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Frederic Bastiat Biography

Frederic Bastiat

Claude-Frédéric Bastiat (French: [klod fʁedeʁik bastja]; 29 June 1801 – 24 December 1850) was a French economist and author who was a prominent member of the French Liberal School.

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Frederic Bastiat Quotes

You compare the nation to a parched piece of land and the tax to a life-giving rain. So be it. But you should also ask yourself where this rain comes from, and whether it is not precisely the tax that draws the moisture from the soil and dries it up. You should also ask yourself further whether the soil receives more of this precious water from the rain than it loses by the evaporation?

Giving, Land, Rain, Receives, Tax, Water

The politician attempts to remedy the evil by increasing the very thing that caused the evil in the first place: legal plunder.

Caused, Evil, Increasing, Libertarian, Liberty

If every person has the right to defend - even by force - his person, his liberty, and his property, then it follows that a group of men have the right to organize and support a common force to protect these rights constantly. Thus, since an individual cannot lawfully use force against the person, liberty, or property of another individual, then the common force - for the same reason - cannot lawfully be used to destroy the person, liberty, or property of individuals or groups.

Follows, Groups, Men, Reason, Rights, Support

The law has been perverted, and the powers of the state have become perverted along with it. The law has not only been turned from its proper function, but made to follow an entirely contrary purpose. The law has become a tool for every kind of greed. Instead of preventing crime, the law itself is guilty of the abuses it is supposed to punish. If this is true, it is a serious matter, and moral duty requires me to call the attention of my fellow-citizens to it.

Abuses, Call, Crime, Greed, Law, Political

When plunder becomes a way of life, men create for themselves a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it.

Authorizes, Create, Life, Men, Money, Plunder

Here I encounter the most popular fallacy of our times. It is not considered sufficient that the law should guarantee to every citizen the free and inoffensive use of his faculties for physical, intellectual and moral self-improvement. Instead, it is demanded that the law should directly extend welfare, education, and morality throughout the nation. This is the seductive lure of socialism. And I repeat: these two uses of the law are in direct contradiction to each other.

Considered, Law, Popular, Self, Socialism, Two

Legal plunder can be committed in an infinite number of ways; hence, there are an infinite number of plans for organizing it: tariffs, protection, bonuses, subsidies, incentives, the progressive income tax, free education, the right to employment, the right to profit, the right to wages, the right to relief, the right to the tools of production, interest free credit, etc. , etc. And it the aggregate of all these plans, in respect to what they have in common, legal plunder, that goes under the name of socialism.

Free Education, Infinite, Legal, Names, Numbers, Progressive

Finally, is not liberty the restricting of the law only to its rational sphere of organizing the right of the individual to lawful self-defense; of punishing injustice?

Law, Liberty, Rational, Restricting, Self

The law is the collective organization of the individual's right to lawful defense of his life, liberty and property. When it is used for anything else, no matter how noble the cause, it becomes perverted and justice is weakened. Thus, the law has become perverted by stupid greed and false philanthropy.

Justice, Law, Lawful, Organization, Property, Stupid

Why don't you reform yourselves? That task would be sufficient enough.

Enough, Reform, Sufficient, Task, Tasks, Would Be

Competition is merely the absence of oppression.

Absence, Competition, Merely, Oppression

We disapprove of state education. Then the socialists say that we are opposed to any education. We object to a state religion. Then the socialists say that we want no religion at all. We object to a state-enforced equality. Then they say that we are against equality. And so on, and so on. 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.

Eat, Equality, Libertarian, Liberty, Religion, Want

They will come to learn in the end, at their own expense, that it is better to endure competition for rich customers than to be invested with monopoly over impoverished customers.

Come, Competition, Economics, Learn, Rich

Sometimes the law defends plunder and participates in it. Sometimes the law places the whole apparatus of judges, police, prisons and gendarmes at the service of the plunderers, and treats the victim - when he defends himself - as a criminal.

Judges, Judging, Law, Police, Prisons

. . . the statement, "The purpose of the law is to cause justice to reign," is not a rigorously accurate statement. It ought to be stated that the purpose of the law is to prevent injustice from reigning. In fact, it is injustice, instead of justice, that has an existence of its own. Justice is achieved only when injustice is absent.

Achieved, Justice, Law, Liberty, Purpose, Stated

Now since man is naturally inclined to avoid pain - and since labor is pain in itself - it follows that men will resort to plunder whenever plunder is easier than work. History shows this quite clearly. And under these conditions, neither religion nor morality can stop it. When, then, does plunder stop? It stops when it becomes more painful and more dangerous than labor. It is evident, then, that the proper purpose of law is to use the power of its collective force to stop this fatal tendency to plunder instead of to work. All the measures of the law should protect property and punish plunder.

Conditions, Law, Man, Men, Pain, Purpose

Try to imagine a system of labor imposed by force that is not a violation of liberty; a transfer of wealth imposed by force that is not a violation of property rights. If you cannot do so, then you must agree that the law cannot organize labor and industry without organizing injustice.

Freedom, Imagine, Imposed, Peace, Rights, Wealth

Is not liberty the destruction of all despotism - including, of course, legal despotism?

Despotism, Destruction, Legal, Liberty

They would be the shepherds over us, their sheep. Certainly such an arrangement presupposes that they are naturally superior to the rest of us. And certainly we are fully justified in demanding from the legislators and organizers proof of this natural superiority.

Natural, Proof, Sheep, Shepherds, Superior, Would Be

I find it hard to understand why those who demand Unitary Education by the State do not also demand a Unitary Press by the State. . . Either the State is infallible, in which case we could not do better than to submit to it the entire domain of intelligent thought, or it is not, in which case it is no more rational to hand over education to it than the press.

Education, Hands, Intelligent, Political, Rational

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