincible by virtue, that of acquiring much glory … there they
punish three vices that go unpunished amongst other people —
ingratitude, dissimulation, and avarice. As to pomp and dissipation,
there is no need to punish these, for they are unknown in Crete. … No
costly furniture, no magnificent clothing, no delicious feasts, no
gilded palaces are allowed.
It is thus that Mentor prepares his scholar to mould and manipulate,
doubtless with the most philanthropic intentions, the people of Ithaca,
and, to confirm him in these ideas, he gives him the example of
Salentum.
So we receive our first political notions. We are taught to treat men
very much as Oliver de Serres teaches farmers to manage and to mix the
soil.
Montesquieu
To sustain the spirit of commerce, it is necessary that all the laws
should favor it; that these same laws, by their regulations in dividing
the fortunes in proportion as commerce enlarges them, should place every
poor citizen in sufficiently easy circumstances to enable him to work
like the others, and every rich citizen in such mediocrity that he must
work, in order to retain or to acquire.
Thus the laws are to dispose of all fortunes.
Although in a democracy, real equality be the soul of the state, yet
it is so difficult to establish that an extreme exactness in this matter
would not always be desirable. It is sufficient that a census be
established to reduce or fix the differences to a certain point, after
which, it is for particular laws to equalize, as it were, the inequality
by burdens imposed upon the rich and reliefs granted to the poor.
Here, again, we see the equalization of fortunes by law, that is, by force.
There were, in Greece, two kinds of republics. One was military, as
Sparta; the other commercial, as Athens. In the one it was wished (by
whom?) that the citizens should be idle: in the other, the love of labor
was encouraged.
It is worth our while to pay a little attention to the
extent of genius required by these legislators, that we may see how, by
confounding all the virtues, they showed their wisdom to the world.
Lycurgus, blending theft with the spirit of justice, the hardest slavery
with extreme liberty, the most atrocious sentiments with the greatest
moderation, gave stability to his city. He seemed to deprive it of all
its resources, arts, commerce, money, and walls; there was ambition
without the hope of rising; there were natural sentiments where the
individual was neither child, nor husband, nor father. Chastity even was
deprived of modesty. By this road Sparta was led on to grandeur and to
glory.
The phenomenon that we observe in the institutions of Greece has been
seen in the midst of the degeneracy and corruption of our modern times.
An honest legislator has formed a people where probity has appeared as
natural as bravery among the Spartans. Mr. Penn is a true Lycurgus, and
although the former had peace for his object, and the latter war, they
resemble each other in the singular path along which they have led their
people, in their influence over free men, in the prejudices which they
have overcome, the passions they have subdued.
Paraguay furnishes us with another example. Society has been accused
of the crime of regarding the pleasure of commanding as the only good of
life; but it will always be a noble thing to govern men by making them
happy.
Those who desire to form similar institutions will establish
community of property, as in the republic of Plato, the same reverence
as he enjoined for the gods, separation from strangers for the
preservation of morality, and make the city and not the citizens create
commerce: they should give our arts without our luxury, our wants
without our desires.
Vulgar infatuation may exclaim, if it likes, "It is Montesquieu!
magnificent! sublime!" I am not afraid to express my opinion, and to
say, "What! You have the gall to call that fine? It is frightful! It is
abominable! And these extracts, which I might multiply, show that
according to Montesquieu, the persons, the liberties, the property,
mankind itself, are nothing but grist for the mill of the sagacity of
lawgivers."
Rousseau
Although this politician, the paramount authority of the Democrats,
makes the social edifice rest upon the general will, no one has so
completely admitted the hypothesis of the entire passiveness of human
nature in the presence of the lawgiver:
If it is true that a great prince is a rare thing, how much more so
must a great lawgiver be? The former has only to follow the pattern
proposed to him by the latter. This latter is the engineer who invents
the machine; the former is merely the workman who sets it in motion.
And what part have men to act in all this? That of the machine, which
is set in motion; or rather, are they not the brute matter of which the
machine is made? Thus, between the legislator and the prince, between
the prince and his subjects, there are the same relations as those that
exist between the agricultural writer and the agriculturist, the
agriculturist and the clod. At what a vast height, then, is the
politician placed, who rules over legislators themselves and teaches
them their trade in such imperative terms as the following:
Would you give consistency to the state? Bring the extremes together
as much as possible. Suffer neither wealthy persons nor beggars.
