The Law

One of the best essays ever on the proper role of government.

good

Nothing to say, except that these are truths long forgotten.

This tiny book is written with breathless anticipation of knowing one does not have long to live. Bastiat wrote The Law in a concise and compelling in a way so that at times, I could only read a few pages before needing to put it down to think about what he had written. The book makes a case that we own ourselves, our past, present, and future. Loved the book. This book makes a great gift to young thinkers, it is about 1/4 thick and easy to tote around.

The Law is concentrated and opinionated. I throughly enjoyed reading it, even if I disagreed with some of his points (see below). The concepts are simple and elegant, making this an immortal book. However, the values are strongly one-sided, and lacking concrete examples. Read on for my book review. The Law, published in 1850 France, declares the purpose of the law is to protect life, liberty and property. Thus, when the law is used otherwise, it is misused. Frédéric Bastiat calls this “legal plunder.” There are two types of legal plunder. The first type is motivated by “naked greed.” For example, think of lobbying. In theory, lobbying allows direct democratic participation, by you and I. But modern lobbying usually seeks to manipulate the laws to favor selfish economic agendas. Thus, even for-profit businesses are willing to invest in lobbyists. Bastiat says this is an abuse of the law. Modern economists agree, calling this “rent-seeking,” causing “deadweight-losses” and “opportunity-costs.” Indeed, very few support the commodification of politics. However, most support laws that are philanthropic, and for good reason. They believe the government has a duty to provide education, welfare and food stamps. Bastiat disagrees. The second type of legal plunder is motivated by “misconceived philanthropy.” Although pursued with good motives, Bastiat says that philanthropy and justice are mutually exclusive ends of the law. They “contradict each other,” because misplaced philanthropy necessarily infringes on inalienable rights. Bastiat would probably agree that taxation for police and court systems are acceptable, because they exist to protect our rights. Nevertheless, he reaches the extreme conclusion that education should not be provided by the state! Our automatic tendency is to reject him as ridiculous. But ignore that tendency for a moment, and consider Bastiat’s point: if you are against corn subsidies, does that mean you are against affordable food? No. Just because Bastiat is against public education, does not mean he is against education. Bastiat overlooks practical considerations by focusing on theory. If education was not funded by taxpayers, would private education alone be sufficient? I could imagine the free markets organizing more efficient school systems than the government. But I can also imagine illiteracy, crime and child labor rates increasing. It’s not even clear that taxpayers would would save money. That being said, I wonder if Bastiat rewrote the book today, if he would have reached a different conclusion. Today we consider education to be a human right. And remember, when this book was published, education was much less important in society. Although Bastiat is obviously educated, articulate and well-read, the language he chooses is too absolute for compromise. Even though conflicting with modern conceptions of government. Bastiat gives us a simple formula to identify legal plunder. Ask, “if a private citizen did what the government is doing, would it still be legal?” For example, it’s illegal to steal, even to donate the stolen property to the Salvation Army. Therefore, taxation is a type of systematic stealing. Bastiat quotes a few writers at length, including Rousseau. He criticizes them for proposing systems of government that treat humans like manipulable matter. Bastiat decries the superimposition of materialism and political science. He defends human dignity. He says that human rights precede the law, and not vice versa. Finally, Bastiat reminds us, “the safest way to make [the laws] respected is to make them respectable.” We sometimes forget that the laws crumble in revolutions. If people do not respect the laws, they have no power. Even force cannot prop up oppressive laws, as France witnessed in their bloody revolution. Bastiat seems to think the proper role of the law is what the common-law courts do, not the legislature. The courts enforce rights and prevent injustice. The legislature is officious and political. For me, the word “politician” implies flip-flopping and filibusters. Bastiat wrote during a transition. Europe was shedding its monarchies, and replacing them with legislatures. Bastiat realized that dictatorships do not require kings, because the laws can serve the same purpose. The law is always chosen by a few, and those few should not “regulate our consciences, our ideas, our will, our education, our sentiments, our works, our exchanges, our gifts, our enjoyments.” According to him, the happiest, safest societies are the freest ones.

