“The Law” Frederic Bastiat

Law is justice. And it is under the law of justice – under the reign of right; under the influence of liberty, safety, stability, and responsibility – that every person will attain his real worth and the true dignity of his being. It is under this law of jusce that mankind will achieve – slowly, no doubt, but certainly – God’s design for the orderly and peaceful progress of humanity.

The law has been perverted. It has turned to do the things that it is supposed to punish.

Bastiat exposes the three basic requirements for life which are life, liberty and property. He redefines the law as the collective organization of individuals to defend their rights. The law comes from ever person’s natural right to defend his or her life, liberty and property. Therefore the reason of the collective is based on individualism and one can only do collectively what one has a right to do individually. This is synonym to justice.

“Nothing can be more evident than this: the law is the organization of the natural right of lawful defense. It is the substitution of a common force for individual forces that have a natural and lawful right to do: to protect persons, liberties, and properties; to maintain the right of each, and to cause justice to reign over us all.”

Why has the law been perverted?

1. Stupid greed: some people want to live and prosper at the expense of others. Everyone wants to satisfy their desires with the least possible pain. That’s why some people live by seizing and consuming the products of the labour of others, when this is done by the government it is legal plunder. Still, it is plunder. Many people believe erroneously that things are just because the “law” makes them so. Therefore when the “law” is rooted in plunder, it is conflicting with morality. Whenever someone dares to defy this common thought, one is accused of being “a dangerous innovator, a utopian, a theorist, a subversive”, etc.

• One example that comes to my mind is when one says that public education is not a right, or that  public education is legal plunder (stealing from some via taxation to give to others), one gets all of this crazy names.
• Critique against universal suffrage: three persons out of four are excluded (in that time women, minors and other people). It is not the voter alone who suffers the consequences of his vote. After voting people return to passiveness, unconsciousness,  and ignorance because the legislator enters into omnipotence.
• Legal plunder: taking the property from one person and giving it to another. Taking the wealth of all and giving it to few.
• How do I know if something is legal plunder? If the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime. If the law takes what belongs to people and gives it to other people.
• Socialism which has to be refuted as a doctrine.
• 1. No legal plunder: justice, peace, order, stability, harmony and logic. “Until the day of my death, I shall proclaim the principle with all the force of my lungs.” *This reminded me of Giancarlo Ibarguen and of so many people that live to teach and disseminate the principles of a society of free and responsible individuals.
  2. Systems of plunder: socialism, communism and protectionism.
  3. Slavery and tariffs are a violation, by law, of liberty and property.

2. False philanthropy: we must choose between being free and living in a just society and not doing so. We must choose between justice and philanthropy. Legally enforced fraternity, when not voluntary, destroys liberty.  The law as Bastiat defines it is incompatible with welfare, public education and with imposing things upon people either by “organizing” them or by dictating them what to do in terms of industry, labour, religion, etc.

• The law can only be an instrument of equalization if it takes from some persons and gives it to others.
• Individualists repudiate forced and artificial organization, not natural organization.
• The socialists want to play God, they want to mold people, dictate them what to do. They treat people as inert matter, as objects without motivation to action. They think they can organize everything to their will and whim into groups, centers, gilds, etc. A lot of these people think of social matters as they think of a potter (the governors) molding clay (governed).
• The socialist are no philanthropists, they see mankind as merely inner matter: “receiving life, organization, morality, and prosperity from the power of the state.” The do this by claiming that by doing so rightly they will make mankind happier (Montesquieu). Governors wish to transform human nature to something greater (Rousseau). Other people see the legislators as a source of good and success in society (Raynal). Society needs a “law” so it is ok to temporally place a dictator to rule in order to restore peace (Mably).

o   Bastiat answers to these people: “Oh sublime writers! Please remember sometimes that this clay, this sand, this manure which you so arbitrarily dispose of are men! They are your equals! They are intelligent and free human beings like yourselves! As you have, they too have received from God the faculty to observe, to plan ahead, to think and to judge for themselves!” All people are rational and have values.

• Socialist want equality of wealth: “impartiality in law consists of two things: the establishing of equality in wealth and equality in dignity among the citizens…(Condillac)” But equality in wealth and dignity can only be achieved artificially through force, through plunder.
• Socialist do not understand that knowledge: “appears and grows with the passage of time; and that in proportion to this growth of knowledge, might takes the side of right , and society regains possession of itself.” Knowledge changes through time, we are constantly learning and improving.
• Socialist want virtuosity but the only way of creating new people, the only way to artificially make people virtuous is, -regardless of any noble ends-, coercion and terror. Because legislators impose and force upon people prejudices, affections, morality and desires. If their ideas are so cool, why is it that they have to force these ideas into people’s heads? Why do they have to make people do things by force? Besides, if human nature is so rotten and incapable of achieving things, then how are legislator free from this “human nature”? Totalitarians believe that they are superior to everyone else.
• The law has become an instrument to the reformers and legislators to achieve their ends.
• It would be great if socialists wanted to implement their plans on their own risks but they what to impose them by law, by force to everyone and not only that, they want to make us pay them taxes.

What is liberty according to Bastiat? The freedom of every person to make full use of his faculties, so long as he does not harm other persons while doing so.