Frédéric Bastiat was a classical liberal who lived in France from 1801 to 1850. (For more information about Bastiat, see a previous post). His writing—which was rediscovered by American libertarians in the 1940s after years of disdain and neglect—is witty and insightful. It provides fables that help teach economics, such as his “Petition by the Manufacturers of Candles, Etc..” which carries protectionism to absurd lengths: Candlemakers petition the government to command people to cover their windows and stop letting in sunlight (thus “protecting” them from sunlight), because the sun is ruining the candle business.[1]
Bastiat was as harsh on French education as he was on protectionism. He split with classical liberals who accepted publicly provided education; he didn’t think the government should be involved in teaching.
But that is not what is extraordinary about his educational views. Rather, he challenged the French secondary-school curriculum because it revered the classical civilizations of antiquity. To Bastiat, the Greeks (both Athenians and Spartans) and Romans were violent, military, and disdainful of work—not worth the study that was slavishly given them. This is extraordinary because respect for antiquity permeated the views of educated Europeans. Among French educators, there were some intellectual disagreements along the lines of whether Athens or Sparta was “better,” but studying classical civilizations was the bread and butter of proper education.
I’d like to share some passages from his essay “Baccalaureate and Socialism,” written in 1850 near the end of his life.[2] I want to show his criticism of the French curriculum but also to raise a question: Do humanities scholars and classical liberals agree with Bastiat?
A member of the National Assembly, Bastiat submitted an amendment in 1850 to the proposed Falloux law (a liberating law that would at last allow Catholics as well as the government to teach students). The Falloux law was adopted, but Bastiat’s proposal was not. He would have eliminated all university degrees—including the baccalaureate, which was required after high school (and still is) in order to enter college. To explain the reasons behind his proposal, Bastiat wrote “Baccalaureate and Socialism.”
Bastiat’s goal was to show that classical learning contributed to the adoption of socialism. His essay was meant to jolt the reader toward new ideas. By arguing a causal connection between classical learning and socialism, he was forcing his readers to make an intellectual stretch. Classical education was noble to the deputies of France’s Second Republic; while socialism—a broad term that mostly meant using government funds to redistribute wealth—was dangerous. How could the noble idea be connected with the base one?
Well, listen to Bastiat.
“The ancients whom we exalt, and I cannot repeat this too often, lived from piracy and would not have touched a tool for anything in the world. The entire human race was their enemy. They had condemned themselves to perpetual warfare and to the situation of always having to conquer or perish. This being so, there was and could be only one occupation, that of soldier. “[3]
Or consider this sarcastic remark about a French writer who approved of the Romans’ carrying off Sabine women:
“They are Romans and that is enough. Burning, pillaging, or kidnaping, anything that comes from them is calm, peaceful, and pure.”[4]
Bastiat notes that patriotism is “called the estimable side of the [Roman] republic.” But he asks: “What is this patriotism? The hatred of foreigners. To destroy all civilization, stifle all progress, put the entire world to fire and the sword, and chain women, children, and the elderly to the triumphal chariots: in that lay glory and virtue.” [5]
In Bastiat’s view, classical education glorified warlike characteristics, often called “virtues,” such as courage, physical discipline, and devotion to one’s group. To Bastiat, such “virtues” were like honor among thieves or, in his terms, among “buccaneers” and “brigands.”[6]
A subtler but probably more important point is that classical governments viewed laws (statutes, not the rule of law) as the measure of whether an act was right or wrong. By accepting legislators as law-givers, no matter how egregious the laws they produced, the public was allowing legislators to plunder, said Bastiat, meaning to rob Peter to pay Paul, the first step to socialism.
Bastiat amasses quotations from well-respected French writers to show that they elevated what he saw as the wrong values. To take one example, the famed Montesquieu wrote in The Spirit of the Laws that “Lycurgus [considered the chief law-giver of Sparta], combining robbery with the spirit of justice, the most severe slavery with the heights of freedom, the most atrocious sentiments with the greatest moderation, gave stability to his city.” Thus, says Bastiat, classical education has “succeeded in misleading this noble intelligence to the extent of causing him to admire the most barbarous of institutions in antiquity.”[7]
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, too, is criticized for his view of the ancients. Rousseau is famous for blaming civilization for destroying happiness, but that did not completely erase appreciation for Roman and Greek civilization. As Bastiat points out, in his Discourse on the Inequality of Conditions Rousseau harkens back to Greece, saying:
“I will picture myself in the Lyceum in Athens, repeating my masters’ lessons, with Plato and Xenocrates as my judges and the human race as my audience.” [8]
Surely, in “Baccalaureate and Socialism” Bastiat is dismissing centuries of brilliant analysis when he derides the great intellectual forbears of Western civilization. Even so, he may be right. I would like to know what others think.
