A 155 year old book that everyone should read today

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	• The Law Frederic Bastiat www.bnpublishing.com, 2007 - 112 pages average customer review:based on 90 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Ethics and moral principles in regards to the law

An erudite and well versed essay on the proper use and form of The Law. A classic study and should be read by anyone studying law or criminal science.

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The mantra put forth by Bastiat is the foundation for what conservatives allegedly base their political philosophies upon. The only difference is that Bastiat is serious, and when he says speaks against governmental taxation, he's not mincing words...he doesn't mean I don't like taxation when it funds your programs but I like it when it funds my special interests...and for that powerful & ethical stance (which modern day politicians are unable to take), he should receive great credit.

Excellent essay, very quick read, and inspiring to all that dream of small, efficient, and equitable government.

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A 155 year old book that everyone should read today

I think this book is responsible for converting more left-leaning big-government types to clear-thinking libertarians than anything ever written.

Interesting how there is only one low ranking review here on Amazon, and the person who wrote it either did not read or did not comprehend the book. The anonymous critic on Amazon claims that Bastiat is guilty of the same greed as the socialists/communists. He falsely claims:

"Ironically, Bastiat himself advocates legal plunder; just instead of the government taking it, Bastiat and those who think like him will take it. All of it if given a chance. Communism arose because of the legal plunder and abuse of the wealthy elite. Yet because of the greed of the leaders of the communist revolution, it became the very thing it fought. Bastiat is no different."

Bastiat never advocated legal plunder of any sort. Nothing could be further from the truth. I will let Bastiat speak from the grave and refute this lie since he predicated critics would make similar claims.

Here is what Bastiat said in "The Law"

"The Desire to Rule Over Others
This must be said: There are too many "great" men in the world - legislators, organizers, do-gooders, leaders of the people, fathers of nations, and so on, and so on. Too many persons place themselves above mankind; they make a career of organizing it, patronizing it, and ruling it.

Now someone will say: "You yourself are doing this very thing." True. But it must be admitted that I act in an entirely different sense; if I have joined the ranks of the reformers, it is solely for the purpose of persuading them to leave people alone. I do not look upon people as Vancauson looked upon his automaton. Rather, just as the physiologist accepts the human body as it is, so do I accept people as they are. I desire only to study and admire.

My attitude toward all other persons is well illustrated by this story from a celebrated traveler: He arrived one day in the midst of a tribe of savages, where a child had just been born. A crowd of soothsayers, magicians, and quacks - armed with rings, hooks, and cords - surrounded it. One said: "This child will never smell the perfume of a peace-pipe unless I stretch his nostrils." Another said: "He will never be able to hear unless I draw his ear-lobes down to his shoulders." A third said: "He will never see the sunshine unless I slant his eyes." Another said: "He will never stand upright unless I bend his legs." A fifth said: "He will never learn to think unless I flatten his skull."

"Stop," cried the traveler. "What God does is well done. Do not claim to know more than He. God has given organs to this frail creature; let them develop and grow strong by exercise, use, experience, and liberty."
-Frederic Bastiat "The Law"

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Libertarian Sensibility

Bastiat wrote this book as a warning to his fellow countrymen about the dangers of government coercion and force. During the time that Bastiat wrote this book, France was quickly sliding backward into a socialistic economy. He was currently serving as the Deputy to the French Legislative Assembly, and he spent much of his time refuting each fallacy presented by individuals who advocated conversion of the economy to full- fledged socialism.

This book is not divided into chapters. Instead, Bastiat devotes a paragraph or two to the discussion of a specific topic of government intervention in the economy and/or personal decision making. The way the book is written (my copy was translated by Dean Russell, a member of the Foundation for Economic Education), it is broken into small parts consisting of a title (similar to a chapter title), written in boldface, with an explanation by Bastiat on that particular topic. Some of the titles include things like "Enforced Fraternity Destroys Liberty", "Socialism is Legal Plunder", "The Proper Function of the Law", "The Vicious Circle of Socialism", etc.

With each short topic, Bastiat explains exactly why these government interventionist policies are wrong, coercive, and anti- liberty. Bastiat was a strong supporter of property rights and the right of an individual to express himself/herself freely and openly, without threat of punishment by government. With property rights, Bastiat dedicates several pages to the evils of legal plunder- that is, the practice by which government steals the property of one person, by force, and then gives it to another. This act can take on many forms, including taxation, protective tariffs, etc. Bastiat felt that plunder was the greatest of all government crimes against the people and it should be wiped out as quickly and swiftly as possible.

When it comes to the law, Bastiat agrees that it's very important that a country has laws and that its citizens obey these laws. However, in order for these laws to be effective, the laws must be respectable. If law and morality contradict each other (like they do with legalized plunder), then the citizens will look for ways to break the law. Or, even worse, the people will begin to look for ways to take advantage of these immoral laws to gain things for themselves. In other words, legal plunder causes individuals to disrespect the law either through avoidance or through extortion. If others are using the law to obtain the property of others, then it's only a matter of time before everyone looks for ways to get something for nothing; subverting the law into an endless cycle of immorality, selfishness, and chaos.

Bastiat sharply condemns government's exploitation and control of the people. He abhors the idea that government legislators somehow have the moral guidance and superior wisdom to think that they can mold the people into a homogeneous society where there is little individualism, freedom of thought, and almost no liberty. Who are these arrogant people to think that they have the moral authority to play the role of God by forcing the citizens to conform to their wishes?

Bastiat rails against the authority of the state, all the way to the end of his writing. He wraps things up with a two- paragraph summary that's short and sweet. "Let us now try liberty", Bastiat says, "Away with quack and organizers! Away with the whims of governmental administrators, their socialized projects, their centralization, their tariffs....etc.".

