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THE FORMAT OF THE ECONOMIC SOPHISMS
The Economic Sophisms in this volume were written over a period of five years, stretching from mid-1845 to mid-1850 (the year in which What Is Seen and What Is Not Seen was published a few months before Bastiat’s death). In writing these essays Bastiat used a variety of formats, which are listed below:
1. Conversations, or “constructed” dialogues, between individuals who represented different points of view.
2. Stand-alone economic tales and fables.
3. Fictional letters and petitions to government officials and other documents.
4. More formal or academic prose.
5. Direct appeals to the workers and citizens of France.
These five different formats reveal the wide range of Bastiat’s writing, from informal to academic, and the equally wide range of audiences he was trying to reach in presenting his ideas. Whether he was appealing to prospective members of the French Free Trade Association, manufacturers who belonged to the protectionist Association for the Defense of National Employment, or workers rioting on the streets of Paris in February 1848, Bastiat believed that all would respond to his efforts to defend free trade and individual liberty.
Bastiat was quite innovative in his use of some of these formats and may have even invented one. His use of the “constructed dialogue” between an advocate of free trade and a skeptic can be traced back to earlier writings by Harriet Martineau, and his use of the “economic tale” can be traced back to the fables of La Fontaine, although his insertion of economic principles is probably unique to him. More original are his small plays3 in which he develops economic arguments at some length over several “acts” with characters like Jacques Bonhomme, the French “everyman,” who appears frequently in his stories. However, his most original invention is the use of Robinson Crusoe4 (and sometimes Friday) in a kind of “thought experiment,” which is used to illustrate the deeper underlying principles of economic theory, or what one might call “the pure theory of choice.” In these stories he discusses
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the options facing Crusoe in choosing how to use his scarce resources and limited time, what is most urgent for him to do now, how will he survive if he wants to do something other than finding food, how does he maintain his capital stock of tools, and so on. Although this argument is standard modern textbook material today, it is possible that Bastiat used it for the first time in some of his sophisms.
The most appropriate style to use when writing the sophisms was something Bastiat could never settle on, whether he should use the amusing and satirical style for which he had a certain flair, or something more serious and formal. Bastiat was stung by a critical review of the First Series, which accused him of being too stiff and too formal, and so he was determined to make the Second Series more lighthearted and amusing. Yet during the course of 1847, when he was compiling the next collection of sophisms, which were to appear in January 1848, the defeat of the free traders in the Chamber by a better-organized protectionist lobby and the rising power of socialist groups on the eve of the Revolution of February 1848 led him to declare that the time for witty and clever stories was over and that more difficult times called for the use of “blunt” and perhaps even “brutal” language. Thus he oscillated between the two different approaches, never being able to decide which was better for his purposes. This is no better illustrated than in the turmoil he experienced when he was writing What Is Seen and What Is Not Seen, which he lost once and rewrote twice, tossing one draft into the fire because it was too serious in style.
THE BENTHAMITE ORIGINS OF BASTIAT’S CRITIQUE OF SOPHISMS AND FALLACIES
It is interesting to ask where Bastiat got the idea of writing short, pithy essays for a popular audience in which he debunked misconceptions (“sophisms” or “fallacies”) about the operations of the free market in general and of free trade in particular.
The most likely source is Bentham’s Handbook of Political Fallacies (1824), which had originally appeared in French, edited by Étienne Dumont, in 1816 with the title Traité des sophismes politiques.5 Bastiat was an admirer of Bentham
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and chose two passages from Bentham’s Théorie des peines et des récompenses (1811) as the opening quotation for both the First and Second Series of Economic Sophisms. In the opening paragraph of this work Bentham offers the following definition of “fallacy,” which Bastiat shared:
By the name of fallacy it is common to designate any argument employed or topic suggested for the purpose, or with the probability of producing the effect of deception, or of causing some erroneous opinion to be entertained by any person to whose mind such an argument may have been presented.6
Bentham’s purpose in categorizing and discussing the varieties of political fallacies which he had identified was to expose “the semantics of persuasion”7 used by conservative political groups to delay or prevent much-needed political reforms. Bentham organized his critique around the main sets of arguments which facilitated “the art of deception”8 and which caused a “hydra of sophistries”9 that permitted “pernicious practices and institutions to be retained.”10 “Reason,” on the other hand, was the “instrument”11 which would enable the reformer to create this new “good government” by a process of logical analysis and classification. As he stated:
To give existence to good arguments was the object of the former work [the Theory of Legislation]; to provide for the exposure of bad ones is the object of the present one—to provide for the exposure of their real nature, and hence for the destruction of their pernicious force. Sophistry is a hydra of which, if all the necks could be exposed, the force would be destroyed. In
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this work, they have been diligently looked out for, and in the course of it the principal and most active of them have been brought in view.12
Bastiat shared Bentham’s view of “deception” as an ideological weapon used by powerful vested interests to protect their political and economic privileges. Bastiat saw that his task in writing the Sophisms was to enlighten “the dupes” who had been misled by la ruse, or the “trickery,” “fraud,” and “cunning” of the powerful beneficiaries of tariff protection and state subsidies.
Bentham recognized a variety of “sophistries” (or “sophisms”) which allowed pernicious government to protect itself from reform, but he believed that they all could be categorized into four classes based on the purpose or strategy the sophistry was designed to promote: the fallacies of authority, the fallacies of danger, the fallacies of delay, and the fallacies of confusion.13 Arguments from “authority” were designed to intimidate and hence repress the individual from reasoning through things himself; arguments about “imminent danger” were designed to frighten the would-be reformer with the supposed negative consequences of any change; arguments which urged caution and “delay” were designed to postpone discussion of reform until it could be ignored or forgotten; and arguments designed to promote “confusion” in the minds of reformers and their supporters were designed to make it difficult or impossible to form a correct judgment on the matter at hand.14
Bastiat, on the other hand, categorized the types of sophisms he was opposing along the lines of the particular social or political class interests the sophisms were designed to protect. Thus he recognized “theocratic sophisms,” “economic sophisms,” “political sophisms,” and “financial sophisms,” which were designed to protect the interests (the “legal plunder”) of the established Church; the Crown, the aristocracy, and elected political officials; the economic groups who benefited from protection and subsidies; and the bankers and debt holders of the government, respectively.15 Bastiat planned to address this broad range of “sophisms” in a book he never completed.16
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What he did have time to complete were two volumes exposing one of these sets of sophisms, namely “economic sophisms.”