War as Spoliation by Frederic Bastiat

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Thu, 29 Dec 2005 10:48:58 -0800 (PST)

War as Spoliation by Frederic Bastiat - Food For Thought

 

 

Link to the article:

http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig6/bastiat-spoilation.html

 

 

 

[Harmonies of Political Economy, Translated from the 3rd edition of

the French by P.J. Stirling, 2nd edition, 1850, London: Simpkin,

Marshall, and Co., pp. 458-464. This essay by the great French

economist Bastiat is a reminder of the dangers to all sides of using

military force as a means of securing resources or to bring freedom to

foreign peoples.]

 

War as Spoliation by Frederic Bastiat

 

A man (and the same thing may be said of a people) may pro­cure the

means of existence in two ways,—by creating them, or by stealing them.

Each of these two great sources of acquisition presents a variety of

methods.

 

We may create the means of existence by the chase, by fishing, by

agriculture, etc.

We may steal them by breach of trust, by violence, by force, fraud,

war, etc.

 

If, confining ourselves to the circle of one or other of these two

categories, we find that the predominance of one of these methods

establishes so marked a difference in the character of nations, how

much greater must the difference be between a nation which lives by

production, and a nation which lives by spoliation?

 

For it is not one of our faculties only, but all of them, which the

necessity of providing for our subsistence brings into exer­cise; and

what can be more fitted to modify the social con­dition of nations

than what thus modifies all the human facul­ties?

 

This consideration, important as it is, has been so little regarded,

that I must dwell upon it for an instant.

 

The realization of an enjoyment or satisfaction presupposes labour;

whence it follows that spoliation, far from excluding pro­duction,

presupposes it and takes it for granted.

This consideration, it seems to me, ought to modify par­tiality which

historians, poets, and novel-writers have displayed for those heroic

epochs which were not distinguished by what they sneer at under the

epithet of industrialism. In these days, as in our own, men lived,

subsisted; and labour must have done its office then as now. Only

there was this difference, that nations, classes, and individuals

succeeded in laying their share of the labour and toil on the

shoulders of other nations, other classes, and other in­dividuals.

 

The characteristic of production is to bring out of nothing, if I may

so speak, the satisfactions and enjoyments which sustain and embellish

life; so that a man, or a nation, may multiply ad infini­tum these

enjoyments, without inflicting privation on any other man, or any

other nation. So much is this the case, that a pro­found study of the

economic mechanism shows us that the success of one man's labour opens

up a field for the success of another's exertions.

 

The characteristic of spoliation, on the contrary, is this, that it

cannot confer a satisfaction on one without inflicting a

correspond­ing privation on another; for spoliation creates nothing,

but dis­places what labour has created. It entails an absolute loss of

the exertions of both parties. So far, then, from adding to the

enjoy­ments of mankind, it diminishes these enjoyments, and confers

them, moreover, on those who have not merited them.

 

In order to produce, man must direct all his powers and faculties to

obtain the mastery over natural laws ; for it is by this means that he

accomplishes his object. Hence, iron converted into a ploughshare is

the emblem of production.

 

To steal, on the other hand, man must direct all his powers and

faculties to obtain the mastery over his fellow-man; for it is by this

means that he attains his end. Hence, iron converted into a sword is

the emblem of spoliation.

 

Between the ploughshare, which brings plenty, and the sword, which

brings destruction and death, there is no greater difference than

between a nation of industrious workmen and a nation of spoliators.

They have, and can have, nothing whatever in com­mon. They have

neither the same ideas, nor the same rules of appreciation, nor the

same tastes, manners, character, laws, morals, or religion.

 

No more melancholy spectacle can present itself to the eye of

philanthropy than to see an industrial age putting forth all its

efforts, in the way of education, to get inoculated with the ideas,

the sentiments, the errors, the prejudices, the vices, of an era of

spoliation. Our own era is frequently accused of wanting consis­tency,

of displaying little accordance between the judgments that are formed

and the conduct that is pursued; and I believe that this arises

principally from the cause which I have just pointed out.

 

Spoliation, in the shape of War—that is to say, pure, simple,

barefaced spoliation—has its root deep in the human heart, in the

organization of man, in the universal motives which actuate the social

world, namely, desire of happiness and repugnance to pain—in short, in

that principle of our nature called self-interest.

