Economic Sophisms and “What Is Seen and What Is Not Seen”. Bastiat Frédéric
One is visible to the naked eye, the other only to the mind’s eye.”3
For example, we can see for ourselves imports and new technology destroying domestic jobs. We can see government spending creating jobs, and minimum wage laws raising wages. To get from these half-truths to the whole truth, however, requires considering what is not seen, except “in the mind’s eye.”
The fable of the broken window is Bastiat’s most famous illustration of the seen versus the unseen.4 The son of Jacques Bonhomme5 broke his window, and a crowd gathered. What a shame; Jacques will have to pay for another window. But wait. There is a silver lining. The window repairman will receive additional income to spend. Some merchant will then also have new income to spend, and so on. It’s a shame about the broken window, but it did set off a chain reaction of new spending, creating prosperity for many.
Hold on, cautions Bastiat. If Jacques didn’t have to replace his window, he would have spent or invested his money elsewhere. Then another merchant would have new income to spend, and so on. The spending chain initiated by the broken window happens and will be seen; the spending chain that would otherwise have happened won’t be seen. The broken window diverted spending; it didn’t increase spending. But the stimulus from the broken window was seen, and seeing is believing.
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The broken window fallacy sounds like a child’s fairy tale, yet nothing could be more relevant today. We’re told every day of the benefits of some government program or project, and most do some good. What we don’t see is how taxpayers might have spent their own money for their own good. Or, if the government spending is financed by borrowing, we probably won’t see the implications for the future burden of the additional debt, or for future inflation if the debt is monetized. We forget that governments can give to us only what they take from us.
Bastiat’s lectures on the half-truth versus the whole truth, the short run versus the long run, the part versus the whole, and the seen versus the unseen teach us the economic way of thinking. While he was steeped in classical economics, his views were also based on what he experienced empirically. All he had to do was walk around the port city of Bayonne where he was born to see firsthand the disastrous results of “protection.” The protection was protection from prosperity.
Bastiat was also influenced by the free-trade movement in England and its leader, Richard Cobden, who became a regular correspondent and firm friend for the last five years of Bastiat’s life. Bastiat wanted to do for France what Cobden was doing for England, so he became an activist, establishing free-trade associations. He entered politics and was elected to the Chamber of Deputies. Many of his speeches, pamphlets, and other articles were directed specifically to statements made by his opponents in that chamber. He named names, but he was ever the gentleman in his debates, attacking the argument rather than the person.
In debate, Bastiat not only proved his opponents wrong; he showed that their positions, when stripped to the core, were absurd. Their focus on the producer rather than the consumer led them to view less output as better than more, and more work to achieve a given end as better than less. Consumers have a stake in efficiency and productivity, and their goals are in harmony with the greater good. Producers, on the other hand, find merit in inefficiency and obstacles to productivity. They wanted to count jobs, while Bastiat wanted to make jobs count. He exposed the absurdity of the fallacy when he suggested allowing workers to use their left hands only and creating jobs by burning Paris.
Bastiat pointed out that the lawmakers who were also merchants or farmers held conflicting positions. Back home they value efficiency and productivity, trying to get the most output and income from the least labor. Yet, as legislators, they tried to make work by creating obstacles and inefficiency.
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They built roads and bridges to facilitate transportation and commerce, then put customs agents on the roads to do the opposite. He pointed out that if they farmed the way they legislated, they would use only hoes and mattocks to till the earth and eschew the plow.
The obvious question is, if Bastiat’s rhetoric was so effective, why didn’t he prevail in the Chamber? His opponents’ answer then, as now, is that these fancy notions may work in theory, but not in practice. “Go write your books, Mr. Intellectual; we are men of practical affairs.” We might, however, answer on behalf of Bastiat that, in the short term at least, the fight against protectionism was sidetracked by the outbreak of the 1848 Revolution and the rise of socialism during the Second Republic. Bastiat, like many of his free market colleagues, had other matters to attend to during this period. In the medium term, we might say that Bastiat’s free trade ideas did in fact have an impact. The signing of the Cobden-Chevalier Trade Treaty between England and France in 1860 is one important measure of the success of free trade ideas, at least in the middle of the nineteenth century. In the longer term, unfortunately, he, as do we today, underestimated the power that economic sophisms have over the popular mind in general and even over most of our legislators in particular. This confirms the importance of returning to Bastiat’s ideas, for the power of his economic arguments as well as for the enjoyment of his inimitable brilliant style. So, even after more than ten years, Bastiat remains “my intellectual hero.”
Robert McTeer
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The Collected Works of Frédéric Bastiat will be the most complete edition of Bastiat’s works published to date, in any country or in any language. The main source for this translation is the Œuvres complètes de Frédéric Bastiat, published by Guillaumin in the 1850s and 1860s.1
Although the Guillaumin edition was generally chronological, the volumes in this series have been arranged thematically:
The Man and the Statesman: The Correspondence and Articles on Politics
“The Law,” “The State,” and Other Political Writings, 1843–1850
Economic Sophisms and “What Is Seen and What Is Not Seen”
Miscellaneous Works on Economics: From “Jacques Bonhomme” to Le Journal des Économistes
Economic Harmonies
The Struggle against Protectionism: The English and French Free-Trade Movements
There are three kinds of notes in this edition: footnotes by the editor of the Guillaumin edition (Prosper Paillottet), which are preceded by “(Paillottet’s note)”; footnotes by Bastiat, which are preceded by “(Bastiat’s note)”; and new editorial footnotes to this edition, which stand alone (unless they are commenting on Paillottet’s notes, in which case they are in square brackets following Paillottet’s note). Each sophism is preceded by a detailed publishing history which consists of (1) the original title, (2) the place and date of first publication, (3) the date of the first French edition as a book or a pamphlet, (4) the location in Paillottet’s edition of the Œuvres complètes (1st ed. 1854–55), and (5) the dates of the following English translations: the first
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English (England) translation, the first American translation, and the FEE translation.
In the text, Bastiat (and Paillottet in the notes) makes many passing references to his works, for which we have provided an internal cross-reference if the work is in this volume. For those works not in this volume, we have provided the location of the orignal French version in the Œuvres complètes (indicated in a footnote by “OC,” followed by the Guillaumin volume number, beginning page number, and French title of the work).
In addition, we have made available two online sources2 for the reader to consult. The first source is a table of contents of the seven-volume Œuvres complètes with links to PDF facsimiles of each volume. The second source is our “Comparative Table of Contents of the Collected Works of Frédéric Bastiat,” which is a table of contents