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Frederic Bastiat (1801-1850)
Bastiat was born in Bayonne in 1801. He lost his parents when he was nine years old. He grew up with his cousins in Murgon. He worked at his uncle’s accounting company, and when he inherited the farm, he became involved in agriculture. After the revolution in 1830, he became politically active. The first paper that he wrote that caught people’s attention was published in 1844 and was entitled ‘The Influence of Custom Tariffs on England and France and the Future of Two Nations’. A year later he moved to Paris. He published ‘Cobden and League’ and started to write a series of texts for the Journal des Economistes. In 1846 he founded the Association of Free Traders and became its secretary. Together with Victor Igo, he founded an International Peace Organization. In 1848 he was elected as a member of the parliament. He published his first book, ‘Sophisms and Protection’ in 1845. In addition to many newspaper articles, he wrote a series of essays, amongst which the most famous are: ‘What is seen and what is not seen’, ‘Law, State Justice and Brotherhood’, and ‘Peace and Freedom...’ His work ‘Economic Harmonies’ was published in 1850, the same year that he died.
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Economic Freedom
Anniversary celebrating 210 year since the birth of Mr. Frederic Bastiat
Prepared by: Prof. dr Petar Ivanović, University of Donja Gorica (UDG)
Today, I meet more and more people who
know a great deal about complex things, but at the same time they know very little, or nothing at all, about the simple, essential matters that are responsible for setting more complex things into motion. It is much easier to function on a complex plane than it is to examine the simple sources of economic trends. Nowadays, there are many economists who understand the consequences of events, while very few indeed understand the causes that result in certain consequences. More and more, we have a tendency to think in a compartmentalized way, rather than to see the picture as a structured whole. Frederic Bastiat wrote about the problems in such way that he presented the problem in a very simple way, from its cause to its consequence. He was a lucid and excellent writer and an impregnable advocate of the existence of an unrestrained, free market. He believed in the destruction of protectionism and all forms of state control, and used plain and easy words that made a deep impression on his readers. His example of the broken window disproved the theory of the Keynesian economy almost a century before it was written. His brilliant and humorous essays are still popular, even today. It is as though he walked one step ahead of his time, fighting for the good of the ordinary, busy person, who, due to increased time constraints, is less and less able to dedicate time to his education. He was gifted with a clean mind, clear thought, the ability to express himself in simple language, and had an excellent sense of humor. All of these traits helped him to be accepted by his widest audience – ordinary people! Some of the best illustrations of Bastiat’s writing are his work, ‘Petition about the manufacturers of candles, wax candles, lamps, street lamps, wick scissors and the manufacturers of fats and oils, resins, alcohol, and everything that is generally relevant to lighting’, in which he discusses the absurdity of protectionism, and his essay, ‘What is seen and what is not seen’, in which he examines economic failures and the mistakes of economic analysts who avoid the invisible and only consider anything which has direct or obvious consequences. Nobel Prize Winner, Frederich Hayek, saw in Bastiat a great supporter of economic freedom. Josef Schumpeter called him “the most brilliant economic journalist that ever lived.” For Murray N. Rothbard, Bastiat’s
strong focus on money taken away by the state and the privileged interests of the state, made “his political economy his weapon in the fight for freedom along with his important viewpoint in the analysis of welfare”. Henry Hazlit described Bastiat as an economic promoter, who to a large extent exposed economic myths and became the most powerful champion of free trade in the continent of Europe. “Anyone who has ever read and understood Bastiat, has become immune to the disease of the illusion of protectionism and of the welfare state. We could use more Bastiat’s today. In fact, we desperately need them.” It is not too much to say that the “social rationalism” of Ludwig von Mises, resulted as a consequence of Bastiat’s discussions about the nature of society and of economic life. Naturally, it would not be logical if everyone had thought well of Bastiat. Karl Marx called him “the shallowest and therefore the best and most successful representative of apologists deriving from a vulgar economy.” Was this opinion the result of Bastiat being such a strong opponent and severe critic of socialism? Or did it occur due to Marx’s resentment towards a writer whose writing was clear and plain and who gained a large audience during his life? The fact is that, during the last two centuries, no one has asked what Bastiat really thought. In the case of Marx, a whole industry developed to express what Marx thought and wanted to say. But he didn’t do what he said, nor did he mean what he said… Bastiat was one of the first, and one of the few, who could arguably explain the basic principles of economy. Bastiat considered that property is an essential consequence of human nature, that a human is born with a desire to be an owner, with wishes, and with a desire for satisfaction on which his life depends. He successfully exposed the pessimism of the English classical economists, Rikardo and Maltus. He advocated free trade by saying, “The general nature of exchange is to reduce the quantity of effort in relation to the level of satisfaction achieved.” He stated that thus, life becomes richer and easier. “Free trade was never a matter of custom rates, but a matter of rights, justice, public order and property.” He fought against protectionism, saying, “Protectionism is the forerunner of communism.” Read Bastiat.