The Law by Frédéric Bastiat
"Life, faculties, production- in other words, individuality, liberty, property- this is man." - Frédéric Bastiat
Life, liberty and property existed before men created laws, and men created laws in order to protect those three faculties. However, the law has been corrupted and instead of protecting them is oppressing them.
What is law?
It is the collective organization of the individual right to lawful defense. The principle of this collective organization is based on protecting the individual right.
“Each of us has a natural right to defend his person, his liberty, and his property”.
If the meaning of law was respected, and government just focused on protecting those faculties, all individuals would live harmoniously attaining their own ends respecting the rights of others.
Unfortunately, the law doesn’t limits itself to its purposes.
“The law has been used to destroy its own objective: it has been applied to annihilating the justice that it was supposed to maintain; to limiting and destroying rights which its real purpose was to respect”.
The law has been corrupted by the influence of greed and false philanthropy.
Greed
All individuals aspire to preserve and develop; we all can coexist together harmoniously if everyone enjoyed his faculties respecting the faculties of others. However, some individuals aspire to preserve and develop themselves at the expense of others.
“Man can live and satisfy his wants only by ceaseless labor; by the ceaseless application of his faculties to natural resources. This process is the origin of property. But it is also true that a man may live and satisfy his wants by seizing and consuming the products of the labor of others. This process is the origin of plunder”.
Plunder begins when this kind of people get involved in law, since law cannot operate without the sanction and support of a dominating force, this force must be entrusted to those who make the laws. Here is when the perversion of law arises. All the rest of individuals become victims of the lawful plunder, and when they notice that, they get into the making of the laws. However, once in the power they have two options: stop lawful plunder or have a share in it.
“As soon as the plundered classes gain political power, they establish a system of reprisals against other classes. They do not abolish legal plunder. Instead, they emulate their evil predecessors by participating in this legal plunder, even though it is against their own interests”.
The evil result of legal plunder is that the law turns into an instrument of plunder. The consequences of this are the following:
“The law has come to be an instrument of injustice”.
If the law were confined to its proper functions, every individual would have the same interest in the law.
How to identify legal plunder?
“See if the law takes from some persons what belongs to them, and gives it to other persons to whom it does not belong. See if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime”.
If legal plunder is not identified and abolished immediately, it will develop into a system. It is a big delusion the attempt of enriching everyone at the expense of everyone, to make plunder universal under the pretense of organizing it.
“If you find this socialistic doctrine to be false, absurd and evil, then refute it. 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”.
Socialists desire to practice legal plunder, not illegal plunder. They want to make the law their own weapon.
We have to choose among limited legal plunder, universal legal plunder and not legal plunder. Legal plunder is the principle of justice, peace, order, stability, harmony and logic. I, as Bastiat, choose to live for this principle.
False Philanthropy
There is a notion that law should provide more than just protecting the right of individuals, i.e. providing education, welfare and morality. This is the seductive lure of socialism. This instantly harms the fact that law should guarantee to every citizen the free and inoffensive use of his faculties for physical, intellectual, and moral self-improvement. Law cannot organize labor, education, and religion without destroying justice.
Three systems of plunder:
Legal plunder is based partially on philanthropy, false philanthropy.
We have to think of the purpose of the law as is to prevent injustice from reigning.
Charity
“The law can be an instrument of equalization only as it takes from some persons and gives to other persons. When the law does this, it is an instrument of plunder”.
Education
The law has two alternatives: “It can permit this transaction of teaching and learning to operate freely without the use of force, or it can force human wills in this matter by taking from some of them enough to pay the teachers who were appointed by government to instruct others, without charge. But in this second case, the law commits legal plunder by violating liberty and property”.
Individualists
“We repudiate the forms of association that are forced upon us, not free association. We repudiate forced fraternity, not true fraternity. We repudiate the artificial unity that does nothing more than deprive persons of individual responsibility. We do not repudiate the natural unity of mankind under Providence”.
Socialists
Socialists look individuals as passive particles, susceptible to being shaped. They attain to shape them through law.
“The socialist writers look upon people in the same manner that the gardener views his trees”.
