Frederic Bastiat (Bayonne, June 30th 1801 - Rome, December 24th 1850) is a economist and liberal politician French. It was buried with the church Saint-Louis-of-French of Rome. Ignored in France, it however profits from an international repute.

Biography

Its family was originating in Mugron, in the Landes, where he lived most of his life, and where a statue is today the representative. He was the son of an easy trader who died whereas he was 9 years old. His/her mother having died two years earlier, it will live then with her paternal grandparent. It leaves the school at 17 years to join the family trade. According to Thomas DiLorenzo it is what will enable him to know well the essential mechanisms of the Marché. Sheldon Richman also notes that it grows in the context of the Napoleonean wars which are marked by a strong official interventionism. The years 1820 it enters freemasonry to the cabin " Zélée". It becomes about it Minister of Justice in 1822, and speaker in 1823. In 1846 he is elected corresponding member of the Institut of France.

Economist and Lampoonist, it had a very short public career (hardly 6 years): it begin with articles in the Journal from the Economists in 1844, creates and becomes in 1846 editor association of a newspaper free exchanger published in Paris, and made appear several works in which it fought at the same time the prohibitory system and socialism.

He is elected appointed Landes in 1848 and re-elected in 1849. He sits each time on the left but vote with the conservatives or the Socialists according to the laws. He asserts himself some in his electoral profession of faith of 1849, informant: " One brought closer my votes to those of the extreme left. Why didn't one also announce the occasions where I voted with the line? ". With the Parliament he was vice president of the committee of supply.

With the Parliament and outwards, it does not have of cease to fight the Protectionnisme and the Socialisme, like promoting the free trade and the rights of the individual. It will be in particular one of the most enthusiastic defenders of the ideas of Richard Cobden and the leagues anti Corn Laws . Its first contribution to the Journal of the economists will be besides in defense of the Libre-échange and fustigates the policies colonialists. It created Association for the freedom of the exchanges and writes a book on Richard Cobden.

He had been also general adviser as from 1831 and Justice of the Peace from May 28th, 1831 to November 30th, 1846. He contracts tuberculosis during the turn of France which he had undertaken to promote the liberal ideas.

He cannot sit any more regularly at the Parliament and share in Italy to be restored. He dies in Rome in 1850, declaring on his bed of death that Gustave de Molinari was his/her spiritual son.

Bastiat had caused the admiration of the pope Leon XIII and would have contributed to the social Doctrine of the Church as regards economy.

Ideas

Writer with direct speech, his writings (articles or lampoons) handle comparisons teaching and fables satirical, and aim to flush out principal myths or Sophism S maintained around State ( this great fiction through which everyone endeavors to live at the expense of everyone ), of the Socialisme ( legal spoliation ), of the richness ( the profit of is the profit of the other ), of the solidarity ( it is completely impossible for me to conceive Fraternity legally forced, without Freedom being legally destroyed, and the Justice legally pressed with the feet ), tax, interventionism, etc It used if not regularly the lampoons and the polemic, in particular against Proudhon with which it will polemize 13 weeks in the newspaper the voice of the people .

The most famous satire of Bastiat (which aims at the Protectionnisme) is its petition at the French Parliament on behalf of the manufacturers of candles , which require to be protected “from the ruinous competition of a foreign rival” who delivers a unfair competition to them by providing his light at prices too low (it is in the final analysis learned that this supplier is… the sun!). This petition is completed by the request for a “law which orders the closing of all windows, attic windows, (…) by which the sunlight has habit to penetrate in the houses”.

Concerning free trade, it defends on the one hand reciprocally selected free trade but watch also how it is more interesting to practice the free trade, even vis-a-vis protectionist countries.

Out of economic material, he often insists on the distinction between what one sees and what one does not see (one would speak today about the hidden costs or the perverse effects). This topic, widened to criticize the interventionist activity of the State, is developed at the origin in its parabola of the Sophisme of the broken pane. The money spent to repair a broken window will bring work to the repairer; this last will be able to increase its expenditure, which will produce more businesses for others. What one does not see here, it is that the money would also have been spent, and simply differently , if the window had not been broken. The broken window diverted only money towards other expenditure. According to Bastiat, a State can act sometimes of the kind while taking with most active to subsidize lobbys, associations supporters of corporatism or to assist the inactive ones.

It developed a subjective theory of the value in made lines Jean-Baptiste Say and of Turgot and in opposition to work of Adam Smith or David Ricardo which sought an objective base of the value. The Austrian school of economy will take again this subjective vein in its work.

