Bastiat

My Research on the Paris School

Part I: The Rise of “The Economists” and the Heyday of the Paris School in the First Half of the 19th Century Part II: The Late 19th Century and the Decline of “The School of Liberty” Part III: Texts and Editions Some blog posts in which I which summarise my thoughts: “ An Introduction to … Read more

Frédéric Bastiat’s Philosophy of Markets

Introduction The French political economist, politician, and journalist Frédéric Bastiat (1801-1850) placed “markets” and mutually beneficial “exchange” at the very heart of of his theory of economics which he elaborated in a two volume collection of essays Sophismes économiques (Economic Sophisms) (1846, 1848), a long essay on “La Loi” (The Law) (1850), and his unfinished … Read more

Lectures and Talks I have given at the Centre for Independent Studies

Below is a list of lectures and talks I have given at the CIS over the years: L&S Conference: “The Classical Liberal Tradition: A Four Hundred Year History of Ideas and Movements”, Liberty and Society Conference (6-8 May 2022): lecture slides PDF and supporting blog posts “Unfortunately, Hardly anyone listens to the Economists”: The Battle … Read more

Bastiat on the Seen and the Unseen

Bastiat is justly famous for the idea of “the seen” (ce qu’on voit) and “the unseen” (ce qu’on ne voit pas) which was the title of the last book he wrote before his untimely death on Christmas Eve 1850. It was an original contribution to the idea of opportunity cost (which Tony de Jasay believed … Read more

My “Farewell to America” tour (January 2020)

As part of my “Farewell to America” tour in January 2020 I gave the following talks and papers on my way back to Australia: On Bastiat at the Political Economy Project at Dartmouth College, New Hampshire On Bastiat at the American Institute for Economic Research, Great Barrington, Massachusetts On classical liberal class analysis at the … Read more

Papers given at the Libertarian Scholars Conference, NYC, 21 Sept. 2019.

Was Molinari a true Anarcho-Capitalist? (1.) “Was Molinari a true Anarcho-Capitalist?: An Intellectual History of the Private and Competitive Production of Security”. A paper given at the Libertarian Scholars Conference, NYC, 21 Sept. 2019 [Full paper HTML and PDF – Slides – Handout ]. See the abstract of the paper below. Some Thoughts on an … Read more

Some Key Terms used by Bastiat in his Economic Theory

Here are the “concept maps” or what I call “vocabulary clusters” of some of Bastiat’s key ideas which I have drawn up to assist me in my editing and translating work. I have done ones for Class, Disturbing Factors, Harmony and Disharmony, Human Action, and Plunder (images below). What the digitization of the collected works … Read more

The Books on Harmony and Disharmony Bastiat never wrote

It is not well known that Bastiat planned to write a multi-volume treatise on “the harmonies” and “the disharmonies” which he observed at work both in the economy and in the broader society which surrounded it. This treatise would have a volume or volumes on the “social harmonies,” the “economic harmonies”, and the various “disharmonies” … Read more

Frédéric Bastiat (1810-1850): A Life in Images

Paris from Above: the Three Barriers around the city in the 1840s The Inner Circle: the octroi tax wall and barriers The Octroi gate and wall at Belleville Pulling down the Octroi Gates and walls in 1859 The Militatry Wall built by Adolphe Thers 1841-44 A photograph of the Military Wall at the Versailles Entry … Read more

“Broken Windows”: A Screenplay about the Life and Work of Bastiat

Films about Ideas and Revolutions This screenplay is designed to be the classical liberal or libertarian equivalent of Warren Beatty’s brilliant but very left-wing movie Reds (1981) about the life of the American communist journalist John Reed (1887-1920) before and during the Russian Revolution of 1917. See his famous account Ten Days That Shook the … Read more

