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Give the Gift of Liberty by Rick Gee The Friday following Thanksgiving kicks off the holiday shopping season and is, in fact, the busiest shopping day of the year. Except for police, fire, rescue and retail workers, most people have the day off, or they call in sick (next year, try the tryptophan-hangover excuse). It is a day for all the products created by the wondrous free market to be consumed by consumers as they begin the arduous process of playing Santa for yet another year. While you may have the Xbox, Harry Potter paraphernalia, DVD box sets, and that popcorn triumvirate in a tin on the wish lists of your loved ones, in these uncertain times it may behoove you to look for gifts with a high value per dollar spent. I can’t think of a product that has a higher value than Frederick Bastiat’s The Law. Bastiat (1801-1850) was a French economist and fierce defender of individual rights and free markets. The Law, written within a year of his death, is Bastiat’s best known work and was published as his countrymen were being tempted by socialism through the works of Bossuet, Fenelon, Montesquieu, Rousseau and others. Bastiat argues that life, faculties and production comprise man; that individuality, liberty and property predate legislation and are perforce superior to it. The law, therefore, can only be just when it protects persons, liberties and properties. Perversion of the law exists when it converts plunder to a right. Bastiat makes a distinction between “illegal plunder” – theft and swindling – and “legal plunder.” Discerning the difference is simple: See if the law takes from some persons what belongs to them, and gives it to other persons to whom it does not belong. See if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime. … If such a law—which may be an isolated case—is not abolished immediately, it will spread, multiply, and develop into a system. Is it not clear that the American democracy has spread, multiplied and developed into a system of legal plunder? The programs that have become ingrained in American life – “free” public education, Social Security, minimum wage, subsidies, unemployment insurance, affirmative action, etc. – are undeniably legal plunder of the productive classes and as a group constitute socialism. How did this sorry state of affairs come about? Bastiat points out two main causes: human greed and false philanthropy. When men find it easier to plunder than to work, they will seek positions in government to affect their plunder. The victims of lawful plunder then attain power, but instead of abolishing plunder, they use it to retaliate against others. In other words, more and more people get in on the rip-off until everyone plunders everyone. Secondly, legislators use the law in a futile attempt at philanthropy (welfare and the like), but if philanthropy is not voluntary, does it not instead destroy liberty? As Bastiat says, “A citizen cannot at the same time be free and not free.” According to Bastiat, law is a negative concept, i.e., “the purpose of the law is to prevent injustice from reigning.” Since law is force, “the proper functions of the law cannot extend beyond the proper functions of force,” which are to prevent man from harming the property or liberty of his fellow man. In one of the most powerful passages in The Law, Bastiat declares: Nothing can enter the public treasury for the benefit of one citizen or one class unless other citizens and other classes have been forced to send it in. … The law can be an instrument of equalization only as it takes from some persons and gives to other persons. When the law does this, it is an instrument of plunder. With this in mind, examine the protective tariffs, subsidies, guaranteed profits, guaranteed jobs, relief and welfare schemes, public education, progressive taxation, free credit, and public works. You will find that they are always based on legal plunder, organized injustice. Bastiat goes on to excoriate the socialists: Because we ask so little from the law—only justice—the socialists thereby assume that we reject fraternity, unity, organization, and association. The socialists brand us with the name individualist. But we assure the socialists that we repudiate only forced organization. We repudiate the forms of association that are forced upon us, not free association. He then proves that the battle between the socialists and those who yearn to be free continues some 150 years later. If I were not quoting Bastiat here, one would assume I was quoting an original comment from a 21st century writer: Socialism, like the ancient ideas from which it springs, confuses that distinction between government and society. As a result of this, every time we object to a thing being done by government, the socialists conclude that we object to its being done at all. