Bastiat Collection Pocket Edition [Paperback]

Frederic Bastiat (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 16, 2011

The world has always needed this: a gigantic collection of Bastiat's greatest work in a single, super-handy pocket edition, at a ridiculously affordable price. All of the best essays by this giant of liberty are here, 1000 plus pages of it, but in a compact package that it is still easy to read. In fact, it is a joy to hold and even more to read because the text just jumps off the page.

Putting this together was a challenge but one we accepted because many people said that our two-volume hardback, though beautiful, was too costly and cumbersome. For some collectors, this was great, but what about students and people who read on the subway, or on lunch break, or just want to throw the book into an overnight bag for a quick trip somewhere?

We can't be more pleased at the result. This is the Bastiat Collection that the world has needed.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Claude Frédéric Bastiat was an economist and publicist of breathtaking intellectual energy and massive historical influence. He was born in Bayonne, France on June 29th, 1801. After the middle-class Revolution of 1830, Bastiat became politically active and was elected Justice of the Peace in 1831 and to the Council General (county-level assembly) in 1832. He was elected to the national legislative assembly after the French Revolution of 1848.

Bastiat was inspired by and routinely corresponded with Richard Cobden and the English Anti-Corn Law League and worked with free-trade associations in France. Bastiat wrote sporadically starting in the 1830s, but in 1844 he launched his amazing publishing career when an article on the effects of protectionism on the French and English people was published in the Journal des Economistes which was held to critical acclaim.

The bulk of his remarkable writing career that so inspired the early generation of English translators and so many more is contained in this collection.

If we were to take the greatest economists from all ages and judge them on the basis of their theoretical rigor, their influence on economic education, and their impact in support of the free-market economy, then Frédéric Bastiat would be at the top of the list.

As Murray N. Rothbard noted: "Bastiat was indeed a lucid and superb writer, whose brilliant and witty essays and fables to this day are remarkable and devastating demolitions of protectionism and of all forms of government subsidy and control. He was a truly scintillating advocate of an untrammeled free market."

This book bring together his greatest works and represents the early generation of English translations. These translators were like Bastiat himself, people from the private sector who had a love of knowledge and truth and who altered their careers to vigorously pursue intellectual ventures, scholarly publishing, and advocacy of free trade.

Thus does this collection, totally 1,000 pages plus extensive indexes, represent some of the best economics ever written. He was the first, and one of the very few, to be able to convincingly communicate the basic propositions of economics.

The vast majority of people who have learned anything about economics have relied on Bastiat or publications that were influenced by his work. This collection possibly more than anything ever written about economics is the antidote for economic illiteracy regarding such things as the inadvisability of tariffs and price controls, and everyone from the novice to the Ph.D. economist will benefit from reading it.

The collection consists of three sections, the first of which contains his best-known essays. In That Which is Seen, and That Which is Not Seen, Bastiat equips the reader to become an economist in the first paragraph and then presents the story of the broken window where a hoodlum is thought to create jobs and prosperity by breaking windows. Bastiat solves the quandary of prosperity via destruction by noting that while the apparent prosperity is seen, what is unseen is that which would have been produced had the windows not been broken.

Professor Jörg Guido Hülsmann credits Bastiat for discovering the counterfactual method, which allowed Bastiat to show that destruction (and a variety of government policies) is actually the path to poverty, not prosperity. This lesson is then applied to a variety of more complex cases and readers will never be able to deny that scarcity exists and will always hopefully remember that every policy has an opportunity cost. If nothing else, they will not believe as is often claimed that earthquakes, hurricanes, and wars lead to prosperity.

