Product Details
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The case for pure laissez-faire has never been better expressed,
By
This review is from: Frederic Bastiat: The Law (Paperback)
Bastiat's 1850 classic is very politically inconvenient to today's liberals and conservatives. It is a declaration of absolute laissez-faire; a free-market economy with the law limited exclusively to the protection of life, liberty, and property. Bastiat rejects public education, public enforcement of morality, progressive taxation, anti-immigrantism, protectionism, central banking, and even the false god of democracy itself. And he makes this case for pure laissez-faire with sharp prose and irrefutable logic.
I found "The Law" very interesting for its political taxonomy, too. Bastiat sat on the left side of the French parliament -- from which the terms "left" and "right" emerge. And yet he, like many other leftists, was for pure laissez-faire. He attacks "socialism" (which he defines as "plunder") with vigor, and never uses the term "capitalism" for the system (or lack thereof) he espoused. The word "liberal" is never used, but there's little doubt that Bastiat was one (in the classical sense). And yet he rejects "democracy," which was the fatal flaw of classical liberalism. Indeed, the only area in which Bastiat's politics are lacking (from modern libertarian perspective) is in his inability to envision a stateless society in which his "Law" (the prohibition of initiation of force) could be maintained by competing agencies. After all, if no one has the right to initiate force against another person, then no entity has the right to prohibit the establishment of a competing "government" within its supposed territory. Bastiat's attack on "democracy" is focused on the seemingly inoffensive principle of universal suffrage. Bastiat points out that if the law were kept within its proper sphere, no one would care if they could vote or not. Good point. Again, he's on the verge of anarchism (anarcho-capitalism) here, but doesn't quite commit to it. The public schools are targeted again and again -- in a departure from Adam Smith. But even more interestingly, Bastiat attacks classical education, the new fad of home-schoolers and cultural conservatives. "The Law" spends ample time dissecting classical texts and exposing them as the root of communistic ideas in the Western mind. Bastiat also predicted the American "Civil War" eleven years before the first shots were fired. He praised the U.S. by saying "there is no country in the world where the law is kept more within its proper domain," but then said there were two -- "and only two" -- issues that endangered the public peace: tariffs and slavery. How right he was. Bastiat is most famous, of course, for his "negative railroad" and other anti-protectionist, pro-free trade writings. Indeed, he says "protectionism, socialism, and communism" are the same plant at different stages of development: do you here that Pat Buchanan? In summary, this 70-page pamphlet is a wonderfully insightful and affirming read. My copy is now so marked up with underlined quotables, I'll have a hard time finding specific passages when I need them. Then again, if need be, I can just read the whole thing again in a couple of hours. "The Law" doesn't ask much of your time. If you haven't read it, you definitely should!
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Convincing argument for small government,
By
This review is from: Frederic Bastiat: The Law (Paperback)
I was given a copy of The Law, by Frederic Bastiat, by a friend who thought I might be interested in its contents. I was expecting an American flag-waving document on patriotism, but instead I found this reasonable booklet by a French statesman, written in 1850, just after the Revolution of 1848, because the author was concerned about France's rapid slide into socialism and communism.
The comparisons to America today are stunning. I have long believed in small government, but have allowed my beliefs to be watered down because of "practical solutions" that I thought needed to be met. But now our generation seems to think that government will solve all of our problems, from economic and political to moral and medical. This is not the government I learned about in my textbooks as a boy, and this booklet has helped me to realize what a slippery slope we've been on for more than 50 years. Bastiat makes a strong case that those in power see themselves as above the rest of mankind, and that they feel they have a right to decide what is good for the rest of the nation. And that "good" can shift depending on who is in power. Bastiat, on the other hand, makes the argument that government should "leave people alone." The closing paragraph of the book sums up the whole argument pretty well: "And now that the legislators and do-gooders have so futilely inflicted so many systems upon society, may they finally end where they should have begun: May they reject all systems, and try liberty; for liberty is an acknowledgment of faith in God and His works." I will be reexamining my libertarian views in the light of what I've read here and perhaps giving more credence to the notion of smaller government. It's no secret that big government has compounded many of the problems its tried to solve. I wonder if this booklet is required reading in our government classes. If not, it should be.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Everyone should read this work,
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: Frederic Bastiat: The Law (Paperback)
I read this work a number of years ago and purchased another copy as a gift. It is well written and thought provoking. Well worth the purchase price.
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
|
|
Tags Customers Associate with This Product(What's this?)Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
|
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
![[Start the discussion]](http://g-ecx.images-amazon.com/images/G/01/x-locale/communities/discussion_boards/start-new-discussion-sec._V192250339_.gif){kind=small}
