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

by Frédéric Bastiat

Undoubtedly this arrangement has been advantageous; but why? Just because it is neither a privilege nor usurped, and [p255] that the man who exclaims, “This domain is mine,” has not had it in his power to add, “What has been produced on it is my exclusive property.” On the contrary, he says, “What has been produced is the exclusive property of whoever desires to purchase it, by giving me back simply the same amount of labour which I have undergone, and which in this instance I have saved his undergoing.” The co-operation of nature in the work of production, which is gratuitous for me, is gratuitous for him also.

M. Say indeed distinguishes, in the value of corn, the parts contributed by Property, by Capital, and by Labour. He has with the best intention been at great pains to justify this first part of the remuneration which accrues to the proprietor, and which is the recompense of no labour, either anterior or present; but he fails; for, like Scrope, he is obliged to fall back on the last and least satisfactory of all grounds of vindication, necessity.

“If it be impossible,” he remarks, “for production to be effected, not only without land and without capital, but without these means of production previously becoming property, may it not be said that proprietors of land and capital exercise a productive function, since, without the employment of these means, production would not take place?—a convenient function no doubt, but which, in the present state of society, presupposes accumulation, which is the result of production or saving,” etc.

The confusion here is palpable. The accumulation has been effected by the proprietor in his character of Capitalist—a character with which at present we have no concern. But what M. Say represents as convenient is the part played by the proprietor, in his proper character of proprietor, exacting a price for the gifts of God. It is this part which it is necessary to vindicate, and it has no connexion with either accumulation or saving.

“If, then, property in land and in capital” (why assimilate the two?) “be the fruit of production, I am warranted in representing such property as a working and productive machine, for which its author, although sitting with his hands across, is entitled to exact a recompense.”

Still the same confusion. The man who constructs a machine is proprietor of a capital, from which he legitimately derives an income, because he is paid, not for the labour of the machine, but for his own labour in constructing it. But land, or territorial property, is not the result of human production. What right, then, have we to be paid for its co-operation? The author has here mixed up two different kinds of property in the same category, in order that the same reasons which justify the one may serve for the vindication of the other.

Blanqui.—“The agriculturist who tills, manures, sows, and reaps his field, furnishes labour, without which nothing would be produced. But the action of the soil in making the seed germinate, and of the sun in bringing the plant to maturity, are independent of that labour, and co-operate in the formation of the value represented by the harvest. . . Smith and other Economists pretend that the labour of [p256] man is the exclusive source of value. Assuredly the industry of the labourer is not the exclusive source of the value of a sack of corn or a bushel of potatoes. His skill can no more succeed in producing the phenomenon of germination than the patience of the alchymist could succeed in discovering the philosopher’s stone. This is evident.”

It is impossible to imagine a more complete confusion than we have here, first between utility and value, and then between onerous and gratuitous utility.

Joseph Garnier.—“The rent of the proprietor differs essentially from the wages of the labourer and the profits of the capitalist, inasmuch as these two kinds of remuneration are the recompense, the one of trouble or pains taken, the other of a privation submitted to, and a risk encountered, whilst Rent is received by the proprietor gratuitously, and in virtue alone of a legal convention which recognises and maintains in certain individuals the right to landed property.”—(Eléments de l’Économie Politique, 2^e edition, p. 293.)

In other words, the labourer and capitalist are paid, in the name of equity, for the services they render; and the proprietor is paid, in the name of law, for services which he does not render.