“Socialists look upon people as raw material to be formed into social combinations”.
In socialism, the legislator becomes the soul of society and all individuals are regarded as people who can be shaped and instructed.
“Oh, sublime writers! Please remember sometimes that this clay, this sand, and this manure which you so arbitrarily dispose are men! They are your equals! They are intelligent and free human beings like yourselves! As you have, they have to received from God the faculty to observe, to plan ahead, to think and to judge from themselves”.
This writings and the false idea that human minds can be shaped, influence others to place themselves among mankind in order to arrange, organize, and regulate it in his own way.
What is liberty?
Dictatorship & Omnipotence
Despotism and other forms of dictatorship (socialism, communism) turn to the law as their weapon, they only desire to make the laws in order to achieve complete power over mankind.
There is a false concept, the “superman idea”, that implies that the legislator is omnipotent and superior to the rest of the individuals. Consequently, the individuals that are being legislated start expecting that the legislator will fix everything for them.
“This will remain the case so long as human beings with feelings continue to remain passive; so long as they consider themselves incapable of bettering their prosperity and happiness by their own intelligence and their own energy; so long as they expect everything from the law; in short, so long as they imagine that their relationship to the sate is the same as that of the sheep to the shepherd”.
Because of these ideas, the responsibility of the government has become enormous. What happens then, when the government doesn’t achieve its promises? Whose fault is it?
“But make the laws upon the principle of fraternity – proclaim that all good, and all bad, stem from the law; that the law is responsible for all individual misfortunes and all social inequalities – then the door is open to an endless succession of complaints, irritations, troubles, and revolutions”.
“Law is the common force organized to act as an obstacle to injustice. Law is justice”.
Proper legislative functions:
What is law?
It is the collective organization of the individual right to lawful defense. The principle of this collective organization is based on protecting the individual right.
“Each of us has a natural right to defend his person, his liberty, and his property”.
If the meaning of law was respected, and government just focused on protecting those faculties, all individuals would live harmoniously attaining their own ends respecting the rights of others.
Unfortunately, the law doesn’t limits itself to its purposes.
“The law has been used to destroy its own objective: it has been applied to annihilating the justice that it was supposed to maintain; to limiting and destroying rights which its real purpose was to respect”.
The law has been corrupted by the influence of greed and false philanthropy.
Greed
All individuals aspire to preserve and develop; we all can coexist together harmoniously if everyone enjoyed his faculties respecting the faculties of others. However, some individuals aspire to preserve and develop themselves at the expense of others.
“Man can live and satisfy his wants only by ceaseless labor; by the ceaseless application of his faculties to natural resources. This process is the origin of property. But it is also true that a man may live and satisfy his wants by seizing and consuming the products of the labor of others. This process is the origin of plunder”.
Plunder begins when this kind of people get involved in law, since law cannot operate without the sanction and support of a dominating force, this force must be entrusted to those who make the laws. Here is when the perversion of law arises. All the rest of individuals become victims of the lawful plunder, and when they notice that, they get into the making of the laws. However, once in the power they have two options: stop lawful plunder or have a share in it.
“As soon as the plundered classes gain political power, they establish a system of reprisals against other classes. They do not abolish legal plunder. Instead, they emulate their evil predecessors by participating in this legal plunder, even though it is against their own interests”.
The evil result of legal plunder is that the law turns into an instrument of plunder. The consequences of this are the following:
- Individuals have no distinction between justice and injustice.
- A society cannot exist unless the laws are respected to some extent.
- When law and morality contradict each other, the individual has the choice of losing his moral sense or losing respect for the law.
- Individuals believe that everything lawful is also legitimate.
- Since everyone uses the law to make profit, everyone would like to use it for his own profit as well.
“The law has come to be an instrument of injustice”.
If the law were confined to its proper functions, every individual would have the same interest in the law.
How to identify legal plunder?
“See if the law takes from some persons what belongs to them, and gives it to other persons to whom it does not belong. See if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime”.
If legal plunder is not identified and abolished immediately, it will develop into a system. It is a big delusion the attempt of enriching everyone at the expense of everyone, to make plunder universal under the pretense of organizing it.