 

I am not sorry to find myself arraigning that principle, for I have

been accused of devoting to it an idolatrous worship, of re­presenting

its effects as productive only of happiness to mankind, and even of

elevating it above the principle of sympathy, of dis­interestedness,

and of self-sacrifice. In truth, I have not so esteemed it; I have

only proved beyond the possibility of doubt its existence and its

omnipotence. I should ill appreciate that omnipotence, and I should do

violence to my own convictions, in representing personal interest as

the universal actuating motive of the human race, did I fail now to

point out the disturbing causes to which it gives rise, just as I

formerly pointed out the harmoni­ous laws of the social order winch

spring from it.

 

Man, as we have already said, has an invincible desire to support

himself, to improve his condition, and to attain happiness, or what he

conceives to be happiness, at least to approximate towards it. For the

same reason he shuns pain and toil.

 

Now labour, or the exertion we make in order to cause nature to

co-operate in production, is in itself toil or fatigue. For this

rea­son, it is repugnant to man, and he does not submit to it, except

for the sake of avoiding a still greater evil.

 

Some have maintained philosophically that labour is not an evil but a

good, and they are right, if we take into account its results. It is a

comparative good; or if it be an evil, it is an evil which saves us

from greater evils. This is precisely the reason why men have so great

a tendency to shun labour when they think that, without having

recourse to it, they may be able to reap its results.

 

Others maintain that labour is in itself a good; and that,

inde­pendently of its productive results, it elevates, strengthens,

and purifies man's character, and is to him a source of health and

en­joyment. All this is strictly true; and it is an additional

evidence to us of the marvelous fertility of those final intentions

which the Creator has displayed in all parts of His works. Apart

altogether from the productions which are its direct results, labour

promises to man, as a supplementary recompense, a sound mind in a

sound body; and it is not more true that idleness is the parent of

every vice than that labour is the parent of many virtues.

 

But this does not at all interfere with the natural and uncon­querable

inclinations of the human heart, or with that feeling which prompts us

not to desire labour for its own sake, but to compare it constantly

with its results; not to desire to expend a great effort on what can

be accomplished with a smaller effort; not of two efforts to choose

the more severe. Nor is our endeavour to diminish the relation which

the effort bears to the result

 

inconsistent with our desire, when we have once acquired some leisure,

to de­vote that leisure to new labours suited to our tastes, with the

prospect of thus securing a new and additional recompense.

With reference to all this, universal facts are decisive. At all

times, and everywhere, we find man regarding labour as undesir­able,

and satisfaction as the thing in his condition which makes him

compensation for his labour. At all times, and everywhere, we find him

endeavouring to lighten his toil by calling in the aid, whenever he

can obtain it, of animals, of the wind, of water-power, of steam, of

natural forces, or, alas! of his fellow creature, when he succeeds in

enslaving him. In this last case,—I repeat, for it is too apt to be

forgotten,—labour is not diminished, but dis­placed.

Man, being thus placed between two evils, want or labour, and urged on

by self-interest, seeks to discover whether, by some means or other,

he cannot get rid of both. It is then that spoliation pre­sents itself

to him as a solution of the problem.

 

He says to himself: " I have not, it is true, any means of procuring

the things necessary for my subsistence and enjoyments—food, clothing,

and lodging—unless these things are previously produced by labour. But

it is by no means indispensable that this should be my own labour. It

is enough that they should be produced by the labour of some one,

provided I can get the mastery. "

 

Such is the origin of war.

 

I shall not dwell upon its consequences.

 

When things come to this, that one man, or one nation, devotes itself

to labour, and another man, or another nation, waits on till that

labour is accomplished, in order to devote itself to rapine, we can

see at a glance how much human power is thrown away.

 

On the one hand, the spoliator has not succeeded as he desired in

getting quit of every kind of labour. Armed robbery exacts efforts,

and sometimes very severe efforts. While the producer devotes his time

to the creation of products fitted to yield satisfac­tions, the

spoliator employs his time in devising the means of robbing him. But

when the work of violence has been accom­plished, or attempted, the

objects calculated to yield satisfaction are neither more nor less

abundant than before. They may minister to the wants of a different

set of people, but not of more wants.

 

Thus all the exertions which the spoliator has made with a view to

spoliation, and the exertions also which he has failed to make with a

view to production, are entirely lost, if not for him, at least for

society.

 

Nor is this all. In most cases an analogous loss takes place on the

side of the producer. It is not likely that he will wait for the

violence with which he is menaced without taking some pre­caution for

his own protection ; and all precautions of this kind—arms,

fortifications, munitions, drill—are labour, and labour lost for ever,

not to him who expects security from this labour, but to mankind at large.