Bastiat’s Theory of Class

Bastiat’s Theory of Class: The Plunderers vs. the Plundered.” This is the Introductory Essay for a bi-lingual edition of Frédéric Bastiat’s writings on class and plunder which is in preparation. It is an attempt to reconstruct from his scattered writings on class the History of Plunder he planned to write but never did. The anthology … Read more

The Economic Thought of Gustave de Molinari, 1845-1855

[Paris being encircled by the State: “The Fortifications of Paris and its Environs as adopted by the Chambers” (1841)
. The pink area is the old part of the city which is surrounded by a customs wall with entry gates which was build in the 1780s to help the Farmers General collect taxes. The orange area … Read more

Reassessing Frédéric Bastiat as an Economic and Social Theorist

Most economists and social theorists, if they have ever heard of him, dismiss Frédéric Bastiat as a light-weight theorist. Joseph Schumpeter summed up the consensus view in 1954 describing him as “no theorist at all” with the very witty but false put down, that he was a clever journalist who got out of his depth … Read more

Frédéric Bastiat (1801-1850) and Rethinking Classical Economics in the mid-19th Century

Talk given to a Conference on “A Brief History of Economic Thought,” Institute for Liberal Studies, The University of Toronto, Bahen Centre Friday 29 September, 2012 Online here Abstract: The decade or so 1845-1856 saw a major re-thinking taking place in the nature of classical economic thought in France. The first generation of 19th century … Read more

Cato Institute Book Forum: The Collected Works of Frédéric Bastiat, vol. 1

Online here Abstract: This was a talk I gave at the Cato Institute Book Forum on the occasion of the publication of vol. 1 of Liberty Fund’s 6 volume Collected Works of Frédéric Bastiat in October 2011. The volume contains his correspondence and many political essays. In the correspondence we see him moving from being … Read more

Is Biography History? The Relationship between Ideas and Human Action in the Life of Frédéric Bastiat (1801-1850)

A paper given at the Historical Society’s 2012 Conference, University of South Carolina, Columbia, South Carolina, 1 June, 2012 June 1. Online here Abstract: “Is Biography History?” My conclusion is that the life of FB is a good example of how the “biography of ideas” developed by Ashcraft for Locke and Scott for Sidney, and Mises’ … Read more

Frédéric Bastiat’s Distinction between Legal and Illegal Plunder

A Paper given at the Molinari Society Session “Explorations in Philosophical Anarchy” at the Pacific Meeting of the American Philosophical Society, Seattle WA, 7 April, 2012. http://davidmhart.com/liberty/Papers/Bastiat/Bastiat_LegalPlunder.html Abstract: This paper comes out of a larger research and publishing project on the life and work of the French advocate for free trade, economic journalist, arch-critic of … Read more

Opposing Economic Fallacies, Legal Plunder, and the State: Frédéric Bastiat’s Rhetoric of Liberty in the Economic Sophisms (1846-1850)

Bastiat_1848SophismesEconomiques_TP

A Paper given at the History of Economic Thought Society of Australia (HETSA) annual meeting, RMIT Melbourne, Victoria, July 5-8, 2011.

Online here.

This paper examines the origin, content, and form of Bastiat’s Economic Sophisms which will comprise volume 3 of Liberty Fund’s translation of his Collected Works. It is argued that in opposing the economic sophisms which he saw around him Bastiat developed a unique “rhetoric of liberty” in order to make his case for economic liberty. For the idea of debunking “fallacies”, he drew upon the work of Jeremy Bentham on “political fallacies” and Col. Perronnet Thomas on “corn law fallacies”; for his use of informal “conversations” to appeal to less well-informed readers, he drew upon the work of two women popularizers of economic ideas, Jane Marcet and Harriet Martineau.

Read more

On Ricochets, Hidden Channels, and Negative Multipliers: Bastiat on Calculating the Economic Costs of ‘The Unseen’.