Product Details

• Paperback: 1012 pages
• Publisher: Ludwig von Mises Institute (March 16, 2011)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1610162005
• ISBN-13: 978-1610162005
• Product Dimensions: 7 x 4.5 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #79,962 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 18 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars INCOMPARABLE December 9, 2011

By Kliment

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

Historically speaking, it is not infrequent that tyranny presents itself as good. Skillful rhetoric and unjust laws can accomplish a greater level of public plunder and serfdom than guns and brute force. It is not the tyranny of the aristocracy or the royalty that is most dangerous, but the popular tyranny - the tyranny of democracy - when the envious poor - the dumb majority - empowers the elite government to enact unjust laws, to abrogate personal freedoms, to eliminate the free market and free competition, to regulate economic activity, to cancel the right to private property and private freedom and to become that omnipotent and mandatory big brother without whom no significant aspect of human life can be lived. And all of that in the name of justice and public benefit. Frederic Bastiat unmasks the carefully implemented political and economic process through which the American and European people have been losing their individual freedoms bit by bit now for two centuries. The book demonstrates that very little of our freedom once bestowed by God and guaranteed through the constitution is left.

Besides Bastiat, I highly recommend reading the following books

1. Freedom and Prosperity in the 21st Century by George Stasen, Zviad Kliment Lazarashvili, etc.
2. Capitalism and Freedom by Milton Friedman
3. American Heroes: Thoreau and Brown by Zviad Kliment Lazarashvili
4. The Road to Serfdom by F. A. Hayek

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Best Kindle edition March 26, 2012

By R. Adams

Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase

Carefully assembled, this Kindle edition contains an active table of contents. Editing and assembling this digital edition has been expertly done.

Table of Contents

Introduction by Mark Thornton

I. That Which Is Seen, and That Which Is Not Seen

1. The Broken Window
2. The Disbanding of Troops
3. Taxes
4. Theaters and Fine Arts
5. Public Works
6. The Intermediaries
7. Protectionism
8. Machinery
9. Credit
10. Algeria
11. Frugality and Luxury
12. He Who Has a Right to Work Has a Right to Profit
II. The Law

III. Government .

IV. What Is Money?

V. Capital and Interest

1. Introduction
2. Ought Capital to Produce Interest?
3. What Is Capital?
4. The Sack of Corn
5. The House
6. The Plane
7. What Regulates Interest?

VI. Economic Sophisms--First Series

Introduction
1. Abundance--Scarcity
2. Obstacle--Cause
3. Effort--Result
4. To Equalize the Conditions of Production
5. Our Products Are Burdened with Taxes
6. Balance of Trade
7. Petition of the Manufacturers of Candles
8. Differential Duties--Tariffs
9. Immense Discovery
10. Reciprocity
11. Nominal Prices
12. Does Protection Raise Wages?
13. Theory--Practice
14. Conflict of Principles
15. Reciprocity Again
16. Obstruction--The Plea of the Protectionist
17. A Negative Railway
18. There Are No Absolute Principles
19. National Independence
20. Human Labor--National Labor
21. Raw Materials
22. Metaphors
23. Conclusion

VII. Economic Sophisms--Second Series

1. Natural History of Spoliation
2. Two Systems of Morals
3. The Two Hatchets
4. Lower Council of Labor
5. Dearness--Cheapness
6. To Artisans and Workmen
7. A Chinese Story
8. Post Hoc, Ergo Propter Hoc
9. The Premium Theft--Robbery by Subsidy
10. The Tax Gatherer
11. Protection; or, The Three City Aldermen
12. Something Else
13. The Little Arsenal of the Free-Trader
14. The Right Hand and the Left
15. Domination by Labor

VIII. Harmonies of Political Economy (Book One)

To the Youth of France
1. Natural and Artificial Organization
2. Wants, Efforts, Satisfactions
3. Wants of Man
4. Exchange
5. Of Value
6. Wealth
7. Capital
8. Property--Community
9. Landed Property
10. Competition
Concluding Observations

IX. Harmonies of Political Economy (Book Two)

11. Producer--Consumer
12. The Two Aphorisms
13. Rent
14. Wages
15. Saving
16. Population
17. Private and Public Services
18. Disturbing Causes
19. War
20. Responsibility
21. Solidarity
22. Social Motive Force
23. Existence of Evil
24. Perfectibility
25. Relationship of Political Economy and Religion

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Bastiat is brilliant. February 3, 2012

By Luke Orem

Format:Paperback

Every word I have ever read by this man has made me reevaluate what I know about government and economics. I believe he is on par with Thomas Paine in opening a person's mind. Find his works anyway you can and read the brilliant arguments put forth. You will be quoting him for the rest of your life.