The Law

I know I have a lot to learn about political philosophy, and I know of a lot of books waiting for me to be read. But the list just got thinner. I just read The Law by Frederic Bastiat and I most say: Wonderful! Anyone who can point out reading-material in a similar standard should go ahead - now!

Bastiat predicted many things which today have come, and said many things which still hold valid. Please read his following words:

The Vicious Circle of Socialism

We shall never escape from this circle: the idea of passive mankind, and the power of the law being used by a great man to propel the people.

Once on this incline, will society enjoy some liberty? (Certainly.) And what is liberty, Mr. Louis Blanc?

Once and for all, liberty is not only a mere granted right; it is also the power granted to a person to use and to develop his faculties under a reign of justice and under the protection of the law.

And this is no pointless distinction; its meaning is deep and its consequences are difficult to estimate. For once it is agreed that a person, to be truly free, must have the power to use and develop his faculties, then it follows that every person has a claim on society for such education as will permit him to develop himself. It also follows that every person has a claim on society for tools of production, without which human activity cannot be fully effective. Now by what action can society give to every person the necessary education and the necessary tools of production, if not by the action of the state?

Thus, again, liberty is power. Of what does this power consist? (Of being educated and of being given the tools of production.) Who is to give the education and the tools of production? (Society, which owes them to everyone.) By what action is society to give tools of production to those who do not own them? (Why, by the action of the state.) And from whom will the state take them?

Let the reader answer that question. Let him also notice the direction in which this is taking us.

Didn't Bastiat here, like many other free-market liberal philosophers in the 18th, 19th and 20th century, just predict the totalitarianism involved in the communist-states of the 20th century? Where the state owned all production tools and gained them by taking them from the people, and where liberty as a consequence suffered greatly. Where the system of socialism ended in sufferings of millions and kept people poor and hungry for decades. Where endless belief in government-interferance led to the near-end of individualism and the free will of men, or as close as possible to that socialistic goal.

Here's a quote especially appropriate today, although it's from the 19th century:

A Confusion of Terms

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.

I strongly recommend that everyone reads The Law and not only learns very good points about socialistic attitudes, but first and foremost the attitudes of a man who wants individuals to be free from all violence and force, as long as they don't use violence and force on others. An ideology called by the Leftists in Iceland, "nýfrjálshyggja" (neo-libertarianism, strangely enough), and has lived and will live as long as totalitarians, authoritarians, Leftists, social-democrats, Greenies or any other types of socialists walk this planet.