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? “If you oppose Social Security and Medicare, you must want seniors to wither away and die. If you object to affirmative action, you clearly prefer that only white males go to the best colleges and fill the highest-paying positions. If you contest the government monopoly on “education,” you must be in favor of mass illiteracy. If you speak out against the government’s nebulous war on terrorism, you must want innocent Americans to die at the hands of terrorists.” Bastiat lays bare the idiocy of this argument of the statist: “It is as if the socialists were to accuse us of not wanting persons to eat because we do not want the state to raise grain.” The socialists, according to Bastiat, believe that mankind, left to its own devices, would slip into ignorance, atheism and poverty. Therefore, it is up to the morally and intellectually superior class of legislators to lead the masses to enlightenment. Despite this belief, they trust mankind temporarily –when it comes time to vote. At election time, the people possess the requisite wisdom to place the right people into positions of political power. Then, once elected, the legislators reassert their superiority and substitute their will for that of the people. Bastiat sees a major problem with this: If the natural tendencies of mankind are so bad that it is not safe to permit people to be free, how is it that the tendencies of these organizers are always good? Do not the legislators and their appointed agents belong to the human race? Bastiat concludes that there is nothing inherently objectionable in the socialists inventing, advocating and advertising their programs. His objection lies in the imposition of these schemes via the law, via force, through compulsory taxes. Finally, Bastiat implores us to try liberty: Away, then, with quacks and organizers! Away with their rings, chains, hooks, and pincers! Away with their artificial systems! Away with the whims of governmental administrators, their socialized projects, their centralization, their tariffs, their government schools, their state religions, their free credit, their bank monopolies, their regulations, their restrictions, their equalization by taxation, and their pious moralizations! And now that the legislators and do-gooders have so futilely inflicted so many systems upon society, may they finally end where they should have begun: May they reject all systems, and try liberty. Amen! Alas, Bastiat is rolling over in his grave at what has become of the United States, for which at the time (1850) he had high hopes for a lasting liberty: “There is no country in the world were the law is kept more within its proper domain; the protection of every person’s liberty and property. As a consequence of this, there appears to be not country in the world where the social order rests on a firmer foundation.” He avers that slavery is an exception. And while chattel slavery is now a relic of history, tax slavery is alive and well in America. It is often said that the United States is the “freest country in the world.” Perhaps, but as Bastiat stated so eloquently, “A citizen cannot at the same time be free and not free.” Either a citizen is entitled to the fruits of his labor, or he is not. Either he is free to dispose of his property as he sees fit regardless of the fact that one woodchuck makes his home there, or he is not. Either she is free to associate, or not associate, with whom she chooses, or she is not. The Law is as eloquent and timely now as it was in 1850. The beauty of the work is its accessibility to the layperson. One need not be an economist or lawyer to understand the lessons it contains, which are clear, concise and compelling. So what makes The Law such a value as a Christmas gift? This brilliant essay, all seventy-six pages of it, will set you back three dollars! Perhaps some on your list are libertarians who already own the complete works of Bastiat, Mises, Rothbard and other luminaries, but presumably, many are not. Send one to everyone you know. Perhaps some of those who receive this thoughtful and generous gift from you will experience the epiphany enjoyed by Walter Williams, who states in his introduction: I must have been forty years old before reading Frederic Bastiat’s classic The Law. An anonymous person, to whom I shall be eternally in debt, mailed me an unsolicited copy. After reading the book I was convinced that a liberal-arts education without an encounter with Bastiat is incomplete. Reading Bastiat made me keenly aware of all the time wasted, along with the frustrations of going down one blind alley after another, organizing my philosophy of life. Who on your Christmas list will be eternally in your debt? Normally, Amazon.com would be a great source, but they are indicating shipping time of four to five weeks. Laissez Faire Books is your best bet. Single copies are three bucks. To make this value even better, they will sell you a box of 100 for $150! Don’t have 100 people on your list? Pool your resources with other libertarians. Allow me to suggest that you do one thing differently than Williams’ anonymous friend: don’t mail it. Use UPS Ground. Sure, it will cost a bit more, but it beats giving money to the state. November 27, 2001 Rick
Gee [send him mail] resides in
paradise, also known as Santa Fe, New Mexico. He writes about liberty, sports,
film and other topics for The Valley
News. In addition to being a Root
Striker, he is a columnist at anti-state.com
and a commentator at LewRockwell.com. |