Economic Harmonies

By Frédéric Bastiat

Frédéric Bastiat (1801-1850) was a French economist, statesman, and author. He was the leader of the free-trade movement in France from its inception in 1840 until his untimely death in 1850. The first 45 years of his life were spent in preparation for five tremendously productive years writing in favor of freedom. Bastiat was the founder of the weekly newspaper
Le Libre Échange, a contributor to numerous periodicals, and the author of sundry pamphlets and speeches dealing with the pressing issues of his day. Most of his writing was done in the years directly before and after the Revolution of 1848—a time when France was rapidly embracing socialism. As a deputy in the Legislative Assembly, Bastiat fought valiantly for the private property order, but unfortunately the majority of his colleagues chose to ignore him. Frédéric Bastiat remains one of the great champions of freedom whose writings retain their relevance as we continue to confront the old adversary.

Book Cover

Translator/Editor

George B. de Huszar, trans. and W. Hayden Boyers, ed.

First Pub. Date

1850

Publisher

Irvington-on-Hudson, NY: Foundation for Economic Education, Inc.

Pub. Date

1996

Comments

First published in French. Introduction by Dean Russell

Copyright

Translation and editorial content: Copyright ©: 1996 The Foundation for Economic Education, Inc. (FEE). All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. The Library of Economics and Liberty is grateful to FEE for permission to produce this book in electronic form.Picture of Frédéric Bastiat courtesy of The Warren J. Samuels Portrait Collection at Duke University.

by W. Hayden Boyers

Bibliographical Notice

Les Harmonies économiques, par Frédéric Bastiat, Paris, Guillaumin, 1850, 463 pp.

This was the first edition. It was published just a few months before Bastiat died, and was incomplete, containing only the first ten chapters.

Les Harmonies économiques, par Frédéric Bastiat, 2ème édition augmentée des manuscrits laissés par l’auteur, publiée par la Société des Amis de Bastiat (
sous la direction de P. Paillottet et R. de Fontenay), Paris, Guillaumin, 1851, xi, 567 pp.

This was the first complete edition, and no changes of any importance were subsequently made in it. Paillottet brought back from Rome (where Bastiat had died) the manuscript of the
Harmonies and had Bastiat’s commission to edit and publish the entire work.

Oeuvres complètes de Frédéric Bastiat, mises en ordre, revues et annotées d’après les manuscrits de l’auteur (
par P. Paillottet et R. de Fontenay), Paris, Guillaumin, 1854-55, 6 vols.

The
Harmonies were incorporated into this as Volume VI.

Oeuvres complètes, etc.,
2ème édition, in the series “La Bibliothèque des sciences morales et politiques,” Paris, Guillaumin, 1862-64, 7 vols.

The
Harmonies remains the sixth volume, and a seventh (
Mèlanges) is added. This has remained the standard edition. Reprints of various volumes, given special “edition” numbers, and sometimes with slight differences in pagination, appeared at various times through 1893.

The edition of the
Harmonies used by the translator is
Les Harmonies èconomiques, par Frèdèric Bastiat, 6ème édition, Paris, Guillaumin, 1870. It is still listed as Volume VI in the
Oeuvres complètes, 2ème edition. The translator also consulted the 1862 and 1884 editions of the
Harmonies and found no significant variants. The Appendix letter, entitled “A Tentative Preface to the
Harmonies,” was consulted in the
Oeuvres complètes, 2ème edition, Vol. VII, 1861, pp. 303 ff.

W. Hayden Boyers

Frédéric Bastiat: Ideas and Influence (Foundation for Economic Education, 1963).

All translations in this Introduction are from the original French. Thus, my selection of words will doubtless differ somewhat from those chosen by the translator of the text. That, of course, is of no consequence.

Notes to “To the Youth of France”

[“I, too, am a painter,” supposedly the young Correggio’s words when he first saw Raphael’s painting of Saint Cecilia.—Translator.]

[As the ensuing pages of this book make clear, Bastiat uses the words “political economy” and the “economists” to designate in a general way the “classical” school of economists to which he himself gave allegiance. These include the eighteenth-century “physiocrats”: Quesnay (
Tableau èconomique, 1759), Mercier de la Rivière, Dupont de Nemours, Le Trôsne, Mirabeau, Condorcet, and Turgot; the “English School”: Adam Smith, Malthus, John Stuart Mill, Senior, Scrope, and Ricardo; and his own French contemporaries: Jean-Baptiste Say, Pellegrino Rossi, Garnier, and others less well known who held similar views on wealth and free exchange. See also Bastiat’s comments in chapter 9.—Translator.]

[Thomas Robert Malthus (1766-1834), English economist. Cf. chapter 16 for Bastiat’s discussion of his
Essay on the Principle of Population.—Translator.]

[David Ricardo (1772-1823), English economist of the classical school.—Translator.]

[Alexis Charles Henri Clérel de Tocqueville (1805-1859), statesman and author of numerous significant books.—Translator.]

[“Socialists,” “egalitarians,” “communists”: In France, before the time of Karl Marx, of course, these terms were used, as Bastiat uses them, to refer generally to those political theorists advocating collectivism primarily as a means to advance equality. Before and during the Revolution they included Morelly (
Code de la nature, 1755); Mably (
Doutes…. sur l’ordre naturel et essentiel des sociétés politiques, 1768); Babeuf, founder of the society of “the Equals” (executed in 1797), and his later followers: Philippe Buonarroti, Armand Barbès, Martin Bernard, and Louis Auguste Blanqui. Bastiat also includes as sharers of these ideas his contemporary “planners of artificial social orders”: Fourier, Louis Blanc, Considérant, Cabet, Owen, and Saint-Simon. (Cf. notes on Fourier, Louis Blanc, Owen, and Cabet, chapter 1, p. 11; on Proudhon, chapter 5, p. 128; on Considérant, p. 550.)—Translator.]

See preceding footnote.

10.

See footnote
supra on “socialists.”

Chapter 1

I can illustrate this law more clearly by figures. Let us take three periods during which capital increases while labor remains constant, and let us represent total production in each of the three periods as: 80-100-120. The distribution will be as follows:

	Capital’s Share	Labor’s Share	Total
First period	45	35	80
Second period	50	50	100
Third period	55	65	120

Of course, these ratios are intended to serve only as an illustration.

NOTES TO CHAPTER 1

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