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

by Frédéric Bastiat

The social mechanism, then, must be very ingenious and very powerful, since it leads to this singular result, that each man, even he whose lot is cast in the humblest condition, has more enjoyment in one day than he could himself produce in many ages.

Nor is this all. The mechanism of society will appear still more ingenious, if the reader will be pleased to turn his regards upon himself.

I suppose him a plain student. What is his business in Paris? How does he live? It cannot be disputed that society places at his disposal food, clothing, lodging, amusements, books, means of instruction, a multitude of things, in short, which would take a long time not only to produce, but even to explain how they were produced. And what services has this student rendered to society in return for all these things which have exacted so much labour, toil, fatigue, physical and intellectual effort, so many inventions, transactions, and conveyances hither and thither? None at all. He is only preparing to render services. Why, then, have so many millions of men abandoned to him the fruits of their positive, effective, and productive labour? Here is the explanation:—The father of this student, who was a lawyer, perhaps, or a physician, or a merchant, had formerly rendered services—it may be to society in China,—and had been remunerated, not by immediate services, but by a title to demand services, at the time, in the place and under the form that might be most suitable and convenient to him. [p051] It is of these past and distant services that society is now acquitting itself, and (astonishing as it seems) if we follow in thought the infinite range of transactions which must have had place in order to this result being effected, we shall see that every one has been remunerated for his labour and services; and that these titles have passed from hand to hand, sometimes divided into parts, sometimes grouped together, until, in the consumption of this student, the entire account has been squared and balanced. Is not this a very remarkable phenomenon?

We should shut our eyes to the light of day, did we fail to perceive that society could not present combinations so complicated, and in which civil and penal laws have so little part, unless it obeyed the laws of a mechanism wonderfully ingenious. The study of that mechanism is the business of Political Economy.

Another thing worthy of observation is, that of the incalculable number of transactions to which the student owed his daily subsistence, there was not perhaps a millionth part which contributed to it directly. The things of which he has now the enjoyment, and which are innumerable, were produced by men the greater part of whom have long since disappeared from the earth. And yet they were remunerated as they expected to be, although he who now profits by the fruits of their labours had done nothing for them. They knew him not; they will never know him. He who reads this page, at the very moment he is reading it, has the power, although perhaps he has no consciousness of it, to put in motion men of every country, of all races, I had almost said of all time—white, black, red, tawny—to make bygone generations, and generations still unborn, contribute to his present enjoyments; and he owes this extraordinary power to the services which his father had formerly rendered to other men, who apparently had nothing in common with those whose labour is now put in requisition. Yet despite all differences of time and space, so just and equitable a balance has been struck, that every one has been remunerated, and has received exactly what he calculated he ought to receive.

But, in truth, could all this have happened, and such phenomena been witnessed, unless society had had a natural and wise organization, which acts, as it were, unknown to us?

Much has been said in our day of inventing a new organization. Is it quite certain, that any thinker, whatever genius we may attribute to him, whatever power we may suppose him to possess, could imagine and introduce an organization superior to that of which I have just sketched some of the results? [p052]

But what would be thought of it if I described its machinery, its springs, and its motive powers?

The machinery consists of men, that is to say, of beings capable of learning, reflecting, reasoning, of being deceived and undeceived, and consequently of contributing to the amelioration or deterioration of the mechanism itself. They are capable of pleasure and pain; and it is that which makes them not only the wheels but the springs of the mechanism. They are also the motive power; for it is in them that the active principle resides. More than that, they are themselves the very end and object of the mechanism, since it is into individual pains and enjoyments that the whole definitely resolves itself.

Now it has been remarked, and it is unhappily obvious enough, that in the action, the development, and even the progress (by those who acknowledge progress) of this powerful mechanism, many of the wheels have been inevitably, fatally injured; and that, as regards a great number of human beings, the sum of unmerited suffering surpasses by much the sum of enjoyment.