people will say, are the benefits of freedom so hidden that they are apparent only to professional economists?
Yes, we agree that our opponents in the debate have a clear advantage over us. They can set out a half-truth in a few words, and to show that it is a half-truth we need long and arid dissertations.
This is in the nature of things. Protection brings together in one single point all the good it does and distributes among the wider mass of people the harm it inflicts. One is visible to the naked eye, the other only to the mind’s eye.3 It is exactly the opposite for freedom.
This is so for almost all economic matters.
If you say: Here is a machine that has thrown thirty workers out into the street;
Or else: Here is a spendthrift who will stimulate all forms of industry;
Or yet again: The conquest of Algiers4 has doubled Marseilles’s trade;
Or lastly: The budget assures the livelihood of one hundred thousand families.
You will be understood by everyone, and your statements are clear, simple, and true in themselves. You may deduce the following principles from them:
Machines are harmful;
Luxury, conquest, and heavy taxes are a blessing;
And your theory will have all the more success in that you will be able to support it with irrefutable facts.
We, on the other hand, cannot stick to one cause and its immediate effect. We know that this effect itself becomes a cause in its turn. To judge a measure, it is therefore necessary for us to follow it through a sequence of results up to its final effect. And, since we must give utterance to the key word, we are reduced to reasoning.
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But right away here we are, assailed by these cries: “You are theorists, metaphysicians, ideologues, utopians, and in thrall to rigid principles,” and all the prejudices of the public are turned against us.
What are we to do, therefore? Call for patience and good faith in the reader and, if we are capable of this, cast into our deductions such vivid clarity that the truth and falsehood stand out starkly in order for victory to be won either by restriction or freedom, once and for all.
I must make an essential observation at this point.
A few extracts from this small volume have appeared in the Journal des économistes.
In a criticism that was incidentally very benevolent, published by the Vicomte de Romanet5 (see the issues of Le Moniteur industriel dated 15 and 18 May 1845),6 he assumed that I was asking for customs dues to be abolished. M. de Romanet is mistaken. What I am asking for is the abolition of the protectionist regime. We do not refuse taxes to the government; what we would like, if possible, is to dissuade those being governed from taxing each other. Napoléon said: “Customs dues ought not to be a fiscal instrument, but a means of protecting industry.”7 We plead the contrary and say: “Customs dues must not be an instrument of mutual plunder in the hands of workers, but it can be a fiscal instrument that is as good as any other.” We are so far, or
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to involve only me in the conflict, I am so far from demanding the abolition of customs dues that I see in them a lifeline for our finances.8 I believe that they are likely to produce huge revenues for the Treasury, and if my idea is to be expressed in its entirety, at the snail’s pace that sound economic doctrine takes to circulate, I am counting more on the needs of the Treasury than on the force of enlightened public opinion for trade reform to be accomplished.
But finally what are your conclusions, I am asked.
I have no need of conclusions. I am opposing sophisms, that is all.
But, people continue, it is not enough to destroy, you have to build. My view is that in the destruction of an error the truth is created.
After that, I have no hesitation in expressing my hope. I would like public opinion to be persuaded to ratify a customs law that lays down terms of approximately this order:
| Objects of prime necessity shall pay an ad valorem duty of | 5 percent |
| Objects of normal usefulness | 10 percent |
| Luxury objects | 15 or 20 percent |
Furthermore, these distinctions are taken from an order of ideas that is totally foreign to political economy as such, and I am far from thinking that they are as useful and just as they are commonly supposed to be. However, that is another story.
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PUBLISHING HISTORY:
Original title: “Abondance, disette.”
Place and date of first publication: JDE 11 (April 1845): 1–8.
First French edition as book or pamphlet: Economic Sophisms (First Series) (1846).
Location in Paillottet’s edition of OC: Vol. 4. Sophismes économiques. Petits pamphlets I, pp. 5–14.
Previous translations: 1st English ed., 1846; 1st American ed., 1848; FEE ed., 1964.
What is better for mankind and society, abundance or scarcity?
What, people will exclaim, is that a question to ask? Has it ever been stated or is it possible to assert that scarcity is the basis of man’s well-being?
Yes, that has been claimed; yes, it has been asserted. It is asserted every day, and I have no fear in saying that the theory of scarcity is by far the more popular. It is the subject of conversation in the journals, books, and on the rostrum, and although this may appear extraordinary, it is clear that political economy will have fulfilled its task and its practical mission when it has popularized and made irrefutable this very simple proposition: “Mankind’s wealth lies in the abundance of things.”
Do we not hear this every day: “Foreigners are going to swamp us with their products”? We therefore fear abundance.
Has M. de Saint-Cricq1 not said: “Production is too high”? He therefore feared abundance.
Do workers not smash machines? They are therefore terrified of excess production or, in other words, abundance.
Has M. Bugeaud2 not pronounced these words: “Let bread become expensive
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and farmers will be rich!”? Well, bread can become expensive only if it becomes scarce; therefore M. Bugeaud was recommending scarcity.
Has not M. d’Argout3 used the very fact of the productive capacity of the sugar industry as an argument against it? Has he not said: “Beetroot has no future, and its cultivation could not be expanded, since if just a few hectares per département were allocated to it this