Please Quit Reading Things At Face Value! In the 1830s and 1840s, the trans-Atlantic countries marked a universal resistance to the Imperial British Free Trade System. You had the German Zollverein (meaning toll union) of the minor Germanic states growing and solidifying their unity into a modern nation-state and (non-coincidentally) experiencing a German renaissance, France was pursuing a protectionist policy after a long a ruinous war, as was the USA after the collapse of 1837 and the 1840 election of William Henry Harrison (the Protectionist-leaning war hero candidate), Russia (Britains chief European rival all throughout the 19th century) was also setting strong import tariffs and building its own productive powers. This era had such famous advocates of the American System as Henry C. Carey, Friedrich List (who was a German national and also a key supporter and primary supporters for the Zollverein), Henry Clay (the living legend) was still fighting for the American System, and the administrations of James Monroe and John Quincy Adams were still fresh in the minds of the people, they knew what is crudely defined in modern parlance as protectionism worked, because they had seen the stark contrasts between the those above mentioned presidencies and the Andrew Jackson, Andrew Jackson, Martin Van Buren terms that they just survived. In fact, the Imperial British Free Trade model was so destructive that John Baynard Byles, an Englishman, and later knighted, did his best to dispel the toxic mass of sophistry and dogma that was and is the Free Trade school in 1849. (It seems as if the false - and politically and intentionally concocted to be false, for the achievement of political objectives - doctrines of Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus and David Ricardo all had `backfired, creating a `feedback loop within the British Intelligentsia. That is, the British Imperialists that funded, promoted and wrote this doctrine to poison the rest of the worlds economic discussions and destroy their Politico-Economic relationships had since fell out of public life, or had died, as Smith, Malthus and Ricardo had long since left the worlds stage; and their intellectual descendants didnt realize that these doctrines were never actually meant to be taken seriously as much as meant to mask British Imperial trade policy and global hegemony geo-politics in cosmopolitan and academic language. In short, the `joke of Free-Trade had gone on long enough to become real.) (Read J.B.B.s landmark work The Sophisms of Free Trade, you can find the free PDF online or buy the book for $30ish dollars.) At this time, the People of the United Kingdom were tired of the domestic race-to-the-bottom, the UKs domestic ever decreasing standard of living (for the productive classes), the crime, the impoverishment, the wage-slavery, the foreign wars and genocide that were waged with British lives for the continued exploitation of the 3rd world by the ruling ultra-elite baron-oligarchs of Britain; meanwhile, fortunes were ruined in Australia and Canada was vacillating on leaving the Imperial Domain of Britain - something was desperately needed to be further concocted to maintain the existing Imperial hegemony of Britain. Does any of this sound the slightest bit familiar to you in our modern times? If the ruling oligarchs of Britain wished to continue their system of extreme exploitation of the world and continued accumulation of extreme uber-wealth that baffles the most fertile imaginations abstractions of the word greed (and they did very much intend to do so), then they needed some type of countervailing ideological force to do what no army or foreign policy could ever do alone: change public opinion. Any obscure or discredited hack, any polemical scribbler of the time in the world that would write either knowingly or unknowingly in line with destroying the National Economic Systems of Germany, Russia, France and the United States would have sudden and very powerful friends that would see the world they saw it and be willing to give them ample resources in promoting their ideology. (No coincidence that this is what we saw with Milton Friedman, FA Hayek, Mises and Hazlitt later in history.) In the zero sum game of Imperialism, it did not matter that these targeted countries protectionism actually increased gross trade between all nations; Imperialism, as such, is reason and guile employed in the pursuit of completely unreasoning goals and serving anti-reasoning vices. These countries represented a conquest, something outside the power of the British Oligarchy and they intended to bring it back under their control and oppression. Frederic Bastiat, someone whose father owned a business in France under the despotic, autocratic Napoleon; a Napoleon who tried to build up the continental powers of his domain with a bunch of flawed and poorly considered Protectionist policies (as Friedrich List illustrates the failure of these in his System of Political Economy) was surely a natural ally of those British Imperial Oligarchs who intended to save their system of globalized rape, exploitation and genocide - albeit perhaps for dissimilar ends than Bastiats own justifications and intentions, but the means were just the same. Just as Adam Smith, the idealist dreamer, was employed in founding the School of Free Trade under the employ of British elites, and therefore became a British Imperial champion and lionized hero to those classes in Britain; Bastiat would work in this infamous and grand tradition. Bastiat was perhaps the first popularized `Libertarian, at least one of the most prominent when we look back at this timeframe. The language and doctrines of Classical Liberalism as abused by Smith, Ricardo and even Malthus was more academic and more `stuffy in terms of its writing style. It was more convoluted and the tricks and word-games required to fool (or provide a `cloak for those willing to go to work for this Imperial System) its adherents were much more advanced. Libertarianism, as pioneered by Bastiat and his ilk, took the same underlying theories of Man and Society as obfuscated and obliterated in the Classical