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’ theory that “human action” is purposeful and ultimately based upon the ideas that an individual holds, can be profitably used to deepen our knowledge and appreciation of Bastiat ideas in the late 1840s. The historian has to know what Bastiat was doing between 1844 and 1850 in order to understand what he was thinking and and why he thought the things he did. Studying the texts by themselves in not sufficient. Studying the events of his life without reference to the evolution of his ideas is also not sufficient. Bastiat provides us with a good example of an individual who had a set of well-thought out (though evolving) ideas upon which he based his actions in order to achieve certain specific goals. He modified his ideas as circumstances changed, he adapted his strategies to achieve his goals, and he cooperated with other individuals who shared his ideas and his goals. The biographical study of his life provides the historian with the information which is needed to understand his ideas, his purposes, and his strategies, as well as to evaluate his successes and failures as a man of ideas and of action. To return to Mises’ useful summary of the relationship between ideas and action in the life of a man: “Action is preceded by thinking. Thinking is to deliberate beforehand over future action and to reflect afterwards upon past action. Thinking and acting are inseparable… But thinking is always a manifestation of individuals.” This was certainly true in the case of Frédéric Bastiat.

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 the socialist movement, member of the French Chamber of Deputies during the Second Republic, and economic, political, and social theorist Frédéric Bastiat (1801-1850). An important part of Bastiat’s social theory was the idea of “plunder” (“spoliation” in French). His theory emerged in the last 3 years of his life (1847-1850) as he intensified his battle against protectionism and socialism, first as a journalist, then as a politician in the Chamber of Deputies during Second Republic, and then as an economic theorist. In this paper I would like to explore in more detail what Bastiat thought about the history of plunder and what part it plays in his social and economic theory.

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.

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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.

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