Harmonies of Political Economy / Translated from the Third French Edition, with a Notice of the Life and Writings of the Author

by Frédéric Bastiat

As regards myself, I am proprietor, if I may use the expression, of all the utility with which nature has invested this water. I can turn it to my own use in any way I think proper. It is for that purpose that I have taken the trouble to fetch it. To dispute my right would be to say that, although men cannot live without [p239] drinking, they have no right to drink the water which they have procured by their own exertions. I do not believe that the Communists, although they go very far, will go the length of asserting this, and even under the régime of Cabet, the lambs of Icaria would be allowed to quench their thirst in the limpid stream.

But in relation to other men, who are free to do as I do, I am not, and cannot be, proprietor except of what is called, by metonymy, the value of the water, that is to say, the value of the service which I render in procuring it.

My right to drink this water being granted, it is impossible to contest my right to give it away. And the right of the other contracting party to go to the spring, as I did, and draw water for himself, being admitted, it is equally impossible to contest his right to accept the water which I have fetched. If the one has a right to give, and the other, in consideration of a payment voluntarily bargained for, to accept, this water, the first is then the proprietor in relation to the second. It is sad to write upon Political Economy at a time when we cannot advance a step without having recourse to demonstrations so puerile.

But on what basis is the arrangement we have supposed come to? It is essential to know this, in order to appreciate the whole social bearing of the word Property,—a word which sounds so ill in the ears of democratic sentimentalism.

It is clear that, both parties being free, we must take into consideration the trouble I have had, and the trouble I have saved to the other party, as the circumstances which constitute value. We discuss the conditions of the bargain, and, if we come to terms, there is neither exaggeration nor subtilty in saying that my neighbour has acquired gratuitously, or, if you will, as gratuitously as I did, all the natural utility of the water. Do you desire proof that the conditions, more or less onerous, of the transaction are determined by the human efforts and not by the intrinsic utility? It will be granted that the utility remains the same whether the spring is distant or near at hand. It is the amount of exertion made, or to be made, which depends upon the distance; and since the remuneration varies with the exertion, it is in the latter, and not in the utility, that the principle of relative value and Property resides.

It is certain, then, that, in relation to others, I am, and can be, proprietor only of my efforts, of my services, which have nothing in common with the recondite and mysterious processes by which nature communicates utility to the things which are the subject [p240] of those services. It would be in vain for me to carry my pretensions farther—at this point we must always in fact encounter the limit of Property;—for if I exact more than the value of my services, my neighbour will do the work for himself. This limit is absolute and unchangeable. It fully explains and vindicates Property, thus reduced to the natural and simple right of demanding one service for another. It shows that the enjoyment of natural utility is appropriated only nominally and in appearance; that the expression, Property in an acre of land, in a hundredweight of iron, in a quarter of wheat, in a yard of cloth, is truly a metonymy, like the expression, Value of water, of iron, and so forth; and that so far as nature has given these things to men, they enjoy them gratuitously and in common; in a word, that Community is in perfect harmony with Property, the gifts of God remaining in the domain of the one, and human services forming alone the very legitimate domain of the other.

But from my having chosen a very simple example in order to point out the line of demarcation which separates the domain of what is common from the domain of what has been appropriated, you are not to conclude that this line loses itself and disappears, even in the most complicated transactions. It continues always to show itself in every free transaction. The labour of going to fetch water from the spring is very simple, no doubt; but when you examine the thing more narrowly, you will be convinced that the labour of raising corn is only more complicated because it embraces a series of efforts quite as simple, in each of which the work of nature co-operates with that of man, so that in fact the example I have shown may be regarded as the type of every economical fact. Take the case of water, of corn, of cloth, of books, of transport, of pictures, of the ballet, of the opera,—in all, certain circumstances, I allow, may impart such value to certain services, but no one is ever paid for anything else than services,—never certainly for the co-operation of nature,—and the reason is obvious, because one of the contracting parties has it always in his power to say, If you demand from me more than your service is worth, I shall apply to another quarter, or do the work for myself.

But I am not content to vindicate Property; I should wish to make it an object of cherished affection even to the most determined Communists. And to accomplish this, all that is necessary is to describe the popular, progressive, and equalizing part which it plays; and to demonstrate clearly, not only that it does not monopolize and concentrate in a few hands the gifts of God, but that its special mission is to enlarge continually the sphere of [p241] Community. In this respect the natural laws of society are much more ingenious than the artificial systems of Plato, Sir Thomas More, Fénélon, or Monsieur Cabet.

That there are satisfactions which men enjoy, gratuitously and in common, upon a footing of the most perfect equality,—that there is in the social order, underlying Property, a real Community,—no one will dispute. To see this it is not necessary that you should be either an Economist or a Socialist, but that you should have eyes in your head. In certain respects all the children of God are treated in precisely the same way. All are equal as regards the law of gravitation, which attaches them to the earth, as regards the air we breathe, the light of day, the water of the brook. This vast and measureless common fund, which has nothing whatever to do with Value or Property, J. B. Say denominates natural wealth, in opposition to social wealth; Proudhon, natural property, in opposition to acquired property; Considérant, natural capital, in opposition to capital which is created; Saint-Chamans, the wealth of enjoyment, in opposition to the wealth of value. We have denominated it gratuitous utility, in contradistinction to onerous utility. Call it what you will, it exists, and that entitles us to say that there is among men a common fund of gratuitous and equal satisfactions.

And if wealth, social, acquired, created, of value, onerous, in a word, Property, is unequally distributed, we cannot affirm that it is unjustly so, seeing that it is in each man’s case proportional to the services which give rise to it, and of which it is simply the measure and estimate. Besides, it is clear that this Inequality is lessened by the existence of the common fund, in virtue of the mathematical rule: the relative inequality of two unequal numbers is lessened by adding equal numbers to each of them. When our inventories, then, show that one man is twice as rich as another man, that proportion ceases to be exact when we take into consideration their equal share in the gratuitous utility furnished by nature, and the inequality would be gradually effaced and wiped away if this common fund were itself progressive.