Liberal Tradition and made it for the masses of people. Easily digestible for the average person at the time. The language is more populist. The authors examples and writing style are bombastic and devoid of any study of ancient history as Smith and Malthus entertained in their writings. This all was happening, mind you, just in time to give another `shot-in-the-arm for the poison of Democracy, as it continued rotting out the USAs republican virtues. This is a very rough sketch of the geo-political environment that Frederic Bastiat was writing in. As for the book directly: This type of parlor-trick ideology frequently employs words that sound inflammatory, and are never rigorously defined, but nevertheless arm the victim of the ideology (that is, the person believing it) with a host of rhetorical ammunition. F.A. Hayeks favorite was collectivism, F.B.s appears to be plunder. To any transfer of wealth to anyone within the system is considered plunder if and only if the government is compelling the transfer, this is, of course, regardless of governmental purpose. He turns history on its head, the most protectionist nations (that is, nations that agreed that their free people wouldnt be allowed to compete with foreign wage-slaves or literal slaves) historically grew the most industry and most powerful; this is not surprising whatsoever to non-ideologues who look at history and understand the American School (which is really little more than the Historical School, that is, in trying what has been proven to work). If import tariffs always constituted a form of plunder then how would we rectify this contradiction? How would the most plundered nations somehow be, after decades of being plundered be stronger and more prosperous every year they were being plundered? Henry C. Carey in his book, The Harmony of Interests illustrates with the actual production statistics that every move toward the Imperial Free Trade policy saw a diminution of production and every move toward reasonable Protectionism a rise in production, property values, farm prices, wages, etc. (basically all the indicators of prosperity). To F.B., monopolies, labor exploitation, cartels, oligopolies, these are irrelevant - only the government is the enemy and prime mover of injustice. Even something as contemporary as the LIBOR scandal are another testament to the eternal falsehood of this ideological position. Not to be accused of miss-summarizing F.B.s work, well take a passage from the book. Every page is filled with intellectual dishonesty and sophistry used to bring back a system of totalitarian feudalism, so it shouldnt be too hard to find something to object to; let us pick a page at random, with my comments parenthetically appended. Here we go: Try to imagine a form of labor imposed by force, that is not a violation of liberty; a transmission of wealth imposed by force, that is not a violation of property. If you cannot succeed in reconciling this, you are bound to conclude that the law cannot organize labor and industry without organizing injustice. {{Here we see a primordial Non-Aggression Principle argument, which is basically a Neanderthal-level of social philosophy . The NAP is a pillar of Libertarianism, Murray Rothbard said it was the primary morality of the system, and is so ridiculous that it despairs me to think that it needs to be refuted. But, the intellectual acumen of the modern man being what it is, heres the short version. The Government is the enforcer of the Law. The Law is the system of organized Justice (F.B. admits this). Justice is a tricky subject, Plato said that it is easier to define what is not just than what it is. Justice has some universal characteristics but the actual enactment of it changes as cultures change, and technology brings new realities to bear and so on. The systems in question are ever changing and therefore the Law should adjust to meet these challenges. The Law must be written in accordance with that sense of Justice is, this gives you the Legislative; the Law must be interpreted when it has been found to be violated, this gives you the Courts or Judicial; the Law must be enforced, this gives you the Executive, district attorneys, police, F.B.I, etc. Seeing as the Law, if to be enacted with the greatest possible alignment of Justice should be controlled by the same institution. That is, you dont want, because it is impossible to have, multiple independent Legislative, Judicial and Executive groups speaking for the same population. This institution is trusted, yes, with a monopoly of power; for how possibly could you have a duopoly of power? A cartel of power? Wouldnt anything but the monopoly of power, held in check by Law and what the present societal reflection of what Justice is, be at best completely arbitrary and at worst completely tyrannical? It is this question of how to align the Law with the system of Justice that has occupied the minds of the greatest philosophers of all time. This is the best that theyve come up with; does anyone think that they can rigorously define a better system? If so, please enlighten us.}} Continued: When, from the seclusion of his office, a politician takes a view of society, he is struck with the spectacle of inequality that presents itself. He mourns over the sufferings that are the lot of so many of our brethren, sufferings whose aspect is rendered yet more sorrowful by the contrast of luxury and wealth. He ought, perhaps, to ask himself whether such a social state has not been caused by the plunder of ancient times, exercised in the way of conquests; and by plunder of more recent times, effected through the medium of the laws? He ought to ask himself whether, granting the aspiration of all men to well-being and improvement, the reign of justice would not suffice to realize the greatest activity of progress, and the greatest amount of equality compatible with that individual responsibility that God has awarded as a just retribution of virtue and vice? He never gives this a thought. His mind turns towards combinations, arrangements, legal or factitious organizations. He seeks the remedy in perpetuating and exaggerating what