The Law
Frederic Bastiat
Translated by Dean Russell
“The law perverted! And the police powers of the state along with it!” Bastiat opens with this bold, cutting statement in response to French government swinging increasingly towards socialism following the revolution in 1848. He asserts that man has a natural right to his person, his liberty, and his property given by God to all. Each individual has a right to defend, by force, these rights. Law establishes an organization of these rights into framework that allows societies to exist and maintain rights for the individual.
Plunder, as defined by Bastiat, is when the property of a person or group is violated for the gain of another; as this right has been given by God, the government no more of a claim to an individual’s property than a thief does. He extends this idea to illustrate his belief that any advance by the government on one’s property, no matter the reason, is plunder as well. In establishing laws like protective tariffs, taxes, guaranteed jobs, and welfare programs, governments have perpetrated “legal plunder.” The taking of wealth from some and redistributing to others is analogous to individual thievery.
If plunder has been legalized in this way, it leads to innumerable threats to individual rights. The first of which, is a clash between those with power and those without. This can manifest by means of restricted voting, as with United States with women and slavery. It can also lead to undue pressure by legislators to attempt to accomplish what they think is best for society. If legal plunder is protected by law, it leaves the door open to a myriad of possible infringements on a person’s liberty as well. Bastiat takes aim at contemporaries like Montesquieu, Rousseau, and others, calling them presumptuous. How, he asks, do these men know better than others what is good for society and the individual?
He concludes his thoughts by arguing that once the law has been perverted to infringe on one these three natural, God given rights, the door is open and no clear line delineates where the infringement should stop. He argues that justice is a negative concept, that is to say, justice is achieved only by the absence of injustice. Law should not dictate morals, redistribute wealth, protect certain industries, or provide public welfare. Law’s proper place is to solely ensure the absence of injustice.
Bastiat’s work stands opposite to the Communist Manifesto on the spectrum of political organization. In the work he points to America as the best example of what an ideal body of laws should be, aside from the blemishes of slavery and tariffs. Today, the United States has moved farther away from the minimalist law that Bastiat admired. Social security, welfare, public schools, and health care are all things he vehemently opposed. An America that conformed to his ideals would need to exclude all of these things as well as minimum wage, workers rights laws, and public works projects. I find it hard to imagine an America without any of these things and wonder how our nation would have progressed without any of them. Although I don’t believe in such a strict minimalist law like Bastiat, his warning is very clear, with these types of laws the US is infringing on the rights of one or another groups of people. As he also pointed out, once the law does that, it’s nearly impossible to find where the line should be. A dilemma emerges-how much personal property can be taken away from an individual for the good of society as a whole? Moving forward, we as voters must understand and realize the consequences of our actions and decide just how much we want our government to preside over our daily lives.