It is one of the first to denounce the possible drifts of the future systems of health insurance: Enthusiastic defender of the mutual relief funds, it opposes any nationalization of this system with force, informant for example in his economic Harmonies : " The abuses will go always increasing and one will recompute the year rectification of it by year, as it is the use until comes the day from an explosion. But then, one will realize that one is tiny room to be taken into account a population which cannot act any more by itself, which very awaits minister or of a prefect, even the subsistence, and whose ideas are perverted at the point to have lost until the notion of the Right, the Property, Freedom and Justice".

It also took share in the ideological debate as a combatant the capital punishment, slavery and defending the trade union rights, being opposed in that to the Socialists.

Influence

Its fame and its influence are especially important abroad whereas there remains ignored in France. Thus, until recently, one did not find some of his works (of which the law) only on Internet and in English, whereas he had written them in French. This changed with the flowering of sites into French language which, from now on, make it possible to reach in original version the texts and speeches of Frederic Bastiat.

Economy

It places as regards producer and consuming individual not (Theory of abundance against theory of the food shortage). According to Jacques Garello, it is the only economist of XIXe with Cobden to precede the theories of the consumer developed at the 20th century by Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich Hayek or Pascal Salin. Many economists were also built in continuity or in reaction to its ideas: In its answers to Keynes, Friedrich Hayek quoted Bastiat regularly while Marx will criticize the theories of the economist in particular in the postface of the 2nd edition of the Capital (1872) and in the Theories on the appreciation.

Policy

Frederic Bastiat was regularly quoted by Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher like one of the economists having influenced them more. Thus Margaret Thatcher declared it: " By replongeant me in the writings of Bastiat, I discovered a defense of freedom and at the same time elegant individual autonomy and puissante" , or " Bastiat recalled us that the direction of the capacity goes from the individuals to the top, and not of the State downwards. It is a message of all the temps." Of the same Alain Madelin recognizes a major influence to him: " Basically, Bastiat recalls us that the liberal thought, before being an economic thinking, is also and especially a philosophical thought, legal and policy of the release of the homme."

Quotations

Quotations of Bastiat:

• “the State, it is the great fiction through which everyone endeavors to live at the expense of everyone” (" État" , Newspaper of DEBATEs, number of September 25th, 1848).
• “To destroy competition, it is to kill the intelligence. ”
• “to await State only two things: freedom, safety. And to see well that one would not know, with the risk to lose them both, to ask a third of it”
• There are too many great men in the world; there are too much legislators, organizers, teachers of companies, drivers of people, fathers of the nations, etc Trop of people are placed at the top of humanity for the régenter, too many people make trade deal with it , (" Loi" , 1848)
• And however, as this crowned word has still the power to make palpitate the hearts, one strips the Freedom of his prestige by tearing off its name to him; and it is under the name of competition that the sad victim is led to the furnace bridge, with the applause of crowd tightening her arms with the bonds of the constraint.

Quotations on Bastiat:

• “In three years all the French can know to read. Do you believe that we will be more advanced? Imagine on the contrary that, in each commune, there is a middle-class man, only one, having read Bastiat, and that this middle-class man is respected, the things would change! ” Flaubert with George Sand, October 7th, 1871
• “a famous economist French (Frederic Bastiat) exposed as in a table the multiple benefits that the man finds in the company and it is a worthy wonder to be admired. ” Cardinal Pecci, future Leon XIII

Works

Complete works of Frederic Bastiat in the edition Guillaumin of 1862 are available on Gallica.

• Volume first, Correspondence, mixtures
• Volume second, free trade
• Volume third, Cobden and the League or English agitation for the freedom of the exchanges
economic
• Volume fourth, Sophisms. Small lampoons. I Contains: economic Sophisms ; Property and law ; Justice and fraternity ; the State ; the Law ; Property and spoliation ; Baccalaureat and socialism ; Protectionism and Communism
economic
• Volume fifth, Sophisms. Small lampoons. II Contains: Spoliation and law ; War with the pulpits of political economy ; correspondence with F.C. Chevé and Pierre Joseph Proudhon; what one sees and what one does not see ; Abundance ; Balance the commercial ; Peace and freedom or the republican budget ; Speech on the tax of the drinks ; Speech on the repression of the industrial coalitions ; Reflections on the amendment of Mr. Mortimer-Ternaux ; parliamentary Incompatibilities
• Volume sixth, [[economic Harmonies]]
• Volume seventh, Tests, outlines, correspondence

References

See also: Free trade, Minarchisme, Liberalism

• Frederic Bastiat: 1801-1850: the crusader of free trade , Gerard Minart, Ed.L' Harmattan, Paris 2004,
• you Like Bastiat , Jacques Garello, Ed.Romillat, Paris 2004

External bonds

• Frederic Bastiat - publication of complete works of Bastiat

• Circle Frederic Bastiat
• the economic heritage of Bastiat
• Bastiat seen by Gustave de Molinari - Its obituary in the Newspaper of the economists

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