If the soil is poor and barren, or the country too much confined for
the inhabitants, turn to industry and the arts, whose productions you
will exchange for the provisions which you require. … On a good soil, if
you are short of inhabitants, give all your attention to agriculture,
which multiplies men, and banish the arts, which only serve to
depopulate the country. … Pay attention to extensive and convenient
coasts. Cover the sea with vessels, and you will have a brilliant and
short existence. If your seas wash only inaccessible rocks, let the
people be barbarous, and eat fish; they will live more quietly, perhaps
better, and most certainly more happily. In short, besides those maxims
which are common to all, every people has its own particular
circumstances, which demand a legislation peculiar to itself.
It was thus that the Hebrews formerly, and the Arabs more recently,
had religion for their principal object; that of the Athenians was
literature; that of Carthage and Tyre, commerce; of Rhodes, naval
affairs; of Sparta, war; and of Rome, virtue. The author of the "Spirit
of Laws" has shown the art by which the legislator should frame his
institutions toward each of these objects. … But if the legislator,
mistaking his object, should take up a principle different from that
which arises from the nature of things; if one should tend to slavery,
and the other to liberty; if one to wealth, and the other to population;
one to peace, and the other to conquests; the laws will insensibly
become enfeebled, the Constitution will be impaired, and the state will
be subject to incessant agitations until it is destroyed, or becomes
changed, and invincible Nature regains her empire.
But if Nature is sufficiently invincible to regain its empire, why
does not Rousseau admit that it had no need of the legislator to gain
its empire from the beginning? Why does he not allow that by obeying
their own impulse, men would of themselves apply agriculture to a
fertile district, and commerce to extensive and commodious coasts
without the interference of a Lycurgus, a Solon, or a Rousseau, who
would undertake it at the risk of deceiving themselves?
Be that as it may, we see with what a terrible responsibility
Rousseau invests inventors, institutors, conductors, and manipulators of
societies. He is, therefore, very exacting with regard to them.
He who dares to undertake the institutions of a people, ought to feel
that he can, as it were, transform every individual, who is by himself a
perfect and solitary whole, receiving his life and being from a larger
whole of which he forms a part; he must feel that he can change the
constitution of man, to fortify it, and substitute a social and moral
existence for the physical and independent one that we have all received
from nature. In a word, he must deprive man of his own powers, to give
him others that are foreign to him.
Poor human nature! What would become of its dignity if it were entrusted to the disciples of Rousseau?
Raynal
The climate, that is, the air and the soil, is the first element for
the legislator. His resources prescribe to him his duties. First, he
must consult his local position. A population dwelling upon maritime
shores must have laws fitted for navigation. … If the colony is located
in an inland region, a legislator must provide for the nature of the
soil, and for its degree of fertility. …
It is more especially in the distribution of property that the wisdom
of legislation will appear. As a general rule, and in every country,
when a new colony is founded, land should be given to each man,
sufficient for the support of his family. …
In an uncultivated island, which you are colonizing with children, it
will only be needful to let the germs of truth expand in the
developments of reason! … But when you establish old people in a new
country, the skill consists in only allowing it those injurious opinions
and customs which it is impossible to cure and correct. If you wish to
prevent them from being perpetuated, you will act upon the rising
generation by a general and public education of the children. A prince
or legislator ought never to found a colony without previously sending
wise men there to instruct the youth. … In a new colony, every facility
is open to the precautions of the legislator who desires to purify the
tone and the manners of the people. If he has genius and virtue, the
lands and the men that are at his disposal will inspire his soul with a
plan of society that a writer can only vaguely trace, and in a way that
would be subject to the instability of all hypotheses, which are varied
and complicated by an infinity of circumstances too difficult to foresee
and to combine.
One would think it was a professor of agriculture who saying to his pupils,
The climate is the only rule for the agriculturist. His
resources dictate to him his duties. The first thing he has to consider
is his local position. If he is on a clayey soil, he must do so and so.
If he has to contend with sand, this is the way in which he must set
about it. Every facility is open to the agriculturist who wishes to
clear and improve his soil. If he only has the skill, the manure which
he has at his disposal will suggest to him a plan of operation, which a
professor can only vaguely trace, and in a way that would be subject to
the uncertainty of all hypotheses, which vary and are complicated by an
infinity of circumstances too difficult to foresee and to combine.
But, oh! sublime writers, deign to remember sometimes that this clay,
this sand, this manure, of which you are disposing in so arbitrary a
manner, are men, your equals, intelligent and free beings like
yourselves, who have received from God, as you have, the faculty of
seeing, of foreseeing, of thinking, and of judging for themselves!
