Economics as ethics: Bastiat's nineteenth century interpretation

Abstract

Frederic Bastiat was an influential economic writer of the middle 1800s. In his work,Economic Sophisms (1848), Bastiat proposed a dual system of ethics, containing economic ethics and religious ethics.

Bastiat first described the tendency of individuals toward “plunder” as a means of satisfying their economic needs. Men, he held, could work and produce what they needed by toil, but history had shown that men preferred to take what they could from others who had toiled. Bastiat identified two main types of plunder — force and fraud.

Bastiat held that appeals made by philosophers over the centuries had done little to stop plunder. He believed that the best way to reduce physical and moral aggression was by educating individuals to the harmful effects caused by violent and fraudulent behavior.

Thus, Bastiat proposed two systems of ethics — economic ethics and religious ethics. Under his system of economic ethics, Bastiat suggested that the recipients of maleficent actions could be stimulated to resist the actions when they were made aware of the true social costs caused by the oppressors. Under his system of religious ethics, Bastiat thought that the perpetrators of maleficent actions could be dissuaded from performing the actions by appealing to their sense of justice and morality.