Frederic Bastiat on Government

Ludwig Von Mises Institute ^ | November 22, 2001 | Gary M. Galles

[yatros from flatwater]

Frederic Bastiat on Government

by Gary M. Galles

[Posted November 22, 2001]

This year marks the bicentennial of the birth of one of history's most ardent defenders of liberty: Frederic Bastiat. Writing just before and immediately after the French Revolution of February 1848, as France was rapidly moving toward socialism, he used logic and satire to expose the fallacies of socialist arguments in several works, including The Law, Economic Sophisms, and That Which Is Seen and That Which Is Not Seen.

His reasoning remains as relevant today as it was then. In fact, his 1848 essay, Government, may be the most insightful critique of America's government available today. To honor him, consider an abbreviated version of that essay (ellipses removed):

I should be glad if you had really discovered a beneficent and inexhaustible being, calling itself the Government, which has bread for all mouths, balm for all sufferings, which can provide for all our wants, 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.

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.

Man recoils from trouble, yet he is condemned by nature to the suffering of privation, if he does not take the trouble to work. What means can he adopt to avoid both? Only one way, which is to enjoy the labor of others. But our disposition to defend our property prevents direct and open plunder from being easy. 

The oppressor no longer acts directly and with his own powers upon his victim. The Tyrant is still present, but there is an intermediate person between them, which is the Government. We all therefore, put in our claim, under some pretext or other, and apply to Government. We say to it "I should like to take a part of the possessions of others. But this would be dangerous. Could you not facilitate the thing for me? By this means shall I 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."

We are all making some similar request to the Government; but Government cannot satisfy one party without adding to the labor of the others. Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else. Every one is, more or less, for profiting by the labors of others. No one would dare to express such a sentiment; he even hides it from himself. A medium is thought of; Government is applied to, and every class in its turn comes and says, "You, who can take justifiably and honestly, take from the public, and we will partake." 

Alas, Government is only too much disposed to follow this diabolical advice. 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. But the most remarkable part of it is the astonishing blindness of the public through it all. What are we to think of a people who never seem to suspect that reciprocal plunder is no less plunder because it is reciprocal; that it is no less criminal because it is executed legally and with order? 

But the thing that never will be seen or conceived is that Government can restore more to the public than it has taken from it. It is radically impossible for it to confer a particular benefit upon any one without inflicting a greater injury upon the community as a whole. Our requisitions, therefore, place it in a dilemma. If it refuses to grant the requests made to it, it is accused of weakness, ill-will, and incapacity. If it endeavors to grant them, it is obliged to load the people with fresh taxes-to do more harm than good.

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. The contradiction is forever starting up before it; if it would be philanthropic, it must attend to its exchequer; if it neglects its exchequer, it must abstain from being philanthropic. 

In all times, two political systems have been in existence. According to one of them, Government ought to do much, but then it ought to take much. According to the other, this two-fold activity ought to be little felt. We have to choose between these two systems, but exacting everything from Government, without giving it anything, is chimerical, absurd, childish, contradictory, and dangerous. 

For ourselves, we consider that Government is and ought to be nothing but the united power of the people, organized, not to be an instrument of oppression and mutual plunder among citizens, but, on the contrary, to secure to every one his own, and to cause justice and security to reign. 

Frederic Bastiat even cited an example of a government that accorded well with its legitimate role of protecting its citizen's rights and liberties-the United States. He noted that then, following our Constitution, "there is no chimerical creation, no abstraction, from which the citizens may demand everything. They expect nothing except from themselves and their own energy." 

Unfortunately, however, America's current redistributionist state has in many ways moved far closer to the socialism of mid-19th century France than to our Constitution. But the underlying fallacies reflected in today's policies are still those Bastiat refuted long ago. So his arguments remain some of the most powerful and essential ammunition, if we are to ever move back toward the terms of our founding compact. 

---

Gary M. Galles is professor of economics at Pepperdine University. Send him MAIL

[yatros from flatwater]

A good starting place for students of where we perenially go wrong with government. We have been childish, it's time we grew up.

"In all times, two political systems have been in existence. According to one of them, Government ought to do much, but then it ought to take much. According to the other, this two-fold activity ought to be little felt. We have to choose between these two systems, but exacting everything from Government, without giving it anything, is chimerical, absurd, childish, contradictory, and dangerous. "

[headsonpikes]

Bastiat bump.

[The Real Eddie01]

And for those who might be interested in reading The Law.

http://www.anti-matrix.net/cgi-bin/the_law.htm

eddie01

[Bonaparte]

Encyclopedia entry for Bastiat

The Life and Work of Frederic Bastiat

Frederic Bastiat Ring

Bastiat.org

(For those who'd like to know, Bastiat is pronounced BastYAH.)

[snopercod]

Thanks for posting this. Bastiat's logic destroys the "general welfare" logic used by most legislators on both sides of the isle.

[JMJ333]

Ping!

[edsheppa]

But the thing that never will be seen or conceived is that Government can restore more to the public than it has taken from it.

While I am a great admirer of Bastiat, I think this goes too far. Governments, even many oppressive ones, add social value relative to a state of anarchy. The historical fact of the persistance of government in all cultures is strong evidence of this - we tend to get rid of the things that don't work and keep the ones that do.

Of course, many (probably most) functions that governments have assumed could be more efficiently done by voluntary organizations (or not done at all!), but some are more efficiently done by a government; a result of man's irrationality IMO.

[JMJ333]

Clearly, Bastiat would not have gotten along well with Alexander Hamilton. I am continually amazed by the sheer adoration that Hamilton had for large centralized governments. I came across a speech he made at the constitutional convention where he urged that a president be given life tenure! No other delegate would go that far out of fear.

In Federalist paper 69 he asserts why he thinks those fears are groundless, and he argues in favor of indefinite re-eligibility on the ground that it would assure better performance of duties. For someone who outlines the falliability of human nature so thoroughly he seems to exempt politicians from such behaviors as if they are better people because of the integrity of the office.

[JMJ333]

We are all making some similar request to the Government; but Government cannot satisfy one party without adding to the labor of the others. Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else. Every one is, more or less, for profiting by the labors of others. No one would dare to express such a sentiment; he even hides it from himself. A medium is thought of; Government is applied to, and every class in its turn comes and says, "You, who can take justifiably and honestly, take from the public, and we will partake."

Which is why I think I prefer the Articles of Confederation, and the anti-federalists, as opposed to the consitution pushed for in the Publius letters by Hamilton, Madison and Jay. The anti-federalists weren't so far wrong when they charged the proposed system of having the possibility of becoming nationally consolidated.

Jay's condemnation of the AOC don't do justice to their achievements.

[gcruse]

The trend seems to be always from a union
of sovereign states to a federal superstate.
It may be that this is another facet of democracy's
core weakness; when the citizens realize
they hold the keys to the treasury, they will
empty it.  And when they have emptied it,
they will endeavor to get more from the other
states.

The only way to do this, short of
warfare, is to create an overarching entity
suitable for raiding from the productive
in the name of justice.  That we allow
ourselves to be robbed because it is
the moral thing to do is inefficient.

Wages of the superbureaucracy
we hire to rob ourselves amount
to more than we actually redistribute.