Bastiat-fromDEP300

A Paper given at the “History of Thought” Session of the Society for the Development of Austrian Economics. 
Southern Economic Association 83rd Annual Meeting,
November 23-25, 2013
Tampa, Florida

The paper is online here

In this paper I would like to examine a theory Bastiat developed in the latter years of his life (1847-1850) on calculating the costs and benefits of what he called “the unseen”. This is an important part of Bastiat’s economic theory which has been ignored by researchers to date, partly because the relevant articles were not included in the FEE translation of his Economic Sophisms (but which will be included in LF’s new translation of the complete Sophisms), partly because of mistranslations of those that have been translated (the key word “ricochet” was often translated figuratively, often as “indirect” or “rebounds”, and not as the technical economic word Bastiat intended it to be), and partly because a full electronic version of his complete works did not exist until recently when comprehensive key word searches could be used for the first time to uncover the rich and colorful vocabulary Bastiat used in formulating his ideas on this topic.

Read more

Gustave de Molinari and the Seven Musketeers of French Political Economy

7Musketeers

See the full paper at my main website.

This is part of a book-length “introduction” (300 pp.) I have written to the translation of Molinari’s Les Soirées de la rue Saint-Lazare (1849). It includes a brief biography of Molinari; a discussion of the struggle against protection in France from the 1820s to the late 1840s; the socialist attack on private property and the legitimacy of profit, interest and rent in the 1840s; a brief history of the popularisation of economic theory and the role played by the “conversation” format; Molinari’s and the economists’ activities during the 1848 Revolution; and Molinari’s theory of liberty and the “natural laws” of political economy which he presents in Les Soirées.

Abstract: In Paris in the 1840s there emerged a very special and unique collection of individuals who came together to promote classical liberal and free market thought and to fight socialism and interventionism. I call them “the Seven Musketeers” of French political economy. The term “Musketeer” comes from Gérard Minart’s new biography of Gustave de Molinari (2012) in which he described Frédéric Bastiat, Molinari, and 2 other colleagues (Guillaumin, Coquelin) as “The Four Musketeers”. This is quite appropriate as Dumas’ popular novel came out in 1844 [it was serialised in Le Siècle] and Bastiat, like D’Artagnan, came from the south-west province of Gascony. These economists formed a close band of liberal intellectuals and activists in Paris who were fighting protectionism and socialism not the Protestant enemies of the King of France as the original Musketeers were. My research has revealed that 7 individuals actually fit this description. They are made up of two generations who were key figures in the classical liberal and political economy movement. The 1st were born around 1800 and were in their mid to late 40s in 1848; the 2nd were born around 1820 and were in their late 20s in 1848.

Read more

The Bastiat Monument in Mugron, 1878

Bastiat_Statue_Postcard432

(A Monument erected to the memory of Bastiat was unveiled in Mugron, 23 April, 1878.)

After Bastiat’s death on Christmas Eve 1850 his friend Prosper Paillottet went through Bastiat’s papers in order to get them organized for a printing of his collected works. Six volumes of the first edition appeared in 1854-55. A second edition with an additional 7th volume appeared in 1862-64 and it was this edition which was reprinted several times during the 19th century. Many of Bastiat’s other single volume works were kept in print by the Guillaumin publishing firm during this time as well, especially the Economic Harmonies. His friends and colleagues wanted to do more for his memory than to just keep his books in print. It was decided to raise money (privately of course) to design a statue of him which would be erected in his home town of Mugron. The illustration on the cover of volume 1 of Liberty Fund’s edition of his Collected Works shows a postcard of the Place Bastiat in the town of Mugron where the statue was displayed.

Read more

Bastiat’s use of Literature in Defense of Free Markets

Date: 14 April, 2015

“Literature IN Economics, and Economics AS Literature I: Bastiat’s use of Literature in Defense of Free Markets and his Rhetoric of Economic Liberty.”

A paper given at the Association of Private Enterprise Education International Conference (April 12-14, 2015), Cancún, Mexico. HTML and PDF.

