Economic Sophisms and “What Is Seen and What Is Not Seen”. Bastiat Frédéric
of 36 million) could nommer pour député (nominate as one’s representative) or se faire représenter par quelqu’un (to be represented by somebody). The latter terminology is used by Mr. Blockhead (the tax collector) to try to persuade Jacques Bonhomme that his tax money is being wisely spent by responsible political representatives in the Chamber of Deputies. Jacques Bonhomme is very skeptical and is not persuaded. We have endeavored in the translation to bring out this very different understanding of the nature of “representation,” which was Bastiat’s intention in choosing this very specific terminology.
The language of war and battle was something that Bastiat wanted to banish
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from all discussion of economic activity. In “Domination through Work” (ES2 17), he argued that it is dangerous to use metaphors drawn from war and the military to describe economic phenomena, as the former acquire wealth for a nation through violence, destruction, and killing, while the latter do it by peaceful, voluntary, and mutually beneficial exchange. He rejected such terms as invasion (of foreign goods), flood, tribute (to describe payment for foreign goods), domination (through trade), fight on equal terms, conquer, crush, be defeated (by one’s trade rivals), and machines that kill off work. He uses these military expressions throughout the sophisms in order to rebut the premises which lie behind their popular usage in the press and in debates in the Chamber, and we have followed his practice. His conclusion was unmistakable: “Bannissons de l’économie politique toutes ces expressions empruntées au vocabulaire des batailles: Lutter à armes égales, vaincre, écraser, étouffer, être battu, invasion, tribut” (Let us banish from political economy all the following expressions borrowed from a military vocabulary: to fight on equal terms, to conquer, to crush, to stifle, to be defeated, invasion, or tribute).9
Use of the Familiar “Tu” Form
As Bastiat oscillated between his more popular and humorous style of writing and his more serious and plain-speaking style, he would use quite different language. In the more lighthearted vein he would have ordinary people espouse opposing views in his constructed dialogues or plays. Sometimes he would use the familiar form of the word “you,” which in French is tu. For example, in his appeal to the workers on the streets of Paris in the early days of the 1848 Revolution, he would speak to them using tu, which we indicate in the footnotes.10
A quite interesting example is provided by the conversations between Robinson Crusoe and Friday on their island. Bastiat may have invented “Crusoe economics” as a way of making complex economic problems more understandable to ordinary readers. In their conversations about how to organize their time and labor most productively on the island, Bastiat has them address each other using tu, which suggests a certain friendship and equal status between the two, which is surprising given the historical context of European colonialism.11 We indicate in the footnotes when tu is being used.
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It is also interesting to note that Bastiat put the free trade arguments in the mouth of the native Friday and the protectionist ideas in the mouth of the European Crusoe.
Technical Economic Terms
In a work which relies so heavily on economic theory it is not surprising to come across many technical economic terms. We have tried to translate these terms consistently, but it is not always possible. A good example is the word travail, which could be translated in several ways, all of which are accurate in their own way. For example, one could use the following English words, depending on the context: “work,” “labor,” “production,” and “employment.” If there is any ambiguity, we indicate this in the footnotes.
Sometimes Bastiat makes a distinction between, on the one hand, les protectionnistes (the advocates of protectionism) and le régime de la protection (the protectionist system), and on the other hand, les prohibitionistes (the advocates of prohibiting imports) and le régime prohibitif (the system of import prohibition). He does this because French tariff policy was a mixture of numerous categories of goods the importation of which was prohibited outright in order to protect French manufacturers, and a complex system of tariffs which raised the price of imported goods to raise money for the French state as well as to give some economic advantage (protection) to French manufacturers. We have preserved Bastiat’s distinction wherever possible because it reveals the three-way split which existed in the French debate about tariffs between the free traders like Bastiat, the hard-core prohibitionists, and the protectionists.
Bastiat uses several terms for “money,” which can be confusing at times: numéraire (cash or gold coins), papier monnaie (paper money or notes), and argent (money). Bastiat makes a very clear distinction between paper money and cash (numéraire), as the European economies of his day were based upon the gold standard, and paper money was often viewed with suspicion as a result of the hyperinflation of the “assignat” paper currency during the Revolution.
There are also several different uses of the word prix (price) which need to be made clear. There is le prix d’achat (the purchase price), le prix de vente (the sale price), le prix courant (the market price), le prix de revient (the cost price), and le prix rémunérateur (the price which covers one’s costs). Very important for Bastiat is the idea of le prix débattu (the freely negotiated price), which is essential for the operation of the free market. This is a price which
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is agreed upon by two voluntary participants in an exchange who “debate” or negotiate a price which is acceptable to both parties. Both are equally free to accept or to refuse the price by concluding the bargain or walking away. Also crucial to his argument is the idea that there is a difference between real economic wealth and the accounting device (the money price) used to measure it, and thus the prix absolus (nominal or money price) of a good or service is not a true measure of the amount of wealth in a society.
Bastiat uses the terms droit, tarif, and taxe, sometimes interchangeably and sometimes reserving different meanings to each one. We have tried to be consistent in translating them as “duty” (droit), “tariff” (tarif), and “tax” (taxe) in order to preserve these sometimes subtle distinctions. It should also be kept in mind that Bastiat, like many free-market economists of the period, distinguished between a tarif protecteur (protectionist tariff) and a tarif des douanes (fiscal tariff or duty). The former, which he opposed, was designed to provide a competitive advantage to a favored manufacturer at the expense of consumers. The latter, which he supported if it was at a low rate, like 5 percent, was purely for revenue-raising purposes.
Bastiat’s References to Laissez-Faire
“The Economists,” as mid-nineteenth-century political economists like Bastiat called themselves, embraced the physiocrats’ policy prescription of laissez-faire, which requires no translation. Where the term appears in this sense, of a recommended government policy, we have left it in the French. Sometimes Bastiat uses the word laissez (leave me free to do something) as a normal French verb but often with the intention of alluding to the free-market policy prescription; for example, laissez-les faire (let them do these things), laissez-le entrer (let it freely enter), and laissez-passer (leave them free to move about). Such occurrences are indicated in the footnotes.
Industry versus Plunder: The Plundered Classes, the Plundering Class, and the People 12
The word classe is used sixy-five times by Bastiat in Economic Sophisms and What Is Seen and What Is Not Seen in at least four different senses, and the frequency of its use increases markedly during and after the 1848 Revolution,
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as Bastiat responded to the socialist critique of French society. Bastiat had his own theory of class, but he also used the word “class” in the socialists’ sense when he was engaged in rebutting their ideas. We have indicated in the footnotes the various meanings of the word “class” and Bastiat’s