Protection and Communism

by Frédéric Bastiat

However, observe well, that it would not perhaps be difficult for the landed proprietors to make this law received as a benefit by the labourer. They would say to the latter:

'It is not for us, honest people, that we have made it, but for you. Our own interests touch us little; we only think of yours. Thanks to this wise measure, agriculture prospers; we proprietors shall become rich, which will, at the same time, put it in our power to support a great deal of labour, and to pay you good wages; without it, we shall be reduced to misery—and what will become of you? The island will be inundated with provisions and importations from abroad; your vessels will be always afloat—what a national calamity! Abundance, it is true, will reign all round you, but will you share in it? Do not imagine that your wages will keep up and be raised, because the foreigner will only augment the number of those who overwhelm you with their competition. Who can say that they will not take it into their heads to give you their produce for nothing? In this case, having neither labour nor wages, you will perish of want in the midst of abundance. Believe us; accept our regulations with gratitude. Increase and multiply. The produce which will remain in the island, over and above what is necessary for our own consumption, will be given to you in exchange for your labour, which by this means you will be always secure of. Above all, do not believe that the question now in debate is between you and us, or one in which your liberty and your property are at stake. Never listen to those who tell you so. Consider it as certain that the question is between you and the foreigner—this barbarous foreigner—and who evidently wishes to speculate upon you; making you perfidious proffers of intercourse, which you are free either to accept or to refuse.'

It is not improbable that such a discourse, suitably seasoned with sophisms upon cash, the balance of trade, national labour, agriculture encouraged by the state, the prospect of a war, &c., &c., would obtain the greatest success, and that the oppressive decree would' obtain the sanction of the oppressed themselves, if they were consulted. This has been, and will be so again.*

* The ease with which the body of the people—the consumers—
are deceived by statements and arguments such as are given
in the text is remarkable. The principal reason, perhaps,
is, that men are disposed at first to regard themselves as
producers rather than as consumers. They imagine that the
advantages of Protection, if applied to their own case,
would be incontestable; and, being unable consistently to
deny that their neighbours are equally entitled to the same
favour, a general clamour for Protection against foreign
competition arises. While they fail to perceive the
absurdity of universal Protection and its fallacy, or that
it would be more for their interests to be able to dispose
of a larger quantity of their productions, though perhaps at
a reduced cost, than a smaller quantity in a market
narrowed, as it must be, by the Protection which it
receives.

However, the true position of the case is now, we hope, firmly established in England, and this is chiefly due to the recent able, full, and free discussions which have resulted in our existing Free-trade system. And we confidently anticipate the day when the people of the Continent, and of America, will, through the same processes of reasoning and reflection, and influenced by our example, arrive at the same result as ourselves.

But the prejudices of proprietors and labourers do not change the nature of things. The result will be, a population miserable, destitute, ignorant, ill-conditioned, thinned by want, illness, and vice. The result will then be, the melancholy shipwreck, in the public mind, of all correct notions of right, of property, of liberty, and of the true functions of the state.

And what I should like much to be able to show here is, that the mischief will soon ascend to the proprietors themselves, who will have led the way to their own ruin by the ruin of the general consumer, for in that island they will see the population, more and more debased, resort to the inferior species of food. Here it will feed on chesnuts, there upon maize, or again upon millet, buckwheat, oats, potatoes. It will no longer know the taste of corn or of meat. The proprietors will be surprised to see agriculture decline. They will in vain exert themselves and ring in the ears of all,—'Let us raise produce; with produce, there will be cattle; with cattle, manure; with manure, corn.' They will in vain create new taxes, in order to distribute premiums to the producers of grass and lucern; they will always encounter this obstacle—a miserable population, without the power of paying for food, and, consequently, of giving the first impulse to this succession of causes and effects. They will end by learning, to their cost, that it is better to have competition in a rich community, than to possess a monopoly in a poor one.

This is why I say, not only is Protection Communism, but it is Communism of the worst kind. It commences by placing the faculties and the labour of the poor, their only property, at the mercy of the rich; it inflicts a pure loss on the mass, and ends by involving the rich themselves in the common ruin. It invests the state with the extraordinary right of taking from those who have little, to give to those who have much; and when, under the sanction of this principle, the dispossessed call for the intervention of the state to make an adjustment in the opposite direction, I really do not see what answer can be given. In all cases, the first reply and the best would be, to abandon the wrongful act.

But I hasten to come to an end with these calculations. After all, what is the position of the question? What do we say, and what do you say? There is one point, and it is the chief, upon which we are agreed: it is, that the intervention of the legislature in order to equalize fortunes, by taking from some for the benefit of others, is Communism—it is the destruction of all labour, saving, and prosperity; of all justice; of all social order.

You perceive that this fatal doctrine taints, under every variety of form, both journals and books: in a word, that it influences the speculations and the doctrines of men, and here you attack it with vigour.