The Law is a short book- only 76 pages in length- but its words are elegant, persuasive, and profound. Bastiat knows the evils of a government out of control, and he doesn't hesitate one second to express his strong views on this subject.

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The Law and the Subversion of the Law

~The Law: A Classic Blueprint for a Just Society~ is a masterful treatise first published in 1850, which surmises the legitimate ends of the instrumentality of the law, and the subversion of the law. Bastiat is best remembered for his tongue-in-cheek cliché, "The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else." Frédéric Bastiat opens his landmark treatise on the law with natural law premises acknowledging that life, liberty and property are the gift of God. At the onset, Bastiat rhetorically asks, "What, then, is law? It is the collective organization of the individual right to lawful defense." He further notes, "Each of us has a natural right - from God - to defend his person, his liberty, and his property." The instrumentality of the law carries force he admits. "Such a perversion of force would be, in both cases, contrary to our premise. Force has been given to us to defend our own individual rights." He summarily encapsulates the purpose and nature of the law: "The law is the organization of the natural right of lawful defense. It is the substitution of a common force for individual forces. And this common force is to do only what the individual forces have a natural and lawful right to do: to protect persons, liberties, and properties; to maintain the right of each, and to cause justice to reign over us all."

Echoing Adam Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments, he postulates basic a priori presuppositions about human nature, labor and property. First, man has a rational self-interest. Likewise, human beings are fragile, imperfect and inherently sinful. "The annals of history bear witness to the truth of it: the incessant wars, mass migrations, religious persecutions, universal slavery, dishonesty in commerce, and monopolies," opines Bastiat. He surmises the origins of property and plunder. "Man can live and satisfy his wants only by ceaseless labor; by the ceaseless application of his faculties to natural resources. This process is the origin of property." Secondly he notes, "But it is also true that a man may live and satisfy his wants by seizing and consuming the products of the labor of others. This process is the origin of plunder." Plunder often proves more advantageous to men than labor, particularly those without moral scruples. Likewise, Bastiat observes that even the law itself - and its agent of force, the state - may be subverted into an instrument of plunder. He astutely enunciates upon the "legal plunder" phenomenon: "Under the pretense of organization, regulation, protection, or encouragement, the law takes property from one person and gives it to another; the law takes the wealth of all and gives it to a few..." The spoliation of taxpayers for illegitimate ends, such as subsidies, wealth redistribution, government largesse for unneeded bureaucrats, and other socialistic schemes act to subvert the law. How does the law quell injustice, when it simultaneously aids Peter in his efforts to plunder Paul?

Bastiat identifies two forms of legal plunder: "They are slavery and tariffs. These are the only two issues where, contrary to the general spirit of the republic of the United States, law has assumed the character of a plunderer. ¶Slavery is a violation, by law, of liberty. The protective tariff is a violation, by law, of property." Slavery represents the coercive spoliation of labor, by confinement and coercive labor. Protective tariffs represent the spoliation of various sectors of economy to the betterment of a politically-connected constituency. The outrageously exorbitant confiscatory protective tariffs of the nineteenth-century in the United States had an effect of diminishing revenues because of the law of diminishing returns. Protective tariffs depressed agricultural prices and facilitated a massive redistribution of wealth from south to north as most revenues were collected in southern ports and most expenditures were made in the north and the beneficiaries of protection were mostly northerners. Ultimately, the resistance to the legal plunder led to disunion, as onerous taxation at rates in excess of fifty and sixty percent proved detrimental to southern interests. The south shouldered over eighty-percent of the tax burden in the mid-nineteenth century. Not surprisingly, the break away Confederacy formed in 1861. The politics of plunder are conducive to war, as plundering parties may wage war to protect their spoliation. Bastiat once remarked, "When goods don't cross borders, soldiers will."

Bastiat elaborates movingly upon the proper function of the law in remarkable detail. "When justice is organized by law - that is, by force - this excludes the idea of using law (force) to organize any human activity whatever, whether it be labor, charity, agriculture, commerce, industry, education, art, or religion. The organizing by law of any one of these would inevitably destroy the essential organization - justice." He critiques the ideas and premises of socialist ideologues who seek to subvert the law for their utopian schemes of transforming humanity or effectuating legal plunder schemes in the name of equality and social justice. He incisively analyzes the desire of socialist lawmakers to manage mankind, pursue redistribution schemes, and play God. He recognizes that socialists fear all liberties. Under socialist logic, voluntary freedom of association (and its attendant freedom to disassociate) is replaced by forced fraternity and corporatist schemes to form cohesive bonds among desperate elements of society with or without their consent. Likewise, the liberty of trade and of labor maybe restrained as well.

Bastiat further criticizes the French Revolution, Napoleon, and various demagogues. In Bastiat's time following the Revolutions of 1848, France was precariously staged to embrace a level of socialism unprecedented of in history. Bastiat saw it as a duty to rise to the occasion as a statesmen and economist, and he sought to diagnose and analyze the socialist fallacies and the logic of legal plunder in his various writings. Likewise, he offered this cogent legal treatise to manifest the true and just purpose of the law. Bastiat has disdain for all artificial systems that seek to subvert the law whether protectionism, mercantilism, socialism or the peculiar French brand of etatism that blended all of these elements.

Today, sadly in the United States of America the law has egregiously been subverted into an instrument of legal plunder. I recommend reading a Cato Institute research paper entitled The Transfer Society by David N. Laband and George C. McClintock which documents the costs of legal plunder in America today. Bastiat remains a staunch defender of the true principles of the law, and his work gives our generation a means of diagnosing the problems of contemporary civil society and effectuating a meaningful restoration of the law to its proper function.

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