I was fortunate to spend a semester studying the work of Frédéric Bastiat, the great nineteenth-century French economic pamphleteer. Beloved by libertarians, he is unequalled in his ability to defend freedom and personal responsibility.
Much can be said about Bastiat, but here I’d like to mention his discussion of communism, for two reasons. First, it illustrates the fluidity of the terms socialism and communism in the mid-nineteenth century—something historians should not forget. For another, it illustrates how brilliant people can be both unusually perceptive about what is around them, but still blind about the future.
Warning: Like most writers about Bastiat, I find it hard not to quote him at length. He says things much better than most of us can.
In his essay “Protectionism and Communism,” Bastiat outlined three meanings of the word communism. One we now call utopian socialism—a group of people sharing their own property communally, without affecting anyone else. Indeed, Etienne Cabet, who created the term communism, was such a utopian. He tried unsuccessfully to create communistic colonies in Texas and Illinois.
Bastiat was not worried about such communism. What worried him was the second meaning of communism, legal plunder (spoliation), which he saw the government doing, all the time—taking from Peter to pay Paul:
“Causing the state to intervene, giving it the mission of evening out profits and balancing wealth by taking from some without their consent in order to give to others with no [remuneration], making it responsible for carrying out the work of leveling through plunder, this is definitely communism.” [1]
Bastiat cites such efforts as: supplying free education, eliminating interest on loans, subsidizing the arts, providing artisans’ tools, raising prices. “It seems as though intervention by the state reconciles us with plunder by attributing responsibility for it to everyone, that is to say, to no one, with the result that people can enjoy the property of others with a perfectly clear conscience,” he wrote. [2]
But there is a third form of communism, Bastiat said. This form is “decidedly the most brutal . . .: make a heap of all the assets that exist and share them out ex aequo [equally]. This is plunder that has become a dominant and universal rule. It is the destruction not only of property but also of work and the very motivation that stimulates men to work.” [3]
Brutality. . . destruction of property . . . of work . . . of the “very motivation” for work. What better description could there be of communism, Soviet-style? And yet Bastiat was not worried. “This form of communism is so violent, absurd, and monstrous that in truth I cannot really think it is dangerous. . . . it is not dangerous when it causes dread.”
How insightful he was about the nature of communism, and how blind he was to the horrors that humans can perpetrate on one another.
[1] Frederic Bastiat, “Protection and Communism,” in volume 2, The Collected Works of Frédéric Bastiat (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2012), 244.
[2] Bastiat, 244-245.
[3] Bastiat, 243.
One of the quintessential anecdotes of the Soviet Union illustrates the results of communism:
A man is walking to work one morning. He sees two workmen by the side of the road. He stops to watch. One is digging holes. The other comes along behind him and fills them in.
“Comrades,” hales the man, “what are you doing?”
“Planting trees says the hole digger.”
“But I see no trees,” says the questioner.
The man filling in the holes replies, “Usually there are three of us, but the comrade who puts the trees in the holes is sick today.”
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In my extensive interviewing of eastern European firms in the early 90s and in my travels across Russia, I saw and heard about examples of this mentality. Everyone got paid roughly the same. Advancement in most professions meant little more than a medal, Hero of Soviet Labor for example. As long as you did your particular labor, losing a job was difficult. (100% employment, always.) I had to overcome this mentality in my office in Kazakhstan. I could go on and on, but the anecdote says everything.
Jane, this is great. I feel like I’m taking the course work along with you!
The format of the blog is great, and you certainly seem to have mastered the technology!
Vic