has produced the evil. For, justice apart, which we have seen is only a negation, is there any one of these legal arrangements that does not contain the principle of plunder? {{He claims that the statesmen shouldnt consider past injustice and attempts to rectify it, but of course, how does this surprise anyone? Why should the Statesmen entertain FBs bias over simply examining `what is in the system? FB proudly proclaims: Dont look at history for any causes of injustice! That was gods just retribution of virtue and vice! This is basic Apologetics for Oligarchy 101, who themselves are married to the past and attempting, at all times, to abort the future. This also denies that there is anything that could be considered The Public Good, or as the US Constitution put it The General Welfare. This is simply a rhetorically brilliant and literarily dashing way to blame the victims for any injustice. It tells the statesmen to not concern themselves with fairness, equality, equity or even the survival of the nation and people; but that everyone is where they are because they deserve it. (This doesnt square with F.B.s assertion that the Law is organized Justice, but who cares? The essay is filled with contradictions.) This of course implies that all the elite oligarchs shouldnt be touched or even considered, they simply want to feed off of society, not contribute to it, and surely not pay for any moral or legal infractions that they have caused. In human affairs and social systems you are never starting from a blank slate, but from what presently exists. F.B.s cosmopolitan theorizing never admits this, that is, his theories never take into account that what might presently exist might be unjust. Would one consider it unjust that certain British elites had accumulated astronomical fortunes using the blood and sweat of the people of that country? Would F.B. claim it was unjust to imprison a murderer? Does this not deprive them of their property? What if such wealth was known to be accumulated from foreign genocide (India) and dope pushing (China) by agents and operatives of the East Indian Trading Company (as David Ricardo was in leadership of during his lifetime)? If the corporation, in this case the East Indian Trading Company, and its principles or owners couldnt be held personally liable for these actions then why is it unjust if the law simply reclaims a portion of that ill-gotten wealth if not revoking their corporate charter? What about the French elites, are their hands completely clean? Were no fortunes amassed or confiscated during the Napoleonic Wars that were unjust? F.B.s ideology presupposes some eternal arbiter or system of pristine governance, for it supposes that any injustice can only occur due to an injustice law; and that past injustice is beyond the scope of The State to bring back into alignment. The Why? to which FB supports his claims & justifies his arguments is wholly lacking in merit and brazenly politically motivated.}} Continued: You say, There are men who have no money, and you apply to the law. But the law is not a self-supplied fountain, whence every stream may obtain supplies independently of society. Nothing can enter the public treasury, in favor of one citizen or one class, but what other citizens and other classes have been forced to send to it. If everyone draws from it only the equivalent of what he has contributed to it, your law, it is true, is no plunderer, but it does nothing for men who want money--it does not promote equality. It can only be an instrument of equalization as far as it takes from one party to give to another, and then it is an instrument of plunder. Examine, in this light, the protection of tariffs, subsidies, right to profit, right to labor, right to assistance, free public education, progressive taxation, gratuitousness of credit, social workshops, and you will always find at the bottom legal plunder, organized injustice. {{And finally, the targets come into view... In this above quote, we see that F.B. wants us to believe that the system of money is above that of the sovereign will of the people. That is, that the state-created, artificially (by F.B.s definition of the word) constructed and , wholly metaphysically fictitious system of money should be effectively above the will of the people, the wisdom of the culture, the traditions and entirety of the past labor, creativity, infrastructure of the society and all its people should be slaves to whomever happens to dominate the system of money at the time. Those being, of course, Fredrics new friends. The political goals of this ideology are intellectually dishonest and corrupt in a way that is so nakedly transparent that I baffles me that people are fooled by such things. To F.B., the people should be slaves to a system of their own creation; why it is this system (of money) and not another is because hes in alignment and championing for their position: the rule by the moneyed elite (oligarchy). Just as anything else would be as absurd to arbitrarily define as being above everything else in the society. Here we also see the targets of this ideology, all benchmarks of progress, creating the rough level of equal opportunity and equality that either a Republic will live or die without, and yet all these things that F.B. decries weaken the power of the ruling class in favor of the laboring and upcoming generation.}} If one cannot see that what F.B. advocates for what we would call today Fascism or Feudalism, then you really have no business concerning yourself in these matters. Please take up other pastimes. This pamphlet preaches an ideology so banal and barbaric, when one is able to see through the sophistical and convoluted language to which he intentionally tries and buries his own truly plundering intentions. He is a representative of the truly plundering class. This is philosophy for intellectual Neanderthals who are easily conned by flowery and superfluous language that is always dodging and running away from itself in the attempt to avoid concrete discussions of policy and actual understanding. It is imperative that, in this late day of history, that you dont fall for it.

