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

by Frédéric Bastiat

To modify substances, so as to increase their utility in relation to us, is to produce, or rather it is one mode of producing. From this I conclude that value (as we shall afterwards more fully explain) does not reside in these substances themselves, but in the effort which intervenes in order to modify them, and which exchange brings into comparison with other analogous efforts. This is the reason why value is simply the appreciation of services exchanged, whether a material commodity does or does not intervene. As regards the notion of value, it is a matter of perfect indifference whether I render to another a direct service, as, for example, in performing for him a surgical operation, or an indirect service, in preparing for him a curative substance. In this last case the utility is in the substance, but the value is in the service, in the effort, intellectual and muscular, made by one man for the benefit of another. It is by a pure metonymy that we attribute value to the material substance itself, and here, as on many other occasions, metaphor leads science astray.

I return to the subject of man’s organization. If we adhere to the preceding notions, he differs from other animals only in the greater extent of his wants, and the superiority of his powers. All, in fact, are subject to the one and provided with the other. A bird undertakes long journeys in search of the temperature which suits it best—the beaver crosses the river on a bridge of [p101] his own construction—the hawk pursues his prey openly—the cat watches for it with patience—the spider prepares a snare—all labour in order to live and multiply.

But while Nature has established an exact proportion between the wants of animals and their faculties, if she has treated man with greater bounty and munificence, if, in order to force him to be sociable, she has decreed that in a state of isolation his wants should surpass his faculties, whilst, on the contrary, in the social state, his powers, superior to his wants, open to him an unlimited field for nobler enjoyments, we ought to acknowledge that, as in his relation with the Creator man is elevated above the beasts by the religious sentiment, in his relations with his fellow-creatures by his sense of justice, in his relations with himself by the moral principle—in like manner, in relation to the means of living and multiplying, he is distinguished by a remarkable phenomenon, namely, Exchange.

Shall I essay to paint the state of poverty, of destitution, and of ignorance, in which, but for the power of exchanging, the human species would have been sunk, had it not, indeed, as is more likely, disappeared altogether.

One of the most popular philosophers, in a romance which has been the charm of the young from generation to generation, has shown us man surmounting by his energy, his activity, his intelligence, the difficulties of absolute solitude. For the purpose of setting clearly before us what are the resources of that noble creature, the author has exhibited him as accidentally cut off from civilisation. It was part of Defoe’s plan to throw Robinson Crusoe into the Island of Juan Fernandez alone, naked, deprived of all that the union of efforts, the division of employments, exchange, society, add to the human powers.

And yet, although the fancied obstacles are but imaginary, Defoe would have taken away from his tale even the shadow of probability if, too faithful to the thought which he wished to develop, he had not made forced concessions to the social state, by admitting that his hero had saved from shipwreck some indispensable things, such as provisions, gunpowder, a gun, a hatchet, a knife, cords, planks, iron, etc.; a decisive proof that society is the necessary medium in which man lives, and out of which not even a romance writer could figure him as existing.

And, observe, that Robinson Crusoe carried with him into solitude another social treasure, a thousand times more precious than all these, and which the waves could not engulf, I mean his ideas, his recollections, his experience, above all, his language, [p102] without which he would not have been able to hold converse with himself, that is to say, to think.

We have the unfortunate and unreasonable habit of attributing to the social state the sufferings which we see around us. We are right so far, if our object be to compare society with itself in different degrees of advancement and improvement; but we are wrong if our object be to compare the social state, however imperfect, with a state of isolation. To authorize us to assert that society impairs the condition, I do not say of man in general, but of some men, and these the poorest and most wretched of the species, we must begin by proving that the worst provided of our fellow-creatures have to support in the social state a heavier load of privations and sufferings than the man whose lot has been cast in solitude. Now, examine the life of the humblest day-labourer. Pass in review, in all their details, the articles of his daily consumption. He is covered with some coarse clothing, he eats a little common bread, he sleeps under shelter, and on boards, at least, if he has no better couch. Now, let us ask if man in a state of isolation, deprived of the resources of Exchange, could by any possibility procure for himself that coarse clothing, that common bread, that rude bed, that humble shelter? Rousseau himself, the passionate enthusiast of the state of nature, avows the utter impossibility of it. Men dispensed with everything, he says; they went naked, they slept in the open air. Thus Rousseau, to exalt the state of nature, was led to make happiness consist in privation. And yet I affirm that this negative happiness is a chimera, and that man in a state of isolation would infallibly perish in a very few hours. Perhaps Rousseau would have gone to the length of saying that that would have been the perfection of his system; and he would have been consistent, for if privation be happiness, death is perfection.

I trust the reader will not conclude from what precedes that we are insensible to the social sufferings of our fellow-men. Because these sufferings are less even in an imperfect state of society than in a state of isolation, it does not follow that we should not invoke, with all earnestness, that progress which constantly diminishes them. But if isolation is something worse than all that is bad in the social state, then I am justified in saying that it places our wants, even the most imperious, far above our faculties and our means of providing for wants.

In what way does Exchange advantageously reverse all this, and place our faculties above our wants?