[1] Frédéric Bastiat, “Petition of the Manufacturers of Candles, Etc.” In Economic Sophisms and “What Is Seen and What Is Not Seen,” vol. 3, The Collected Works of Frédéric Bastiat, ed. Jacques Guenin (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, [1850] 2016), 59-53.
[2] Bastiat, “Baccalaureate and Socialism.” In “The Law,” “The State,” and Other Political Writings, 1843-1850, vol. 2, The Collected Works of Frédéric Bastiat, ed. Jacques Guenin (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, [1850] 2012), 185-234.
[3] Bastiat 1850, 223.
[4] Bastiat 1850, 207.
[5] Bastiat 1850, 192.
[6] Bastiat 1850, 192.
[7] Bastiat 1850, 199. Here and elsewhere, Bastiat reverses the usual meanings of “civilization” and “barbarians.” The Romans destroyed civilizations, and they acted barbarously.
[8] Bastiat 1850a, 202.
Previous comments have made a good case for an important place for the classics in modern education. I make a small note about law.
“. . . classical governments viewed laws (statutes, not the rule of law) as the measure of whether an act was right or wrong.” Is this a chicken and egg problem? If the values of a society (or its most powerful members) have an architecture of right and wrong behaviors, don’t they then write laws to codify and enable enforcement? Law is the commemoration of a society’s right and wrong. Whether law comes from an elite ideology as in the Soviet Union and other communist countries and as in theocracies, or whether it comes from widely held and practiced common values makes all the difference.
When law crystallizes common values (whatever they are), it creates a widely accepted clarity. When law is imposed by ideology or theology it may also be clear, but it leads to corruption, subterfuge (black markets), and rebellion.
Bastiat’s argument for cashiering the classical curriculum is absurd.
It is true, of course, that there was much evil in the ancient world—as in our own. But much of the classical corpus consists of criticisms of that evil. An obvious example are the orations of Cicero against Verres. Moreover, while it is true that much of the classical corpus praises “virtue” (i.e., manliness), the values encompassed in virtue are much wider than military valor. Consider how much better Hector comes off than Achilles, or the complicated and admirable figure Virgil draws of Aeneas. And the classical writers also praise many other values—pietas, liberality, prudence, consideration, and so forth. There is little admiration for “piracy.”
Nor is it true that the ancients thought that positive law was only definitive measure of good and evil. It is true that they, particularly the Romans, honored law. But an overriding reason for this was that the rule of law was a refuge against the turbulence and chaos of the world.
Apparently, one source for Bastiat’s errors was simple ignorance. Consider the statement, “The ancients . . . and would not have touched a tool for anything in the world.” How does that square with Greek and Roman admiration for the simple farmer, the pastoral life (think Theocritis and Virgil again) and for characters like Cincinnatus, who was called from the plow to save Rome?
Values aside, a compelling reason for studying classical literature is that it is filled with ideas that fashioned our own civilization. And another compelling reason is that much of it is material of unutterable beauty.
One could go on and on, but I’m not sure Bastiat’s ignorance on this subject is worth it.
The association between “warlike” ancients and “peaceful” moderns clearly echoes Benjamin Constant’s 1819 address on the Liberty of the Moderns.
Daniel Rosenberg, thank you for this reminder of Constant’s speech. It offers a great opportunity for comparison.
It’s almost too easy to turn Bastiat’s criticisms back on him. A few years before Bastiat was writing, the French created a totalitarian state known as “The Terror” for its inhumanity, then started the biggest wars to date on the European continent, and were known for their exceptionally cruel treatment of the locals in their colonies. So, should we dismiss all 19th century French thinkers for the savagery of their nation?
And some (especially Robert Nisbet) say that all liberalism—even the classical version—leads to socialism, since it so focuses on the individual that man’s need for community is denied. When that happens, alienated individuals can start looking to the collective to restore their lost sense of community.
Certainly we can’t look to the ancients for some things. Their science was laughable, and their epistemology primitive. But in moral and political reasoning, they had great insights. A few years back, I explored various authors who wrote about natural rights based on reason rather than God. The writer who best explained what I was looking for—better than many modern writers—was the Roman Cicero.
Sometimes you have to find their wisdom indirectly. Do we look to Plato for the best way to organize society? Of course not, he proposed a totalitarian state that would make Stalin and Pol Pot green with envy. Even so, there is no better place to begin the journey to discover how to organize society than The Republic. Plato just framed political reasoning extremely well, and in an entertaining way.