Mably
He is supposing the laws to be worn out by time and by the neglect of security, and continues thus:
Under these circumstances, we must be convinced that the bonds of
government are slack. Give them a new tension (it is the reader who is
addressed), and the evil will be remedied. … Think less of punishing the
faults than of encouraging the virtues that you want. By this method
you will bestow upon your republic the vigor of youth. Through ignorance
of this, a free people has lost its liberty! But if the evil has made
so much way that the ordinary magistrates are unable to remedy it
effectually, have recourse to an extraordinary magistracy, whose time
should be short, and its power considerable. The imagination of the
citizens requires to be impressed.
In this style he goes on through 20 volumes.
There was a time when, under the influence of teaching like this,
which is the foundation of classical education, everyone was for placing
himself beyond and above mankind, for the sake of arranging,
organizing, and instituting it in his own way.
Condillac
Take upon yourself, my lord, the character of Lycurgus or of Solon.
Before you finish reading this essay, amuse yourself with giving laws to
some wild people in America or in Africa. Establish these roving men in
fixed dwellings; teach them to keep flocks. … Endeavor to develop the
social qualities that nature has implanted in them. … Make them begin to
practice the duties of humanity. … Cause the pleasures of the passions
to become distasteful to them by punishments, and you will see these
barbarians, with every plan of your legislation, lose a vice and gain a
virtue.
All these people have had laws. But few among them have
been happy. Why is this? Because legislators have almost always been
ignorant of the object of society, which is to unite families by a
common interest.
Impartiality in law consists in two things, in establishing equality
in the fortunes and in the dignity of the citizens. … In proportion to
the degree of equality established by the laws, the dearer will they
become to every citizen. How can avarice, ambition, dissipation,
idleness, sloth, envy, hatred, or jealousy agitate men who are equal in
fortune and dignity, and to whom the laws leave no hope of disturbing
their equality?
What has been told you of the republic of Sparta ought to enlighten
you on this question. No other state has had laws more in accordance
with the order of nature or of equality.
It is not to be wondered at that the 17th and 18th centuries should
have looked upon the human race as inert matter, ready to receive
everything — form, figure, impulse, movement, and life, from a great
prince, or a great legislator, or a great genius. These ages were reared
in the study of antiquity; and antiquity presents everywhere — in
Egypt, Persia, Greece, and Rome, the spectacle of a few men molding
mankind according to their fancy, and mankind to this end enslaved by
force or by imposture. And what does this prove? That because men and
society are improvable, error, ignorance, despotism, slavery, and
superstition must be more prevalent in early times. The mistake of the
writers quoted above is not that they have asserted this fact, but that
they have proposed it as a rule for the admiration and imitation of
future generations. Their mistake has been, with an inconceivable
absence of discernment, and upon the faith of a puerile conventionalism,
that they have admitted what is inadmissible, viz., the grandeur,
dignity, morality, and well-being of the artificial societies of the
ancient world; they have not understood that time produces and spreads
enlightenment; and that in proportion to the increase of enlightenment,
right ceases to be upheld by force, and society regains possession of
herself.
And, in fact, what is the political work that we are endeavoring to
promote? It is no other than the instinctive effort of every people
toward liberty. And what is liberty, whose name can make every heart
beat, and which can agitate the world, but the union of all liberties,
the liberty of conscience, of education, of association, of the press,
of movement, of labor, and of exchange; in other words, the free
exercise, for all, of all the inoffensive faculties; and again, in other
words, the destruction of all despotisms, even of legal despotism, and
the reduction of law to its only rational sphere, which is to regulate
the individual right of legitimate defense, or to repress injustice?
This tendency of the human race, it must be admitted, is greatly
thwarted, particularly in our country, by the fatal disposition,
resulting from classical teaching and common to all politicians, of
placing themselves beyond mankind, to arrange, organize, and regulate
it, according to their fancy.
For whilst society is struggling to realize
liberty, the great men who place themselves at its head, imbued with the
principles of the 17th and 18th centuries, think only of subjecting it
to the philanthropic despotism of their social inventions, and making it
bear with docility, according to the expression of Rousseau, the yoke
of public felicity as pictured in their own imaginations.
This was particularly the case in 1789. No sooner was the old system
destroyed than society was to be submitted to other artificial
arrangements, always with the same starting point — the omnipotence of
the law.
Saint-Just
The legislator commands the future. It is for him to will for the
good of mankind. It is for him to make men what he wishes them to be.
Robespierre
The function of government is to direct the physical and moral powers of the nation toward the object of its institution.
Billaud Varennes
A people who are to be restored to liberty must be formed anew.
Ancient prejudices must be destroyed, antiquated customs changed,
depraved affections corrected, inveterate vices eradicated. For this, a
strong force and a vehement impulse will be necessary. … Citizens, the
inflexible austerity of Lycurgus created the firm basis of the Spartan
republic. The feeble and trusting disposition of Solon plunged Athens
into slavery. This parallel contains the whole science of government.
