and date of first publication: JDE 11 (April 1845): 10–16.
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. 19–27.
Previous translations: 1st English ed., 1846; 1st American ed., 1848; FEE ed., 1964.
We have just seen that there are obstacles between our needs and their satisfaction. We manage to overcome them or to reduce them by using our various faculties. In a very general way, we may say that production is an effort followed by a result.
But against what is our well-being or wealth measured? Is it on the result of the effort? Is it on the effort itself? There is always a ratio between the effort employed and the result obtained. Does progress consist in the relative increase of the second or of the first term of this relationship?
Both of these theses have been advocated; in political economy, they divide the field of opinion.
According to the first thesis, wealth is the result of output. It increases in accordance with the increase in the ratio of the result to the effort. Absolute perfection, of which the exemplar is God, consists in the infinite distancing of two terms, in this instance: effort nil; result infinite.
The second thesis claims that it is the effort itself that constitutes and measures wealth. To progress is to increase the ratio of the effort to the result.
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Its ideal may be represented by the effort, at once eternal and sterile, of Sisyphus.1,2
Naturally, the first welcomes everything that tends to decrease the difficulties involved and increase the product: the powerful machines that add to human powers, the trade that enables better advantage to be drawn from the natural resources spread to a greater or lesser extent over the face of the earth, the intelligence that makes discoveries, the experience that verifies these discoveries, the competition that stimulates production, etc.
Logically, by the same token, the second willfully summons up everything whose effect is to increase the difficulties of production and decrease the output: privileges, monopolies, restrictions, prohibitions, the banning of machines, sterility, etc.
It is fair to note that the universal practice of men is always directed by the principle of the first doctrine. Nobody has ever seen and nobody will ever see anyone working, whether he be a farmer, manufacturer, trader, artisan, soldier, writer, or scholar, who does not devote the entire force of his intelligence to doing things better, faster, and more economically, in a word, to doing more with less.
The opposite doctrine is practiced by theoreticians, deputies, journalists, statesmen, and ministers, in a word, men whose role in this world is to carry out experiments on society.
Again it should be noted that, with regard to things that concern them personally, they, like everybody else in the world, act on the principle of obtaining from work the greatest number of useful results possible.
You may think I am exaggerating, and that there are no real Sisyphists.
If you mean that, in practice, the principle is not pushed to the limit of its consequences, I would readily agree with you. Actually, this is always the case when people start from a false principle. It soon leads to results that are so absurd and harmful that one is simply forced to abandon it. For this reason, very practical productive activity never accepts Sisyphism: punishment would follow errors too closely for them not to be revealed. However, with regard to speculative theories of industrial activity, such as those developed
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by theoreticians and statesmen, a false principle may be followed for a long time before people are made aware of its falsity by complicated consequences of which moreover they are ignorant, and when at last they are revealed, and action is taken in accordance with the opposing principle, people contradict themselves and seek justification in this incomparably absurd modern axiom: in political economy there is no absolute principle.3
Let us thus see whether the two opposing principles that I have just established do not hold sway in turn, one in actual production and the other in the legislation regulating production.
I have already recalled something M. Bugeaud has said; however, in M. Bugeaud there are two men, one a farmer and the other a legislator.
As a farmer, M. Bugeaud tends to devote all his efforts to this twin aim: to save on work and to obtain bread cheaply. When he prefers a good cart to a bad one, when he improves the quality of fertilizer, when in order to break up his soil he substitutes the action of the atmosphere for that of the harrow or the hoe as far as he can, when he calls to his assistance all the procedures in which science and experiment have shown their effectiveness, he has and can have one single goal: to reduce the ratio of the effort to the result. Actually, we have no other way of recognizing the skill of the farmer and the quality of the procedure other than measuring what they have saved in effort and added to the result. And since all the farmers around the world act according to this principle, it may be said that the entire human race aspires, doubtless to its advantage, to obtaining bread or any other product more cheaply and to reducing the effort required to have a given quantity available.
Once account has been taken of this incontrovertible tendency in human beings, it ought to be enough to show legislators the real principle of the matter, that is, show them how they should be supporting productive economic activity (as far as it lies within their mission to support it), for it would be absurd to say that human laws ought to act in opposition to the laws of providence.
Nevertheless, the deputy, M. Bugeaud, has been heard to exclaim, “I do not understand the theory of low prices; I would prefer to see bread more expensive and work more plentiful.” And as a result, the deputy for the Dordogne has voted for legislative measures whose effect has been to hamper trade precisely because it indirectly procures us what direct production can supply us only at a higher cost.
Well, it is very clear that M. Bugeaud’s principle as a deputy is diametrically
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opposed to that of M. Bugeaud as a farmer. If he were consistent with himself, he would vote against any restriction in the Chamber or else he would carry onto his farm the principles he proclaims from the rostrum. He would then be seen to sow his wheat on the most infertile of his fields, since he would then succeed in working a great deal for little return. He would be seen to forbid the use of the plough, since cultivation using his nails would satisfy his double desire of making bread more expensive and work more plentiful.
The avowed aim and acknowledged effect of restriction is to increase work.
It also has the avowed aim and acknowledged effect of raising prices, which is nothing other than making products scarce. Thus, when taken to its limit, it is pure Sisyphism as we have defined it: infinite work, product nil.
Baron Charles Dupin,4 said to be a leading light among the peers in economic science, accuses the railway of harming shipping, and it is clear that it is the nature of a more perfect means to restrict the use of a means that is comparatively rougher. However, the railway can harm shipping only by diverting transport to itself; it can do so only by carrying it out more cheaply, and it can carry it out more cheaply only by reducing the ratio of the effort used to the result obtained, since this is what constitutes