 

But should the producer, after undergoing this double labour, not

esteem himself able to resist the threatened violence, it is still

worse for society, and power is thrown away on a much greater scale;

for, in that case labour will be given up altogether, no one being.

disposed to produce in order to be plundered.

 

If we regard the manner in which the human faculties are affected on

both sides, the moral consequences of spoliation will be seen to be no

less disastrous.

 

Providence has designed that man should devote himself to pacific

combats with natural agents, and should reap directly from nature the

fruits of his victory. When he obtains this mastery over natural

agents only by obtaining a mastery over his fellow-creatures, his

mission is changed, and quite another direction is given to his

faculties. It is seen how great the difference is between the producer

and the spoliator, as regards foresight—foresight which becomes

assimilated in some degree to provi­dence, for to foresee is also to

provide against.

 

The producer sets himself to learn the relation between cause and

effect. For this purpose, he studies the laws of the physical world,

and seeks to make them more and more useful auxiliaries. If he turns

his regards on his fellow-men, it is to foresee their wants, and to

provide for them, on condition of reciprocity.

 

The spoliator does not study nature. If he turns his regards on his

fellow-men, it is to watch them as the eagle watches his prey, for the

purpose of enfeebling and surprising them.

 

The same differences are observable in the other faculties, and extend

to men's ideas.

 

Spoliation by means of war is not an accidental, isolated, and

transient fact; it is a fact so general and so constant as not to give

place, as regards permanence, to labour itself.

 

Point me out any country of the world where of two races, conquerors

and conquered, the one does not domineer over the other. Show me in

Europe, in Asia, or among the islands of the sea, a favoured spot

still occupied by the primitive inhabitants. If migrations of

population have spared no country, war has been equally widespread.

 

Its traces are universal. Apart from rapine and bloodshed, public

opinion outraged, and faculties and talents perverted, war has

everywhere left other traces behind it, among which we must reckon

slavery and aristocracy.

 

Not only has the march of spoliation kept pace with the crea­tion of

wealth, but the spoliators have seized upon accumulated riches, upon

capital in all its forms; and, in particular, they have fixed their

regards upon capital in the shape of landed property. The last step

was taking possession of man himself. For human powers and faculties

being the instruments of labour, they found it a shorter method to lay

hold of these powers and faculties, than to seize upon their products.

 

It is impossible to calculate to what extent these great events have

acted as disturbing causes, and as trammels on the natural progress of

the human race. If we take into account the sacrifice of industrial

power which war occasions, and the extent to which the diminished

results of that power are concentrated in the hands of a limited

number of conquerors, we may form to ourselves an idea of the causes

of the destitution of the masses,—a destitution which in our days it

is impossible to explain on the hypothesis of liberty.

 

How the warlike spirit is propagated.

 

Aggressive nations are subject to reprisals. They often attack others;

sometimes they defend themselves. When they act on the defensive, they

have on their side the feeling of justice, and the sacredness of the

cause in which they are engaged. They may then exult in their courage,

devotion, and patriotism. But, alas! they carry these same sentiments

into their offensive wars—and where is their patriotism then?

 

When two races, the one victorious and idle, the other van­quished and

humiliated, occupy the same territory, everything calculated to awaken

desire or arouse popular sympathies falls to the lot of the

conquerors. Theirs are leisure, fêtes, taste for the arts, wealth,

military parade, tournaments, grace, elegance, literature, poetry. For

the conquered race, nothing remains but ruined huts, squalid garments,

the hard hand of labour, or the cold hand of charity.

 

The consequence is that the ideas and prejudices of the dominant race,

always associated with military force, come to constitute public

opinion. Men, women, and children, all unite in extolling the

soldier's life in preference to that of the labourer, in preferring

war to industry, and spoliation to production. The vanquished race

shares the same sentiments, and when, at periods of transi­tion, it

succeeds in getting the better of its oppressors, it shows itself

disposed to imitate them.

 

What is this imitation but mad­ness?

 

How war ends.

 

Spoliation, like Production, having its source in the human heart, the

laws of the social world would not be harmonious, even to the limited

extent for which I contend, if the latter did not succeed in the

long-run in overcoming the former.

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Frederic Bastiat (1801-1850) was a French economist, legislator, and

writer.

 

 

Aggressive Progressives