Frédéric Bastiat

I would like to see a prize founded, not of five hundred francs, but of a million, with crowns, crosses and ribbons, for the person who gives a good, simple and intelligible definition of this word: the State.

What an immense service it would confer on society!

The State! What is it? where is it? what does it do? what should it do?

All we know is that it is a mysterious character, and certainly the most solicited, the most tormented, the most busy, the most advised, the most accused, the most invoked and the most provoked there is in the world.

For, Sir, I do not have the honour of knowing you, but I bet ten to one that for the last six months you have been envisaging utopias; and if so, I bet ten to one that you are entrusting the State for the realization of them.

And you, Madame, I am sure that you wish from the bottom of your heart to cure all the ills of suffering humanity, and that you would not be in the least embarrassed if the State would only lend itself to the task.

But, alas! That poor unfortunate personage, like Figaro, knows neither who to listen to nor which way to turn. The hundred thousand mouths of the press and the gallery are shouting at him all at once:

“Organise work and workers.
Extirpate selfishness.
Suppress the insolence and tyranny of capital.
Experiment with manure and eggs.
Cover the country with railways.
Irrigate the plains.
Forest the mountains.
Set up model farms.
Found social workshops.
Colonise Algeria.
Feed the children.
Educate the youth.
Assist the aged.
Send city dwellers to the countryside.
Equalize the profits of all industries.
Lend money, without interest, to those who need it.
Free Italy, Poland and Hungary.
Rear and perfect the saddle horse.
Encourage art, train musicians and dancers.
Prohibit trade and, at the same time, create a merchant navy.
Discover the truth and put a grain of reason in our heads.
The mission of the State is to enlighten, develop, enlarge, fortify, spiritualise and sanctify the souls of the people.”

“Gentlemen, a little patience,” says the State, looking pitiful.

‘I will try to satisfy you, but to do so I need some resources.  I have prepared plans for five or six brand new taxes, the most benign in the world. You will see what a pleasure it is to pay them.

But then a loud cry is heard: "No! indeed! Where is the merit of doing something with resources!  It wouldn't be worth calling ourselves the State. Far from hitting us with new taxes, we ask you to withdraw the old ones. Abolish:

The tax on salt.
The tax on liquors.
The tax on letters.
Custom duties.
Patents.
Compulsory services.”

In the midst of this uproar, and after the country has again and again changed the State administration for not having satisfied all these demands, I wanted to point out that they were contradictory. What on earth was I thinking? Couldn't I keep this unfortunate remark to myself?

Here I am, discredited for ever; and it is now accepted that I am a man without heart and without feeling, a dry philosopher, an individualist, a bourgeois, and, to put it in a nutshell, an economist of the English or American school.

Oh, forgive me, sublime writers, who stop at nothing, not even at contradictions. I am wrong, no doubt, and I recant with all my heart. I would like nothing better, rest assured, if you had really discovered, outside of us, a beneficent and inexhaustible being, called the State, which has bread for all mouths, work for all hands, capital for all enterprises, credit for all projects, ointments for all wounds, balm for all suffering, advice for all perplexities, solutions for all doubts, truths for all intellects, entertainment for all troubles, milk for infancy, wine for old age, which provides for all our needs, anticipate all our desires, satisfies all our curiosities, rectifies all our errors, all our faults, and exempt us henceforth from the necessity for foresight, prudence, judgement, sagacity, experience, order, economy, temperance and activity.

What reason could I have for not desiring to see such a discovery made? Indeed, the more I think about it, the more I find it convenient, and I long to have within my reach this inexhaustible source of wealth and enlightenment, this universal physician, this unlimited treasure, this infallible adviser that you call the State.

I therefore ask that it be shown to me, that it be defined for me, and this is why I propose the foundation of a prize for the first person to discover this phoenix. After all, I am sure that this precious discovery has not yet been made, since, up to now, anything that presents itself under the name of State is immediately overthrown by the people, precisely because it does not fulfil the rather contradictory conditions of the programme.

Do we have to say it? I am afraid that we are, in this respect, fooled by one of the strangest illusions that has ever seized the human mind.

The human being recoils from pain and suffering. And yet he is condemned by nature to the Suffering of Deprivation, if he does not take the Pain of Toil. So, he has only the choice between these two evils.