LePelletier
Considering the extent of human degradation, I am convinced — of the
necessity of effecting an entire regeneration of the race, and, if I may
so express myself, of creating a new people.
Men, therefore, are nothing but raw material. It is not for them to
will their own improvement. They are not capable of it; according to
Saint-Just, it is only the legislator who is. Men are merely to be what
he wills that they should be. According to Robespierre, who copies
Rousseau literally, the legislator is to begin by assigning the aim of
the institutions of the nation. After this, the government has only to
direct all its physical and moral forces toward this end. All this time
the nation itself is to remain perfectly passive; and Billaud Varennes
would teach us that it ought to have no prejudices, affections, nor
wants, but such as are authorized by the legislator. He even goes so far
as to say that the inflexible austerity of a man is the basis of a
republic.
We have seen that, in cases where the evil is so great that the
ordinary magistrates are unable to remedy it, Mably recommends a
dictatorship, to promote virtue. "Have recourse," says he, "to an
extraordinary magistracy, whose time shall be short, and his power
considerable. The imagination of the people requires to be impressed."
This doctrine has not been neglected. Listen to Robespierre:
The principle of the republican government is virtue, and the means
to be adopted, during its establishment, is terror. We want to
substitute, in our country, morality for self-indulgence, probity for
honor, principles for customs, duties for decorum, the empire of reason
for the tyranny of fashion, contempt of vice for contempt of misfortune,
pride for insolence, greatness of soul for vanity, love of glory for
love of money, good people for good company, merit for intrigue, genius
for wit, truth for glitter, the charm of happiness for the weariness of
pleasure, the greatness of man for the littleness of the great, a
magnanimous, powerful, happy people, for one that is easy, frivolous,
degraded; that is to say, we would substitute all the virtues and
miracles of a republic for all the vices and absurdities of monarchy.
At what a vast height above the rest of mankind does Robespierre
place himself here! And observe the arrogance with which he speaks. He
is not content with expressing a desire for a great renovation of the
human heart; he does not even expect such a result from a regular
government. No; he intends to effect it himself, and by means of terror.
The object of the discourse from which this puerile and laborious mass
of antithesis is extracted was to exhibit the principles of morality
that ought to direct a revolutionary government.
Moreover, when Robespierre asks for a dictatorship, it is not merely
for the purpose of repelling a foreign enemy, or of putting down
factions; it is that he may establish, by means of terror and as a
preliminary to the operation of the Constitution, his own principles of
morality. He pretends to nothing short of extirpating from the country
by means of terror, self-interest, honor, customs, decorum, fashion,
vanity, the love of money, good company, intrigue, wit, luxury, and
misery. It is not until after he, Robespierre, shall have accomplished
these miracles, as he rightly calls them, that he will allow the law to
regain her empire. Truly it would be well if these visionaries, who
think so much of themselves and so little of mankind, who want to renew
everything, would only be content with trying to reform themselves; the
task would be arduous enough for them. In general, however, these
gentlemen, the reformers, legislators, and politicians, do not desire to
exercise an immediate despotism over mankind. No, they are too moderate
and too philanthropic for that. They only contend for the despotism,
the absolutism, the omnipotence of the law. They aspire only to make the
law.
Frédéric Bastiat was the great French proto-Austrolibertarian whose
polemics and analytics run circles around every statist cliché. His
primary desire as a writer was to reach people in the most practical way
with the message of the moral and material urgency of freedom. See
Frederic Bastiat's
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This article is excerpted from Bastiat's
The Law (Originally published in 1850; republished by the Mises Institute in 2007). An audiobook version of
The Law, narrated by Floy Lilley,
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Yglesias thus conflates Austrian economic theory with libertarian political theory. In fairness, he is not alone in committing this error. Many libertarians do the same, which is unfortunate. Austrian economic theory describes how purposive action by fallible human beings unintentionally generates a grand, complex, and orderly market process. An additional ethical step is required to pronounce the market process good. Economic theory per se cannot recommend but only explain markets. This is what Ludwig von Mises meant when he insisted that Austrian economics is value-free. Anyone of any persuasion ought to be able to acknowledge that economic logic indicates that imposing a price ceiling on milk will, other things equal, create a shortage of milk. But that in itself is not an argument against the policy. Mises assumed the policymaker would have thought that result bad, but the economist qua economist cannot declare it such. As Israel Kirzner likes to say, the economist’s job in the policy realm is merely to point out that you cannot catch a northbound train from the southbound platform.
