Frédéric Bastiat, while pondering the nature of war, concluded that society had always been divided into two classes - those who engaged in productive work and those who lived off their backs (1850)
About this Quotation:
Bastiat had a scathing attitude towards the study of classical languages and the ancient world because he had a very low regard for the morals of the slave owning and conquering Romans. Like Milton he thought that military glory was a “false glory” and Like Calhoun he thought that society was divided into classes of people - those who worked and traded peacefully and who paid the taxes, and those who lived off those taxes and ofter served in the military to boot. When this quotation was chosen in January 2005 Liberty Fund was preparing to translate the complete works of Bastiat (the mid-19th century French edition runs to 7 volumes). Soon there will a cornucopia of the writings in English of this great defender of liberty.
Other quotes from this week:
- 2010: Voltaire laments the destruction of Lisbon in an earthquake and criticises the philosophers who thought that “all’s well with the world” and the religious who thought it was “God’s will” (1755)
- 2008: Henry Vaughan argues that it is the voluntary and “universal concurrence of mankind”, not the laws, which makes money acceptable as a medium of exchange (1675)
- 2005: Vicesimus Knox tries to persuade an English nobleman that some did not come into the world with “saddles on their backs and bridles in their mouths” and some others like him came “ready booted and spurred to ride the rest to death” (1793)
Other quotes about Origin Of Government:
- 2009: John Stuart Mill discusses the origins of the state whereby the “productive class” seeks protection from one “member of the predatory class” in order to gain some security of property (1848)
- 2007: David Hume on the origin of government in warfare, and the “perpetual struggle” between Liberty and Power (1777)
- 2007: Franz Oppenheimer argues that there are two fundamentally opposed ways of acquiring wealth: the “political means” through coercion, and the “economic means” through peaceful trade (1922)
- 2007: Tom Paine asks how it is that established governments came into being, his answer, is "banditti of ruffians" seized control and turned themselves into monarchs (1792)
- 2005: Herbert Spencer makes a distinction between the “militant type of society” based upon violence and the “industrial type of society” based upon peaceful economic activity (1882)
16 January, 2006
 | Frédéric Bastiat, while pondering the nature of war, concluded that society had always been divided into two classes - those who engaged in productive work and those who lived off their backs (1850) |
In chapter 19 of the last work he ever completed, Bastiat pondered on the nature of war and who benefits from it. He concluded that society is divided into two groups: those who live off the productive activity of others and the vast bulk of the people who engage in productive activities:
… [in the ancient world] a very small number of men managed to live without working, supported by the labor of the oppressed masses. This small leisured group made their slaves construct sumptuous palaces, vast castles, or somber fortresses. They loved to surround themselves with all the sensuous pleasures of life and with all the monuments of art. They delighted in discoursing on philosophy and cosmogony; and, above all, they carefully cultivated the two sciences to which they owed their supremacy and their enjoyments: the science of force and the science of fraud.
For beneath this aristocracy were the countless multitudes occupied in creating, for themselves, the means of sustaining life and, for their oppressors, the means of surfeiting them with pleasures. Since the historians never make the slightest mention of these multitudes, we forget their existence; they do not count for us at all. We have eyes only for the aristocracy.
[in ancient life] … the only difference was that the labor that a few men had managed to escape fell crushingly on the oppressed masses, to the great detriment of justice, liberty, property, wealth, equality, and progress…
The full passage from which this quotation was taken can be be viewed below (front page quote in bold):
I cannot help thinking that among the Greeks, as among the Romans and in the Middle Ages, men were just as they are today, that is, subject to wants so strong, so recurrent, that it was necessary to provide for them on pain of death. Therefore, I cannot help concluding, that then, as now, these wants were the chief and most absorbing preoccupation of the great majority of the human race.
What does appear certain is that a very small number of men managed to live without working, supported by the labor of the oppressed masses. This small leisured group made their slaves construct sumptuous palaces, vast castles, or somber fortresses. They loved to surround themselves with all the sensuous pleasures of life and with all the monuments of art. They delighted in discoursing on philosophy and cosmogony; and, above all, they carefully cultivated the two sciences to which they owed their supremacy and their enjoyments: the science of force and the science of fraud.
For beneath this aristocracy were the countless multitudes occupied in creating, for themselves, the means of sustaining life and, for their oppressors, the means of surfeiting them with pleasures. Since the historians never make the slightest mention of these multitudes, we forget their existence; they do not count for us at all. We have eyes only for the aristocracy. It is this class that we call ancient society or feudal society. We imagine that such societies were self-sustaining, that they never had recourse to anything so mundane as commerce, industry, or labor; we admire their unselfishness, their generosity, their love of the arts, their spiritual qualities, their disdain for servile occupations, their lofty thoughts and sentiments; we declare, with a certain quaver in the voice, that at one time the nations cared only for glory, at another only for the arts, at another only for philosophy, at another only for religion, at another only for virtue; we very sincerely weep over our own sorry state; we speak of our age with sarcasm because, unable to rise to the sublime heights attained by such paragons, we are reduced to according to labor and to all the prosaic virtues associated with it so important a place in our modern life.
Let us console ourselves with the thought that it played a no less important role in ancient life. The only difference was that the labor that a few men had managed to escape fell crushingly on the oppressed masses, to the great detriment of justice, liberty, property, wealth, equality, and progress; and this is the first of the disturbing factors to which I must call the reader’s attention.