Frederic Bastiat, the Nineteeth-Century Tea Party Economist

Excerpted from a longer blog post on The Free Republic

Thoughts from Frederic Bastiat, French economist and political philosopher.

Nineteenth Century Dudes Knew A Lot.

"Perverted Law Causes Conflict

Law may be diverted from its true purpose — that it may violate property instead of protecting it. Then, everyone will want to participate in making the law, either to protect himself against plunder or to use it for plunder...This odious perversion of the law is a perpetual source of hatred and discord...and tends to destroy society itself.

Look at the United States [in 1850]. There is no country in the world where 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 no country in the world where the social order rests on a firmer foundation. But even in the United States, there are two issues — and only two — that have always endangered the public peace.

The law has come to be an instrument of injustice...The proper purpose of the law has been perverted in Europe, where the perversion of the law is a principle...a system...


Two Kinds of Plunder

Mr. de Montalembert wrote: "We must make war against socialism." He meant: "We must make war against plunder."

But of what plunder was he speaking? For there are two kinds of plunder: legal and illegal.

I do not think that illegal plunder, such as theft or swindling can be called socialism. The Law Defends "Legal" Plunder Sometimes the law defends plunder and participates in it. Thus the beneficiaries are spared the shame, danger, and scruple which their acts would otherwise involve. 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. In short, there is a legal plunder, and it is of this, no doubt, that Mr. de Montalembert speaks.

How to Identify Legal Plunder

This is how legal plunder is to be identified: Does the law take from some persons what belongs to them, and give it to other persons to whom it does not belong? Does the law benefit one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime?

Then abolish this law without delay, for it is not only an evil itself, but also it is a fertile source for further evils because it invites reprisals. If such a law — which may be an isolated case — is not abolished immediately, it will spread, multiply, and develop into a system.

The person who profits from this law will complain bitterly, defending his acquired "rights." He will claim that the state is obligated to protect and encourage his particular industry; that this procedure enriches the state because the protected industry is thus able to spend more and to pay higher wages to the poor workingmen. <--(Ed.: Didn't Nancy Pelosi say something like this?)

Do not listen to this sophistry by vested interests. The acceptance of these arguments will build legal plunder into a whole system. In fact, this has already occurred. The present-day delusion is an attempt to enrich everyone at the expense of everyone else; to make plunder universal under the pretense of organizing it.

Legal Plunder Has Many Names

Legal plunder can be committed in an infinite number of ways...Thus we have an infinite number of plans for organizing it: tariffs, protection, benefits, subsidies, encouragements, progressive taxation, public schools, guaranteed jobs (Ed.: tenure), guaranteed profits, minimum wages, a right to relief, a right to the tools of labor, free credit, and so on, and so on. All these plans as a whole — with their common aim of legal plunder — constitute socialism.

Now, since under this definition socialism is a body of doctrine, what attack can be made against it other than a war of doctrine? If you find this socialistic doctrine to be false, absurd, and evil, then refute it. And the more false, the more absurd, and the more evil it is, the easier it will be to refute. Above all, if you wish to be strong, begin by rooting out every particle of socialism that may have crept into your legislation. This will be no light task.

Socialism Is Legal Plunder

It has been said, "The war that we must fight against socialism must be in harmony with law, honor, and justice." But ...that is a vicious circle: You would use the law to oppose socialism? But it is upon the law that socialism itself relies. (ed.: Everything Hitler did was legal) Socialists desire to practice legal plunder...they, like all other monopolists, desire to make the law their own weapon. And when once the law is on the side of socialism, how can it be used against socialism? When plunder is abetted by the law, it does not fear your courts, your gendarmes, and your prisons. Rather, it calls upon them for help.

To prevent this, you would exclude socialism from entering into the making of laws? You would prevent socialists from entering the Legislative Palace? You shall not succeed, I predict, so long as legal plunder continues to be the main business of the legislature. It is illogical — in fact, absurd — to assume otherwise.

The Choice Before Us

This question of legal plunder must be settled once and for all, and there are only three ways to settle it:

The few plunder the many. Everybody plunders everybody. Nobody plunders anybody.

We must make our choice among limited plunder, universal plunder, and no plunder. The law can follow only one of these three.

Limited legal plunder: This system prevailed when the right to vote was restricted. One would turn back to this system to prevent the invasion of socialism.

Universal legal plunder: We have been threatened with this system since the franchise was made universal. The newly enfranchised majority has decided to formulate law on the same principle of legal plunder that was used by their predecessors when the vote was limited.

No legal plunder: This is the principle of justice, peace, order, stability, harmony, and logic. Until the day of my death, I shall proclaim this principle with all the force of my lungs (which alas! is all too inadequate)."