‘The Law’: The Case against the State
A review of ‘The Law’, by Frédéric Bastiat; Ludwig von Mises Institute, 2011.
We have Freddie Bastiat to thank or blame for bringing classical liberalism to the masses. Locke, Smith, Hume did the deep thinking, but Bastiat set out the stall in a way that captured the imagination. He published countless essays that he written in a clear and clever style, often using metaphor, example and analogy to hammer his point home. Writing about 60 years after the revolutionaries in France trashed the place, Bastiat was just as keen on swaying the masses as the intellectual class.
In The Law, first published in 1850, Bastiat argues that the proper role of the state is to protect the right of the individual — that is his life, liberty and property — and otherwise sod off. When the law strays from this end and becomes a means of ‘legal plunder’, it not only fails in its duty but takes on an actively harmful form. For when the law takes from me to give to you (as lovely as you no doubt are, dear reader), it violates the very rights it exists to defend. Taxation, subsidies, regulation — all amount to legal plunder.
Writing about 60 years after the revolutionaries in France trashed the place, Bastiat was just as keen on swaying the masses as the intellectual class.
This dangerous expansion of state power, Bastiat claims, undermines the moral fabric of society. It erodes and devalues justice; it exalts one group or person at the cost of another; … In so doing, it erodes and devalues personal responsibility, creates dependency, and produces bitterness and conflict. He believes passionately in a night-watchman state: a neutral arbiter which, likes Hobbes’ leviathan, exists solely to prevent a war of all against all. It is, then a classical liberal polemic — or, if you prefer, a libertarian or ‘minarchist’ polemic. Bastiat’s theme is not so much that state intervention tends to makes things worse, as many of his ilk are apt to claim, but that the government’s involvement in our lives is plain wrong. His case is not pragmatic but moral, which is a big reason for its force and appeal.
It is amusing to read this now. For British conservatives like Sir Roger Scruton, individual freedom is a byproduct of social order which institutions, including the state, uphold. In this he draws on ideas espoused in Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France, which, against the bizarrely childish thoughts of Jean-Jacques Rousseau in respect of human nature, include the notion that in a state of disorder there is no freedom. For post-liberals like Patrick Deneen, in the kind of world that Bastiat champions all common bonds — family, faith, flag — are soon swept away by a great tidal wave of individualism, helped along by the commercialisation of everything. In such a culture (our, Western, culture, says Deneen), we end up lonely, purposeless and sad.
In the kind of world that Bastiat champions all common bonds — family, faith, flag — are soon swept away.
I am going to stay with Deneen for a moment because of an observation he makes about the young United States of America. Alexis de Tocqueville, in his Democracy in America, heaps praise on that classical liberal society, and is often read and quoted by classical liberal and libertarian types for that reason. But as Deneen shows, de Tocqueville calls a great deal of attention to the piety and neighbourliness of those Americans, without whose strong bonds, he suggests, the society might not have worked. I would add to that remark that it was hardly as if those yanks could order off Amazon or encounter wacky new ideas through the internet. Their circumstances were highly conducive to the forming of close ties.
Context is everything. Asked what would constitute the ideal state, Solon is supposed to have said, ‘For whom? And at what time?’ What works in one place, at one point in history might not work for another place, and might not work 100 years hence. At the moment, conservatives in my country wish to copy the Sweden way of tackling immigration. (Sweden is the only country in Europe with net migration of less than zero — ie, people are leaving.) Our current Labour prime minister, Sir Keir Starmer, is already asking Giorgia Meloni how she cracked that particular nut in Italy. But what worked for the Italians might not work for us. Sweden (again) did not lock down during the Covid pandemic and had the lowest mortality in Europe from 2020 to 2022. Perhaps they got it right, as many are saying. Or perhaps there is something special about Sweden. We just don’t know.
Asked what would constitute the ideal state, Solon is supposed to have said, ‘For whom? And at what time?’
Bastiat’s view will strike many as simplistic; but The Law is, after all, a polemic — Bastiat is making a case, and a point — and, at the very least, he asks us to think about the role of the state, about our rights and duties, and about what amounts to freedom. He was unimpressed with what he saw unfolding in post-revolutionary France. There was (ironically, but predictably) too much power in too few hands and too little thought for the natural rights of the people. His logic is faultless. His humour is bone-dry and almost palpable; he seems almost amused by how far people will go to avoid what he sees as a simple truth: that the state ought to know its place. Bastiat is particularly scathing when he gets to the utopian thinkers of his day, accusing them of dreaming up systems where the government magically solves all human problems, sod the actual workings of human nature.
It is a slim volume, and a masterclass in concision and clarity. He writes simply, directly. It is, if you like, surgical. There is not a wasted word: we might say this is fitting for a man who believed in a minimal state. There is something very admirable about a writer whose style and tone reflect his content. Bastiat gets to the point, makes it, then moves on to the next one. So really, reader, you have no excuse not to read this clever, entertaining, thunderstorm of a book.
