sophism Bastiat uses a variety of words in his attempt to speak plainly and brutally. Here is a list with our preferred translation for each: dépouiller (to dispossess), spolier (to plunder), voler (to steal), piller (to loot or pillage), raviser (to ravish or rape), filouter (filching), and variants, such as le vol de grand chemin (highway robbery).
There was also some debate in Bastiat’s time about what to call the compulsory conscription of young men into the French Army. It was called requisition in 1793, conscription in 1798, and, more euphemistically, recrutement, during the Restoration and the July Monarchy. Bastiat rejected the euphemism used during the 1840s, preferring to see it as a violation of individual liberty, and hence conscription was his preferred term.
The theory of plunder which Bastiat was working on in the last couple of years of his life, most notably in “The Physiology of Plunder” (ES2 1) and “Two Moral Philosophies” (ES2 2), is a good example of the application of his more brutal style to an analysis of how the state goes about extracting the revenue it needs to carry out its activities. Bastiat described taxation as nothing less than “plunder” (la spoliation), where the more powerful, the plunderers (les spoliateurs), use force to seize the property of others (the plundered) in order to provide benefits for themselves or favored vested-interest groups like the aristocracy or the church, resulting in what he termed “aristocratic” or “theocratic plunder.” He uses a number of closely linked expressions to describe this process of plunder: the plunderers (les spoliateurs) use a combination of outright coercion (la force), fraud (la ruse), and deception (la duperie) to acquire resources from ordinary workers and consumers. They also resort to the use of misleading and deceptive arguments (sophismes) to deceive ordinary people, the dupes (les dupes), and to convince them that these actions are taken in their own interests and not those of the ruling elites. We have
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retained this language in our translation and have indicated in the footnotes when Bastiat is using this form of “plain speaking.”
At times Bastiat resorts to cursing, which we have not hesitated to translate as accurately as we can. His best-known example of this is his essay on money titled “Maudit argent!” (Damned Money!, 1849). Other examples include the expressions que Dieu maudisse (what God would damn, or God-damned),7 malédiction sur les machines! (a curse on machines!), le fesse-mathieu, which is a coarse expression for a usurer or moneylender,8 and où diable l’économie politique va-t-elle se nicher? (where the devil is political economy taking us?).
Opposition to Circumlocutions and Euphemisms
The use of the words “plunder” and “dupes” is not the only example of Bastiat’s attempts to avoid circumlocutions and euphemisms in describing government policies like taxation and tariff protection. In the sophism “The Tax Collector” (ES2 10), Bastiat makes a concerted effort to distinguish clearly between two types of “representation,” and we have tried to follow closely the specific set of terms he uses to describe each one. In the first type of representation, an individual contracts with another party, perhaps a business representative or a lawyer with power of attorney, to act on their behalf in a strictly limited manner. For this Bastiat uses phrases such as s’arranger directement (to engage in an exchange directly with a supplier of a good or service) or placer une procuration (to appoint someone to act with one’s power of attorney). He contrasts this with political représentation, where a voter (in the case of France before 1848 this was a very limited number of wealthy taxpayers—some 240,000 in a population of 36 million) could nommer pour député (nominate as one’s representative) or se faire représenter par quelqu’un (to be represented by somebody). The latter terminology is used by Mr. Blockhead (the tax collector) to try to persuade Jacques Bonhomme that his tax money is being wisely spent by responsible political representatives in the Chamber of Deputies. Jacques Bonhomme is very skeptical and is not persuaded. We have endeavored in the translation to bring out this very different understanding of the nature of “representation,” which was Bastiat’s intention in choosing this very specific terminology.
The language of war and battle was something that Bastiat wanted to banish
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from all discussion of economic activity. In “Domination through Work” (ES2 17), he argued that it is dangerous to use metaphors drawn from war and the military to describe economic phenomena, as the former acquire wealth for a nation through violence, destruction, and killing, while the latter do it by peaceful, voluntary, and mutually beneficial exchange. He rejected such terms as invasion (of foreign goods), flood, tribute (to describe payment for foreign goods), domination (through trade), fight on equal terms, conquer, crush, be defeated (by one’s trade rivals), and machines that kill off work. He uses these military expressions throughout the sophisms in order to rebut the premises which lie behind their popular usage in the press and in debates in the Chamber, and we have followed his practice. His conclusion was unmistakable: “Bannissons de l’économie politique toutes ces expressions empruntées au vocabulaire des batailles: Lutter à armes égales, vaincre, écraser, étouffer, être battu, invasion, tribut” (Let us banish from political economy all the following expressions borrowed from a military vocabulary: to fight on equal terms, to conquer, to crush, to stifle, to be defeated, invasion, or tribute).9
Use of the Familiar “Tu” Form
As Bastiat oscillated between his more popular and humorous style of writing and his more serious and plain-speaking style, he would use quite different language. In the more lighthearted vein he would have ordinary people espouse opposing views in his constructed dialogues or plays. Sometimes he would use the familiar form of the word “you,” which in French is tu. For example, in his appeal to the workers on the streets of Paris in the early days of the 1848 Revolution, he would speak to them using tu, which we indicate in the footnotes.10
A quite interesting example is provided by the conversations between Robinson Crusoe and Friday on their island. Bastiat may have invented “Crusoe economics” as a way of making complex economic problems more understandable to ordinary readers. In their conversations about how to organize their time and labor most productively on the island, Bastiat has them address each other using tu, which suggests a certain friendship and equal status between the two, which is surprising given the historical context of European colonialism.11 We indicate in the footnotes when tu is being used.
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It is also interesting to note that Bastiat put the free trade arguments in the mouth of the native Friday and the protectionist ideas in the mouth of the European Crusoe.
Technical Economic Terms
In a work which relies so heavily on economic theory it is not surprising to come across many technical economic terms. We have tried to translate these terms consistently, but it is not always possible. A good example is the word travail, which could be translated in several ways, all of which are accurate in their own way. For example, one could use the following English words, depending on the context: “work,” “labor,” “production,” and “employment.” If there is any ambiguity, we indicate this in the footnotes.
Sometimes Bastiat makes a distinction between, on the one hand, les protectionnistes (the advocates of protectionism) and le régime de la protection (the protectionist system), and on the other hand, les prohibitionistes (the advocates of prohibiting imports) and le régime prohibitif (the system of import prohibition). He does this because French tariff policy was a mixture of numerous categories of goods the importation of which was prohibited outright in order to protect French manufacturers,
