Harmonies of Political Economy

Frédéric Bastiat

• Publisher: Jazzybee Verlag
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9783849648787
• Topic: Economics
• Subtopic: Economic History
• Index: Economics

"Harmonies of Political Economy", the last and principal work of Frédéric Bastiat, has been translated by Mr. Stirling, who says of it, "This great work, the child of Bastiat's anxious hopes, the subject of his dying thoughts, .... is perhaps the most important and the most original contribution which the science of Political Economy has received sinco the days of Adam Smith." Its design is thus explained in the author's own words: "I undertake in this work, " he says, "to demonstrate the harmony of those laws of Providence which govern human society. What makes these laws harmonious and not discordant is, that all principles, all motives, all springs of action, all interests, cooperate towards a grand final result, which humanity will never reach by reason of its native imperfection, but to which it will always approximate more and more by reason of its unlimited capability of improvement. And that result is, the indefinite approximation of all classes towards a level, which is always rising; in other words, the equalization of individuals in the general amelioration."

V. OF VALUE.

All dissertations are wearisome—a dissertation on Value the most wearisome of all.

What unpractised writer, who has had to face an Economic problem, but has tried to resolve it without reference to any definition of value?

Yet he soon finds he has engaged in a vain attempt. The theory of Value is to Political Economy what numeration is to arithmetic. In what inextricable confusion would not Bezout have landed himself, if, to save labour to his pupils, he had undertaken to teach them the four rules and proportion, without having previously explained the value which the figures derive from their form and position?

The truth is, if the reader could only foresee the beautiful consequences deducible from the theory of Value, he would undertake the labour of mastering the first principles of Economical Science with the same cheerfulness that one submits to the drudgery of Geometry, in prospect of the magnificent field which it opens to our intelligence.

But this intuitive foresight is not to be expected; and the more pains I should take to establish the distinction between Value and Utility, or between Value and Labour, in order to show how natural it is that this should form a stumbling-block at the very threshold of the science, the more wearisome I should become. The reader would see in such a discussion only barren and idle subtleties, calculated at best to satisfy the curiosity of Economists by profession.

You are inquiring laboriously, it may be said, whether wealth consists in the Utility of things, or in their Value, or in their rarity. Is not this like the question of the schoolmen, Does form reside in the substance or in the accident? Are you not afraid that some street Molière will hold you up to public ridicule at the Théâtre des Variétés?

Yet truth obliges me to say that, in an economical point of view, Society is Exchange. The primary element of Exchange is the notion of Value, so that every truth and every error which this word introduces into men’s minds is a social truth or error.

I undertake in this work to demonstrate the Harmony of those laws of Providence which govern human society. What makes these laws harmonious and not discordant is, that all principles, all motives, all springs of action, all interests, co-operate towards a grand final result, which humanity will never reach by reason of its native imperfection, but to which it will always approximate more and more by reason of its unlimited capability of improvement. And that result is, the indefinite approximation of all classes towards a level, which is always rising; in other words, the equalization of individuals in the general amelioration.

But to attain my object. I must explain two things, namely,

1st, That Utility has a tendency to become more and more gratuitous, more and more common, as it gradually recedes from the domain of individual appropriation.

2d, That Value, on the other hand, which alone is capable of appropriation, which alone constitutes property legitimately and in fact, has a tendency to diminish more and more in relation to the utility to which it is attached.

Such a demonstration—founded on Property, but only on the property of which Value is the subject, and on Community, but only on the community of utility,—such a demonstration, I say, must satisfy and reconcile all schools, by conceding to them that all have had a glimpse of the truth, but only of partial truth, regarded from different points of view.

Economists! you defend property. There is in the social order no other property than that of which Value is the subject, and that is immovable and unassailable.

Communists! you dream of Community. You have got it. The social order renders all utilities common, provided the exchange of those values which have been appropriated is free.

You are like architects who dispute about a monument of which each has seen only one side. They don’t see ill, but they don’t see all. To make them agree, it is only necessary to ask them to walk round the edifice.

But how am I to reconstruct the social edifice, so as to exhibit to mankind all its beautiful harmony, if I reject its two corner stones. Utility and Value? How can I bring about the desired reconciliation of various schools upon the platform of truth if I shun the analysis of these two ideas, although the dissidence has arisen from the unhappy confusion which they have caused?

I have felt this kind of introduction necessary, in order, if possible, to secure from the reader a moment’s attention, and relieve him from fatigue and ennui. I am much mistaken if the consoling beauty of the consequences will not amply make up for the dryness of the premises. Had Newton allowed himself to be repulsed at the outset by a distaste for elementary mathematics, never would his heart have beat with rapture on beholding the harmonies of the celestial mechanism; and I maintain that it is only necessary to make our way manfully to an acquaintance with certain first principles, in order to be convinced that God has displayed in the social mechanism goodness no less touching, simplicity no less admirable, splendour no less magnificent.