Bastiat, a classical liberal shows just how evil a big government is, and how once you give government the power to get their hands on the economy, they quickly get involved in legal plunder, and it is not to the aid of the poor. He then talks about the absurdity of socialism, and how unnatural and ineffective it is. He talks about the absurdity of government violating property instead of protecting it, because after all, the only reason government comes into existence in the first place, is to only protect property. He also talks about the types of plunder and also makes the distinction that law is supposed to enhance freedom, not restrict it, although in our world, it is definitely the other way around. There is also a bit of history to be found in the book as well, and it goes back as far as ancient Greece. A must read for all people. Bastiat, the great economist, is also a great political philosopher.

Bastiat warns us not to kid ourselves about a kind, gentle, caring government. Like George Washington, Bastiat reminds us that law means force, and that any appeal to the law is ultimately an appeal to force. In appealing to the law, therefore, we must ask ourselves if we would be justified in using force to vindicate our appeal. Life, liberty, and property, Bastiat argues, are the rights which God has given to each individual by virtue of the fact that the individual exists, and that with or without government, an individual is justified in defending his or her life, liberty, and property. Ideally, governments should exist to defend these three basic God-given rights. As an individual, I cannot spend all of my time defending my life, liberty, and property, nor can my neighbors. Government is born when my neighbors and I come together to hire a sheriff to defend these rights full-time for us. The sheriffs authority to defend these rights on our behalf is derived from the authority of each of us individually to protect ourselves in these rights. Because government derives its authority from the aggregrate authority of individual citizens, government should not be allowed to do for me what I cannot legally do for myself. This is the foundation of Bastiats argument, and when taken to its natural conclusion, it shows us that redistribution-of-wealth schemes that the government forces upon some members of society to benefit others are a potential threat to a free people. Social security, welfare, and other government entitlements are all examples of this. Bastiat referred to such government programs as legalized plunder which ultimately creates far more social problems than it solves. The recent presidential race has shown us just how weak and dependent Americans have become. Just as Bastiat predicted, every little social group is clamoring to get its own share of government entitlements, and politician are clamoring to pander to these groups in exchange for political power, even if it means continuing the disastrous economic course of deficits and staggering public debt which may someday threaten the country with bankruptcy and economic collapse. We should learn the lesson of communism--it isnt governments job to take care of us. Being responsible for our own subsistence, including the inherent risks involved in such responsibility, is the price we must pay for freedom and prosperity. If we succumb to the lure of government-provided security by means of legalized plunder, we will one day find ourselves bereft of the freedom which we once took for granted. Bastiats classic shows us how to preserve a free society and avoid the consequences of legalized injustice.

Values are timeless...and history repeats itself

This classic text challenges readers to think, not just about politics but even the language, and the history behind the authors words. Challenge a high school mind with a text like this on each of these fronts and todays graduating classes could rise to the day. I am a 24 year old and can only just now understand why Bastiats name rings in the annals of history and I wish I had in or before college. If you arent certain this book is what you are looking for, buy it anyway, you wont regret it for a second!