We close the year of religious con men and retrogressive laws

Claude Frederic Bastiat was a 19th Century French politician, political economist and a prolific devastating polemicist who advocated personal freedom, limited governments and free trade.

His best known work is the anti-protectionist polemic ‘The Candlemakers Petition’. One of his less known works — my favourite — is an essay on corruption, ‘The Physiology of Plunder’.

I have thought it a fitting way to close the year of religious con men and retrogressive legislation.

This is an abridged version of Bastiat’s essay, edited with some creative licence — I have reordered many sections so that the flow is not the same in the original.

Bastiat discusses many types of plunder including war, slavery and commercial fraud. I have limited my edition to religious and government corruption.

There are only two ways of obtaining the means essential to the preservation, the adornment and the improvement of life: production and plunder.

Some people say plunder is a fortuitous event, a purely local and transient evil, condemned by moral philosophy, punished by law and unworthy of the attention of political economy.

Yet however well-disposed or optimistic one may be, one is compelled to recognise that plunder is practised on too vast a scale that it is too much a part of all great human events for any social science — political economy least of all — to be able to ignore it.

PROSPER AT ONE ANOTHER'S EXPENSE

I go further. What keeps the social order from improving (at least to the extent to which is capable of improving) is the constant endeavour of its members to live and prosper at one another’s expense. If plunder did not exist, society would be perfect and the social sciences would be without an object.

I still go further. When plunder has become a way of life for a group of men living together, they create for themselves a legal system that authorises it and a moral code that glorifies it.

The true and just rule for mankind is the voluntary exchange of service for service. Plunder consists in prohibiting freedom of exchange, by force or fraud, in order to receive a service without rendering one in return.

Forcible plunder is effected by waiting until a man has produced something then taking it from him by violence.

When practised by one individual, it is called theft and is punishable by imprisonment. When practised by one nation on another, it is called conquest and leads to glory.

Fraud consists of the misuse of the intellect. I shall review two kinds of plunder carried out by fraud on a grand scale.

The first is plunder by theocratic fraud. Men are induced to give actual services in the form of food, clothing, luxury, prestige, influence and power, in exchange for fictitious services.

If I tell a man: “I’m going to render you an immediate service,” I am obliged to keep my word otherwise he would soon know what to expect and my fraud would be unmasked.

CHANGING TIMES

But suppose I say to him: “In exchange for services from you, I shall confer immense services to you, not in this world but in the next. Whether, after this life you are to be eternally happy or wretched depends entirely on me. I’m an intermediary between God and man and can open to you the gates of heaven or hell.”

If this man believes me, he is at my mercy. This sort of imposture has been widely practised since the beginning of the world. The extent of the power which Egyptian priests attained by such means is well known.

God forbid that I should seek here to disturb those comforting beliefs that view this life of sorrows as but a prelude to a future life of happiness! But that the irresistible yearning that impels us to accept such beliefs has been shamefully exploited. No one, not even the Pope, could deny.

There is one sign by which it is possible to determine whether or not people have been victimised this way. Examine the religion and the priest and see whether the priest is the instrument of religion or the religion is the instrument of the priest.

If the priest is the instrument of religion, if his only thought is to disseminate everywhere its ethical principles and its beneficial influence, he will be gentle, tolerant, humble, charitable and zealous. His life would resemble that of his divine model. He will preach freedom and equality among men and peace and brotherhood among nations.

He will resist the temptations of temporal power since he would want no ties with that which, of all things in this world, has the greatest need for restraint. He will be a man of the people, a man of good counsel and tender consolation, a man whose opinion is esteemed and a man obedient to the Gospel.

If, on the contrary, the religion is the instrument of the priest, he will treat it as one does an instrument that one modifies, bends or twists to his own purposes so as to derive from it the greatest possible advantage.
He will adjust his moral principles to suit changing times, men and circumstances. He will try to awe the populace with his studied gestures and poses.
A hundred times a day he will mumble words that have long since lost all meaning and become mere empty conventionalities. He will involve himself in worldly intrigues and will always side with those in power on condition that they side with him.
WONDERFUL INVENTIONS
In brief, from every one of his acts it will be clear that what he is aiming at is not to advance religion by means of the clergy but to advance the clergy by means of religion.