FontainMoliere450

The fountain dedicated to Molière on the rue de Richelieu, Paris where the publishing firm Guillaumin was located. They published all of Bastiat’s books.

Abstract: In this paper I will show how one economist used literature in creative and amusing ways to assist him in defending free trade and free markets from their intellectual and political opponents in France during the 1840s. The economic journalism which Frédéric Bastiat produced at this time is some of the best ever written and is still a model for economists today. His knowledge of both high and low French culture and literature was extensive, drawing upon the plays of Molière and the fables of La Fontaine at one end of the spectrum, as well as the political drinking songs and poems of Béranger at the other. These are all examples of Bastiat’s use of “literature in economics”.

Read more

The Economics of Robinson Crusoe from Defoe to Rothbard

Date: 14 April, 2015

“Literature IN Economics, and Economics AS Literature II: The Economics of Robinson Crusoe from Defoe to Rothbard by way of Bastiat.”

Crusoe1805

A paper given at the Association of Private Enterprise Education International Conference (April 12-14, 2015), Cancún, Mexico. HTML and PDF. An earlier working title was “Robinson Crusoe and Praxeology: A History”.

Abstract: Daniel Dafoe’s novel The Life and Strange Adventures of Robinson Crusoe of York, Marriner (1719) has provided economists and social theorists with a rich and seemingly infinitely broad canvas on which they can paint whatever picture they like of the nature of economic activity. In addition to Dafoe’s own economically informed, English Protestant original story, there have been Marxist, feminist, post-colonial, neo-classical, as well as Austrian accounts of the activities of the man ship-wrecked on the Island of Despair. These have been termed “Robinsonades” or “Crusoe economics.”

Read more

The Liberal Roots of American Conservatism

Date: 28 March, 2015 “The Liberal Roots of American Conservatism: Bastiat and the French Connection.” A paper given to the Philadelphia Society meeting March 27-29, 2015 on “The Roots of American Conservatism – and its Future”. HTML and PDF Abstract: The paper discusses the contribution to American conservative thought of the economist Frédéric Bastiat (1801–1850) … Read more

The changing Optics of Bastiat Studies

Date: 1 Dec. 2014

A paper on “Seeing the ‘Unseen’ Bastiat: the changing Optics of Bastiat Studies. Or, what the Liberty Fund’s Translation Project is teaching us about Bastiat” given to the “Colloquium on Market Institutions & Economic Processes” at NYU

Bastiat-fromDEP300

Abstract: The translation project being undertaken by Liberty Fund to translate the Collected Works of Frédéric Bastiat provides us with an opportunity to reassess the work of this mid-19th century French political economist. This paper examines the changing perception of Bastiat’s work from the late 1840s until the conference held in Mugron in June 2001 to celebrate the 200th anniversary of his birth when the decision was made to translate into English all of his available work for the first time. His contemporaries recognized his talents as a brilliant economic journalist, a free trade activist, and an elected politician who dabbled in economic theory but died in 1850 before he could complete his work. His reputation went into decline for the next 100 years as his approach to economics went against first the classical and then the neo-classical schools. Except for a very few economists like W.S. Jevons Bastiat was dismissed as a serious economic theorist. Joseph Schumpeter summed up the consensus view in 1954 describing him as not a theorist at all.

Read more

The French Connection: Say to Jasay

Date: 23 Sept. 2014

A paper on “Negative Railways, Turtle Soup, talking Pencils, and House owning Dogs”: ‘The French Connection’ and the Popularization of Economics from Say to Jasay.” HTML

anthony_de_jasay250

A much shorter version of this essay will appear in a special issue of The Independent Review in June 2015.

Read more

Interview about the Bastiat translation project

Date: 30 August, 2014 This is an interview I gave in Nov. 2013 about my work on the Bastiat Translation Project. I have only just now edited it to go online. It lasts for 12 mins. Page with video embedded. Summary: This is an interview conducted by Liberty Fund staff of Dr. David M. Hart … Read more