Claude Frederic Bastiat was a prominent mid nineteenth century economist, classical liberal political and legal theorist, and member of the French Assembly. Bastiat was a strong supporter of free trade, regularly criticising protectionist arguments, and famously lampooning them in the satirical Candle-makers’ Petition (a request from candle-makers to block out the sun). He is often cited as the originator of the economic concept of “opportunity cost”, most famously illustrated by his Parable of the Broken Window.

Bastiat’s approach to economics, and his liberal political philosophy, have made him something of a forebear to libertarianism generally, and the Austria School of Economics in particular. Despite having a relatively short ‘economic career’ (from 1844 to his untimely death at 49 from tuberculosis in 1850), he produced a significant volume of essays including Economic Sophisms, Selected Essays on Political Economy, What is Seen and What is Unseen, Economic Harmonies and The Law, all of which remain influential to this day.

1) “The State is the great fiction through which everyone endeavours to live at the expense of everyone else.”

Selected Essays on Political Economy (1848)

2) “Either fraternity is spontaneous, or it does not exist. To decree it is to annihilate it. The law can indeed force men to remain just; in vain would it would try to force them to be self-sacrificing.”

Justice and Fraternity, in Journal des Economistes (15/06/1848)

3) “When under the pretext of fraternity, the legal code imposes mutual sacrifices on the citizens, human nature is not thereby abrogated. Everyone will then direct his efforts toward contributing little to, and taking much from, the common fund of sacrifices. Now, is it the most unfortunate who gains from this struggle? Certainly not, but rather the most influential and calculating.”

Justice and Fraternity, in Journal des Economistes (15/06/1848)

4) “By virtue of exchange, one man’s prosperity is beneficial to all others.”

Economic Harmonies (1850)

5) “Competition is merely the absence of oppression.”

Economic Harmonies (1850)

6) “Society loses the value of objects unnecessarily destroyed,” and at this aphorism, which will make the hair of the protectionists stand on end: “To break, to destroy, to dissipate is not to encourage national employment,” or more briefly: “Destruction is not profitable.”

The Broken Window, from What is Seen and What is Unseen (1850)

7) “Try to imagine a regulation of labor imposed by force that is not a violation of liberty; a transfer of wealth imposed by force that is not a violation of property. If you cannot reconcile these contradictions, then you must conclude that the law cannot organize labor and industry without organizing injustice.”

The Law (1850)

8) “Socialism, like the ancient ideas from which it springs, confuses the distinction between government and society. As a result of this, every time we object to a thing being done by government, the socialists conclude that we object to its being done at all. We disapprove of state education. Then the socialists say that we are opposed to any education. We object to a state religion. Then the socialists say that we want no religion at all. We object to a state-enforced equality. Then they say that we are against equality. And so on, and so on. It is as if the socialists were to accuse us of not wanting persons to eat because we do not want the state to raise grain.”

The Law (1850)

9) “If the natural tendencies of mankind are so bad that it is not safe to permit people to be free, how is it that the tendencies of these organizers are always good? Do not the legislators and their appointed agents also belong to the human race? Or do they believe that they themselves are made of a finer clay than the rest of mankind?”

The Law (1850)

10) “It seems to me that this is theoretically right, for whatever the question under discussion—whether religious, philosophical, political, or economic; whether it concerns prosperity, morality, equality, right, justice, progress, responsibility, cooperation, property, labor, trade, capital, wages, taxes, population, finance, or government—at whatever point on the scientific horizon I begin my researches, I invariably reach this one conclusion: The solution to the problems of human relationships is to be found in liberty.”

The Law (1850)