And since so much effort implies an end and as this end — according to our hypothesis — can be nothing other than power and wealth, the conclusive proof that the people have been duped is that the priest is rich and powerful.

The second is fraud by misuse of government; a field of plunder so immense that we can only glance at it.

In ordinary private transactions, each party remains the sole judge, both of the services he receives and the services he performs.

He can either decline the exchange or make it elsewhere, hence the need of offering in the market only such services as will find voluntary acceptance.

It is the tendency of all men to exaggerate the services they render and to minimise the services they receive. Chaos would reign if we did not have, in private transactions, the assurance of a negotiated price.

This assurance is completely lacking in our transactions with the government, yet the State, which, after all is composed of men obeys the universal tendency.

It wants to serve us a great deal — more, indeed than we desire — and to make us accept as real services what are often far from being such, and all this for the purpose of exacting some services from us in return in the form of taxes.

Governments act methodically, step by step, according to a well contrived plan that is constantly being improved by tradition and experience.

They study men and their passions. If they perceive, for instance, that the people are inclined to war, they incite and inflame this calamitous propensity.

By their diplomacy, they surround the nation with dangers and as a natural consequence, demand that it provides soldiers, pilots, sailors, arsenal and fortifications.

Often, in fact, they do not need to go to the trouble of making such demands for everything they want is offered to them. Then they have jobs, pensions, and promotions to distribute. All this requires money; hence they impose taxes and float loans.

If the nation is open-handed, the government offers to cure all the ills of mankind. It promises to restore commerce, make agriculture prosperous, expand industry, encourage arts and letters, wipe out poverty and so on. All that is needed is to create some new government agencies and pay a few more bureaucrats.

LIABLE TO FALL PREY

Certain nations seem particularly liable to fall prey to governmental plunder. They are those in which men, lacking faith in their own dignity and capability, would feel themselves lost if they were not governed and administered every step of the way.

Without having travelled a great deal, I have seen countries in which people think agriculture can make no progress unless the government supports experimental farms; that soon there will no longer be any horses if the government does not provide studs; that parents will not have their children educated, or will only be taught immorality if the government does not decide what is proper to learn.

Governments assuming gigantic proportions end by absorbing half of the national income. The people are astonished to find that while they hear of wonderful inventions that are to multiply goods without end, they are working as hard as ever and are still no better off than before.

The trouble is, while the government has been acting with so much ability, the people have shown practically none. Thus, when called upon to choose those who would be entrusted with the powers of government, those who are to determine the sphere of and the payment for government action, who do they choose? Government officials!

THE GERM THAT KILLS ITSELF

They entrust the executive authority itself with the power to fix the limits of its own activities and requirements. They act like Moliere’s would-be gentleman who, for the selection and number of his suits, relied upon his tailor!

Plunder always carries within itself the germ that ultimately kills it. It is rarely that many plunder few, for in such case, the latter would promptly be so reduced in number as to be no longer capable of satisfying the greed of the former, so that plunder would come to an end.

Almost always, it is the many that are oppressed by the few; yet plunder is nonetheless doomed to come to an end.

For if it makes use of force. In the long run, force will naturally pass to the side of the many. And if fraud is the means, it is natural unless intelligence is to count for nothing, that the majority should eventually become aware of it.

The extent to which plunder is practised is always in inverse proportion to the gullibility of the people since it is the nature of abuses to go as far as they can. Plunders conform to the Malthusian law: they multiply with the means of existence; and the means of existence of knaves is the credulity of their dupes.

Seek as one will, there is no substitute for an informed and enlightened public opinion. It is the only remedy.

Happy holidays, and have an enlightened 2015.

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