How to avoid them both? It has so far found only one way, and no other will ever be found. And this way is: to enjoy the labour of others; to ensure that Pain and Satisfaction do not fall to each person according to a natural sharing, but that all the Pain is for some and all the Satisfaction for others. This is the origin of slavery and of plunder, whatever its form may be, - whether that of wars, impostures, violence, restrictions, frauds, etc., monstrous abuses, but consistent with the thinking that gave rise to them. Oppressors should be detested and resisted but they cannot be qualified as absurd.

Slavery is disappearing, thanks be to Heaven, and, on the other hand, our disposition to defend our property means that direct and naive Spoliation is not easy. One thing, however, has remained. It is that unfortunate primitive inclination that all human beings have to split the complex lot of life into two parts, passing the Pain on to others and keeping the Satisfaction for themselves. It remains to be seen what new form this sad tendency will take.

The oppressor no longer acts directly on the oppressed. No, our conscience has become too sensitive for that. There is still the tyrant and the victim, but between them there is an intermediary who is the State, in other words the law itself. What could be more appropriate to silence our scruples and, what is perhaps more appreciated, to overcome all resistance?  So, all of us, in one capacity or another, under one pretext or another, turn to the State. We say to it:
“I don't find that there is a proportion between my enjoyment and my work that satisfies me. To establish the desired balance, I would like to take a little from the property of others. But that's dangerous. Couldn't you make it easier for me? Couldn't you give me a good job? Or hinder the industry of my competitors? Or lend me free of charge capital that you have taken from their owners?  Or bring up my children at public expense?  Or give me incentives? Or ensure my well-being when I'm fifty? In this way, I will achieve my goal with a clear conscience, because the law itself will have acted on my behalf, and I will have all the advantages of spoliation without the risks or the reproaches!”

Since it is certain, on the one hand, that we all address some similar request to the State, and since, on the other hand, it is proven that the State cannot provide satisfaction to some without adding to the toil of others, while waiting for another definition of the State, I feel authorized to give mine here. Who knows whether it won't win the prize? Here it is:

The State
is the great fiction
through which everyone
strives to live at the expense of everyone else.

Today, as in the past, everyone, a little more or a little less, would like to profit from the work of others.  They dare not show it, they hide it from themselves; and then, what do they do?  They imagine an intermediary, they turn to the State, and each class in turn comes to say:
 
“You, who can take justifiably and honestly, take from the public, and we will share."

Alas! the State is only too inclined to follow this diabolical advice; for it is made up of ministers, civil servants, human beings who, like all human beings, have desire in their hearts and always eagerly seize the opportunity to see their wealth and influence grow. The State is not slow to perceive the advantages it may derive from the role entrusted to it by the public. It will be the arbiter, the master of all destinies: it will take a lot, so it will have much left for itself; it will multiply the number of its agents, it will widen the circle of its attributions; it will end up acquiring an enormous size.

But what must be noted is the astonishing blindness of the public in all this.  When victorious soldiers reduced the vanquished to slavery, they were barbaric, but they were not absurd. Their aim, like ours, was to live at the expense of others; and, like us, they did not fail to do so. What are we to think of a people who never seem to suspect that reciprocal plundering is no less plunder because it is reciprocal; that it is no less criminal because it is carried out legally and in an orderly fashion; that it adds nothing to public well-being but, on the contrary, it diminishes it just in proportion to the cost of the expensive intermediary we call the State?

And we have placed this great chimera, for the edification of the people, on the frontispiece of the Constitution. Here are the first words of the preamble:

“France has constituted itself as a Republic to... call all citizens to an ever higher degree of morality, enlightenment and well-being.”

So it is France, or an abstraction, that is calling the French people, or the current realities, to morality, well-being and so on. Doesn't this produce the bizarre illusion that we expect everything from an energy other than our own?  Doesn't this imply that there is, alongside and outside the French people, a virtuous, enlightened, wealthy being who can and must bestow his benefits upon them?  Does this not imply, and certainly quite gratuitously, that there is between France and the French, between the simple, abbreviated, abstract denomination of all individualities and these very individualities, a relationship of father to son, of tutor to pupil, of teacher to schoolboy? I am well aware that it is sometimes said metaphorically: The fatherland is a tender mother. But to catch the inanity of such a constitutional proposition, it suffices to show that it can be reversed not only without inconvenience, but even with advantage.
Would accuracy suffer if the preamble had said:

“The French have constituted themselves into a Republic to call France to an ever higher degree of morality, enlightenment and well-being?”

Now, what is the value of an axiom where the subject and the attribute can change places without inconvenience? Everyone understands if we say: the mother will breast-feed the child. But it would be ridiculous to say: the child will breastfeed the mother.