“If you find this socialistic doctrine to be false, absurd and evil, then refute it. 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”.
Socialists desire to practice legal plunder, not illegal plunder. They want to make the law their own weapon.
We have to choose among limited legal plunder, universal legal plunder and not legal plunder. Legal plunder is the principle of justice, peace, order, stability, harmony and logic. I, as Bastiat, choose to live for this principle.
False Philanthropy
There is a notion that law should provide more than just protecting the right of individuals, i.e. providing education, welfare and morality. This is the seductive lure of socialism. This instantly harms the fact that law should guarantee to every citizen the free and inoffensive use of his faculties for physical, intellectual, and moral self-improvement. Law cannot organize labor, education, and religion without destroying justice.
- Enforced fraternity destroys liberty.
- Plunder violates ownership: When wealth is transferred from the owner to the other that does not own it, property is violated.
Three systems of plunder:
- Protectionism
- Socialism
- Communism
Legal plunder is based partially on philanthropy, false philanthropy.
We have to think of the purpose of the law as is to prevent injustice from reigning.
Charity
“The law can be an instrument of equalization only as it takes from some persons and gives to other persons. When the law does this, it is an instrument of plunder”.
Education
The law has two alternatives: “It can permit this transaction of teaching and learning to operate freely without the use of force, or it can force human wills in this matter by taking from some of them enough to pay the teachers who were appointed by government to instruct others, without charge. But in this second case, the law commits legal plunder by violating liberty and property”.
Individualists
“We repudiate the forms of association that are forced upon us, not free association. We repudiate forced fraternity, not true fraternity. We repudiate the artificial unity that does nothing more than deprive persons of individual responsibility. We do not repudiate the natural unity of mankind under Providence”.
Socialists
Socialists look individuals as passive particles, susceptible to being shaped. They attain to shape them through law.
“The socialist writers look upon people in the same manner that the gardener views his trees”.
“Socialists look upon people as raw material to be formed into social combinations”.
In socialism, the legislator becomes the soul of society and all individuals are regarded as people who can be shaped and instructed.
“Oh, sublime writers! Please remember sometimes that this clay, this sand, and this manure which you so arbitrarily dispose are men! They are your equals! They are intelligent and free human beings like yourselves! As you have, they have to received from God the faculty to observe, to plan ahead, to think and to judge from themselves”.
This writings and the false idea that human minds can be shaped, influence others to place themselves among mankind in order to arrange, organize, and regulate it in his own way.
What is liberty?
- Union of all liberties: conscience, education, association, press, travel, labor, and trade.
- Freedom of every individual to use his faculties as long as he does not harm other persons while doing it.
- Destruction of despotism and legal despotism.
- Restricting the law to its original purpose: individual faculties protection and punishing injustice.
Dictatorship & Omnipotence
Despotism and other forms of dictatorship (socialism, communism) turn to the law as their weapon, they only desire to make the laws in order to achieve complete power over mankind.
There is a false concept, the “superman idea”, that implies that the legislator is omnipotent and superior to the rest of the individuals. Consequently, the individuals that are being legislated start expecting that the legislator will fix everything for them.
“This will remain the case so long as human beings with feelings continue to remain passive; so long as they consider themselves incapable of bettering their prosperity and happiness by their own intelligence and their own energy; so long as they expect everything from the law; in short, so long as they imagine that their relationship to the sate is the same as that of the sheep to the shepherd”.
Because of these ideas, the responsibility of the government has become enormous. What happens then, when the government doesn’t achieve its promises? Whose fault is it?
“But make the laws upon the principle of fraternity – proclaim that all good, and all bad, stem from the law; that the law is responsible for all individual misfortunes and all social inequalities – then the door is open to an endless succession of complaints, irritations, troubles, and revolutions”.
“Law is the common force organized to act as an obstacle to injustice. Law is justice”.
Proper legislative functions:
- Protect the exercise of these rights (property, life and liberty) and to prevent any person from interfering with them.
- Its lawful domain is only required when the use of force is necessary.
- Every individual has the right to use force for lawful self-defense.
“The solution of the problems of human relationships is to be found in liberty”.