In the first chapter we viewed man as both active and passive, and we saw that Want and Satisfaction, acting on sensibility alone, were in their own nature personal, peculiar, and intransmissible; that Effort, on the contrary, the connecting link between Want and Satisfaction, the mean term between the motive principle of action and the end we have in view, proceeding from our activity, our spontaneity, our will, was susceptible of conventions and of transmission. I know that, metaphysically, no one can contest this assertion, and maintain that Effort also is personal. I have no desire to enter the territory of ideology, and I hope that my view of the subject will be admitted without controversy when put in this vulgar form:—We cannot feel the wants of others—we cannot feel the satisfactions of others; but we can render service one to another.

It is this transmission of efforts, this exchange of services, which forms the subject of Political Economy; and since, on the other hand, economical science is condensed and summed up in the word Value, of which it is only a lengthened explanation, it follows that the notion of value would be imperfectly, erroneously, conceived if we were to found it upon the extreme phenomena of our sensibility—namely, our Wants and Satisfactions—phenomena which are personal, intransmissible, and incommensurable as between two individuals, in place of founding it on the manifestations of our activity, upon efforts, upon reciprocal services, which are interchanged because they are susceptible of being compared, appreciated, estimated, and which are capable of being estimated precisely because they are capable of being interchanged.

In the same chapter we arrived at the following formulas:—

“Utility (the property which certain things and certain acts have of serving us, of being useful to us) is complex,—one part we owe to the action of nature, another to the action of man.”—“With reference to a given result, the more nature has done the less remains for human action to do.”—“The co-operation of nature is essentially gratuitous—the co-operation of man, whether intellectual or muscular, exchanged or not, collective or solitary, is essentially onerous, as indeed the word Effort implies.”

And as what is gratuitous cannot possess value, since the idea of value implies onerous acquisition, it follows that the notion of Value would be still erroneously conceived, if we were to extend it, in whole or in part, to the gifts or to the co-operation of nature, instead of restricting it exclusively to human co-operation.

Thus, from both sides, by two different roads, we arrive at this conclusion, that value must have reference to the efforts which men make in order to obtain the satisfaction of their wants.

In the third chapter we have established that man cannot exist in a state of isolation. But if, by an effort of imagination, we fancy him placed in that chimerical situation, that state contrary to nature, which the writers of the eighteenth century extolled as the state of nature, we shall not fail to see that it does not disclose to us the idea of Value, although it presents the manifestation of the active principle which we have termed effort. The reason is obvious. Value implies comparison, appreciation, estimation, measure. In order that two things should measure each other, it is necessary that they be commensurable, and, in order to that, they must be of the same kind. In a state of isolation, with what could we compare effort? With want? With satisfaction? In that case, we could go no farther than to pronounce that the effort was more or less appropriate, more or less opportune. In the social state, what we compare (and it is this comparison which gives rise to the idea of Value) is the effort of one man with the effort of another man,—two phenomena of the same nature, and, consequently, commensurable.

Thus, the definition of the word Value, in order to be exact, must have reference not only to human efforts, but likewise to those efforts which are exchanged or exchangeable. Exchange does more than exhibit and measure values—it gives them existence. I do not mean to say that it gives existence to the acts and the things which are exchanged, but it imparts to their existence the notion of value.

Now, when two men transfer to each other their present efforts, or make over mutually the results of their anterior efforts, they serve each other; they render each other reciprocal service.

I say, then, Value is the relation of two services exchanged.

The idea of value entered into the world the first time that a man having said to his brother, Do this for me, and I shall do that for you—they have come to an agreement; for then, for the first time, we could say—The two services exchanged are worth each other.

It is singular enough that the true theory of value, which we search for in vain in many a ponderous volume, is to be found in Florian’s beautiful fable of l’Aveugle et le Paralytique,—

Aidons—nous mutuellement,

La charge des malheurs en sera plus légère.

. . . . . . . . . . A nous deux

Nous possédons le bien à chacun nécessaire.

J’ai des jambes, et vous des yeux.

Moi, je vais vous porter; vous, vous serez mon guide:

Ainsi, sans que jamais notre amitié décide

Qui de nous deux remplit le plus utile emploi,

Je marcherai pour vous, vous y verrez pour moi.

Here you have value discovered and defined. Here you have it in its rigorous economic exactitude, excepting the touching trait relative to friendship, which carries us into another sphere, that of sympathy. We may conceive two unfortunates rendering each other reciprocal service, without inquiring too curiously which of the two discharged the most useful employment. The exceptional situation imagined by the fabulist explains sufficiently that the principle of sympathy, acting with great force, comes to absorb, so to speak, the minute appreciation of the services exchanged—an appreciation, however, which is indispensable in order to disengage completely the idea of Value. That idea would be complete if all men, or the majority of them, were struck with paralysis or blindness; for the inexorable law of supply and demand would then predominate, and, causing the permanent sacrifice accepted by him who fulfils the more useful employment to disappear, would restore the transaction to the domain of justice.

We are all blind or impotent in some respects, and we soon come to understand that, by assisting each other, the burden of misfortune is lightened. Hence Exchange. We labour in order to feed, clothe, shelter, enlighten, cure, defend, instruct one another. Hence reciprocal Services. We compare, we discuss, we estimate or appreciate these services. Hence Value.

A multitude of circumstances may augment the relative importance of a Service. We find it greater or less, according as it is more or less useful to us—according as a greater or less n...