The Americans had a different idea of the relationship between citizens and the State when they placed these simple words at the head of their Constitution:

“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish ...”

Here there is no chimerical creation, no abstraction, from which the citizens may demand everything. They expect nothing except from themselves and their own energy.

If I have taken the liberty of criticising the opening words of our Constitution, it is because it is not, as one might think, a matter of pure metaphysical subtlety. I claim that this personification of the State has been in the past and will be in the future a fertile source of calamities and revolutions.

Here is the Public on the one hand, the State on the other, regarded as two distinct beings. The State bound to bestow upon the Public, and the Public having the right to claim from the State all imaginable human benefits.
What is to happen?

By the way, the State is not one-handed and cannot be. It has two hands, one for receiving and the other for giving, in other words, a rough hand and a soft hand. The activity of the latter is necessarily subordinate to the activity of the former.

Strictly, the State may take and not give. This has been seen and can be explained by the porous and absorbent nature of its hands, which always retain part and sometimes all of what they touch. But what has never been seen, what will never be seen and cannot even be imagined, is for the State to give back to the public more than it has taken from it. It is therefore quite foolish for us to adopt the humble attitude of beggars around him. It is radically impossible for the State to confer a particular advantage on some of the individuals who make up the community, without inflicting a greater damage on the whole community.

As a result, our demands place the State in an obvious vicious circle.

If it refuses the good we demand of him, it is accused of impotence, ill-will and incapacity. If it tries to grant them, it is obliged to load the people with redoubled taxes, doing more harm than good, and attracting, on the other hand, the general disaffection.

Thus, in the public there are hopes, and the State makes two promises: many benefits and no taxes. Hopes and promises which, being contradictory, are never fulfilled.

Now, is not this the cause of all our revolutions? For between the State, which lavishes impossible promises, and the public, which has conceived unattainable hopes, come two classes of men: the ambitious and the utopians. Their role is dictated by the situation. All these courtiers of popularity have to do is shout in the ears of the people: “Those in power are deceiving you; if we were in their place, we would shower you with benefits and free you from taxes.”

And the people believe, and the people hope, and the people make a revolution.

No sooner are their friends in office, than they are summoned to action. “Give me work, bread, help, credit, education and colonies” - say the people - and at the same time, according to your promises, deliver me from the clutches of the taxman.”

The new State is no less embarrassed than the old State, because when it comes to implement the impossible, promises can be made but not kept. It tries to gain time because it needs time to mature its vast projects. First, it makes a few timid attempts; on the one hand, it extended primary education a little; on the other, it reduces the tax on liquor a little (1830). But it is always faced with a contradiction: if it wants to be a philanthropist, it has to remain a taxman; and if it gives up taxation, it also has to give up philanthropy.

These two promises always and necessarily prevent each other. Using credit, which is the same as exhausting the future, is indeed a current means of reconciling them; an attempt is made to do a little good now, at the expense of a great deal of harm in future. But this process raises the spectre of bankruptcy, which drives out credit.  So what is to be done? The new State power takes, then, a bold step; it gathers forces to maintain itself, it stifles opinion, it resorts to arbitrariness, it ridicules its old maxims, it declares that one can only administer on condition of being unpopular; in short, it proclaims itself governmental.

And that's where other wooers of popularity are waiting for. They exploit the same illusion, take the same route, achieve the same success, and will soon be engulfed in the same abyss. This is how we arrived in February 1848. At that time, the illusion which is the subject of this article had penetrated further than ever before into the ideas of the people, by way of the socialist doctrines. More than ever, they expected that the State in its republican form would open wide the source of benefits and close that of taxation.
“I have often been deceived - said the people - but this time I will make sure not to be deceived again.”

What could the provisional government do?  Alas! what one always does in such circumstances: make promise and gain time. It did not fail to do so, and to make its promises more solemn, it set them down in decrees.
“Increase of prosperity, diminution of workload, relief, credit, free education, agricultural colonies, land clearing, and at the same time a reduction in the tax on salt, liquor, letters, meat, everything will be granted... when the National Assembly meets.”

The National Assembly meets, and as it is impossible to realize two contradictory things, its task, its sad task, is limited to withdrawing, as gently as possible, one after the other, all the decrees of the Provisional Government.

However, in order not to make the disappointment too cruel, it is found necessary to compromise somewhat. Certain engagements are maintained, others are given a very small start, and therefore the new administration is compelled to contrive some new taxes.

