Harmonies of Political Economy: Translated from the Third French Edition, with a Notice of the Life and Writings of the AuthorBastiat, Frédéric
Philosophy
Harmonies of Political Economy: Translated from the Third French Edition, with a Notice of the Life and Writings of the Author
Bastiat, Frédéric
Economics
At all events, do the inventors of new organizations not perceive
that this principle, inherent in the very nature of man, will follow
them into their systems, and that there it will make greater havoc
than in our natural organization, in which the interest and unjust
pretensions of one are at least restrained by the resistance of
all? These writers always make two inadmissible suppositions—the
first is, that society, such as they conceive it, will be directed
by infallible men denuded of this motive of self-interest; and,
secondly, that the masses will allow themselves to be directed by
these men.
Finally, these system-makers appear to give themselves no trouble
about the means of execution. How are they to establish their system?
How are they to induce all mankind at once to give up the principle
upon which they now act—the attraction of enjoyment, and the
repugnance to pain? It would be necessary, as Rousseau has said, ‹to
change the moral and physical constitution of man›.
In order to induce men at once to throw aside, as a worn-out garment,
the existing social order in which the human race has lived and been
developed from the beginning to our day, to adopt an organization of
human invention and become docile parts of another mechanism, there
are, it seems to me, only two means which can be employed—Force, or
Universal Consent.
The founder of the new system must have at his disposal a force
capable of overcoming all resistance, so that humanity shall be in
his hands only as so much melting wax to be moulded and [p054]
fashioned at his pleasure—or he must obtain by persuasion an assent
so complete, so exclusive, so blind even, as to render unnecessary
the employment of force.
I defy any one to point out to me a third means of establishing or
introducing into human practice a ‹Phalanstère›,[16] or any other
artificial social organization.
Now, if there be only two assumed means, and if we have demonstrated
that the one is as impracticable as the other, we have proved that
these system-makers are losing both their time and their trouble.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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