Now, I transport myself, in thought, a few months into the future, and I wonder, with sadness in my soul, what will happen when agents of the New State go into our countryside to collect the new taxes on inheritance, on income, on the profits of farming. It is to be hoped that my presentiments may not come true, but I still see a role for the courtiers of popularity.

Read the latest Manifesto of the Montagnards [a political group], the one they issued on the subject of the presidential election. It's a bit long, but, after all, it can be summed up in two words: The State must give much to the people and take little from them. It's always the same tactic, or, if you like, the same mistake.

“The State must provide instruction and education free of charge to all citizens.”

It must give: “General and vocational education appropriate, as far as possible, to the needs, vocations and abilities of each citizen.”

It must: “Teach him his duties towards God, towards mankind and towards himself; develop his feelings, his aptitudes and his faculties; in short, give him the science of his work, the understanding of his interests and the knowledge of his rights.”

It must: “Make available to all, the arts and letters, the heritage of thought, the treasures of the mind, all the intellectual enjoyments that elevate and strengthen the soul.”

It must: “Repair any disaster, fire, flood, etc. (this et caetera means more than it says) experienced by a citizen.”

It must: “Intervene in the relationship between capital and labour and regulate credit.”

It must: “Provide agriculture with serious encouragement and effective protection.”

It must: “Buy back the railways, the canals, the mines, and no doubt also administer them with that industrial capacity that is proper to the State.”

It must: “Encourage useful experiments, promote and assist them by every means likely to make them successful. As a regulator of credit, it will give ample support to industrial and agricultural associations, in order to ensure their success.”

The State must do all of this, in addition to the services it is required to perform today; and, for example, it will always have to adopt a threatening attitude towards foreign powers; because, say the signatories of the programme, “bound by this holy solidarity and by the precedents of republican France, we carry our wishes and our hopes beyond the barriers that despotism erects between nations: The rights that we want for ourselves, we want for all those oppressed by the yoke of tyranny; we want our glorious army to still be, if necessary, the army of liberty.”

You can see that the gentle hand of the State, that good hand which gives and distributes, will be very busy under the Montagnard government. Do you perhaps think that the same will be true of the rough hand, the hand that penetrates and digs into our pockets?

Do not deceive yourselves. The courtiers of popularity would not know their trade, if they did not have the art, by showing the soft hand, to hide the rough hand.

Their reign will undoubtedly cause the rejoicing of the taxpayer. “It is the superfluous - they say - not the necessary that the tax must reach.”

Will it not be a good time when, in order to overwhelm us with benefits, the taxman will be content to chip away at our superfluities?

And that is not all. The Montagnards aspire to a time when “taxation loses its oppressive character and becomes nothing more than an act of fraternity.”

Good heavens! I knew that it was fashionable to put fraternity everywhere, but I had no idea that it could be put into the hands of the taxman.

Turning to the details, the signatories of the programme say:
‘We want the immediate abolition of taxes on basic necessities, such as salt, beverages, et cetera.
‘The reform of property taxes, custom duties, and patents.
‘Free justice, i.e. simplification of forms and reduction of fees.” (This, no doubt, refers to stamp duties).

Thus, property tax, excise duties, patents, stamps, salt, liquor, postage, everything is covered. These gentlemen have found the secret of giving an earnest activity to the gentle hand of the State, while they entirely paralyze its rough hand.

Well, I ask the impartial reader, is this not childishness, and more than that, dangerous childishness?
How can the people not make revolution after revolution, if they have once decided not to stop until they have realised this contradiction: “Give nothing to the State and receive a great deal!”

Do we believe that if the Montagnards came to power, they would not be the victims of the means they employed to seize it?

Citizens, there have always been two political systems, and both can be supported by good reasons. According to one, the State must do a great deal, but it must also take a great deal. According to the other, its twofold action should be little felt. We must choose between these two systems. But as for the third system, which is part of the other two, and which consists in demanding everything from the State without giving it anything, it is chimerical, absurd, childish, contradictory and dangerous. Those who put it forward, in order to take the pleasure of accusing all governments of impotence and thus exposing them to your attacks, are flattering and deceiving you, or at least they are deceiving themselves.

As for us, we believe that the State is or should be nothing other than the common force instituted, not to be an instrument of oppression and reciprocal despoilment between all citizens, but, on the contrary, to guarantee each one his own, and to ensure that justice and security reign.