These are among the most intriguing issues in political and economic philosophy. More specifically, the problem of law that itself violates law is an insurmountable conundrum of all statist philosophies.

The problem has never been discussed so profoundly and passionately as in this essay by Frederic Bastiat from 1850. The essay might have been written today. It applies in ever way to our own time, which is precisely why so many people credit this one essay for showing them the light of liberty.

Bastiat’s essay here is timeless because applies whenever and wherever the state assumes unto itself different rules and different laws from that by which it expects other people to live.

And so we have this legendary essay, written in a white heat against the leaders of 19th century France, the reading of which has shocked millions out of their toleration of despotism. This new edition from the Mises Institute revives a glorious translation that has been out of print for a hundred years, one that circulated in Britain in the generation that followed Bastiat’s death.

This newly available translation provides new insight into Bastiat’s argument. It is a more sophisticated, more subsantial, and more precise rendering than any in print.

The question that Bastiat deals with: how to tell when a law is unjust or when the law maker has become a source of law breaking? When the law becomes a means of plunder it has lost its character of genuine law. When the law enforcer is permitted to do with others’ lives and property what would be illegal if the citizens did them, the law becomes perverted.

Bastiat doesn’t avoid the difficult issues, such as why should we think that a democratic mandate can convert injustice to justice. He deals directly with the issue of the expanse of legislation:

It is not true that the mission of the law is to regulate our consciences, our ideas, our will, our education, our sentiments, our sentiments, our exchanges, our gifts, our enjoyments. Its mission is to prevent the rights of one from interfering with those of another, in any one of these things. Law, because it has force for its necessary sanction, can only have the domain of force, which is justice.

More from Bastiat’s The Law:

Socialism, like the old policy from which it emanates, confounds Government and society. And so, every time we object to a thing being done by Government, it concludes that we object to its being done at all. We disapprove of education by the State — then we are against education altogether. We object to a State religion — then we would have no religion at all. We object to an equality which is brought about by the State then we are against equality, etc., etc. They might as well accuse us of wishing men not to eat, because we object to the cultivation of corn by the State.

How is it that the strange idea of making the law produce what it does not contain — prosperity, in a positive sense, wealth, science, religion — should ever have gained ground in the political world? The modern politicians, particularly those of the Socialist school, found their different theories upon one common hypothesis; and surely a more strange, a more presumptuous notion, could never have entered a human brain.

They divide mankind into two parts. Men in general, except one, form the first; the politician himself forms the second, which is by far the most important.

Bastiat concludes his penetrating analysis with this:

The social organs are constituted so as to enable them to develop harmoniously in the grand air of liberty. Away, then, with quacks and organizers! Away with their rings, and their chains, and their hooks, and their pincers! Away with their artificial methods! Away with their social laboratories, their governmental whims, their centralization, their tariffs, their universities, their State religions, their inflationary or monopolizing banks, their limitations, their restrictions, their moralizations, and their equalization by taxation! And now, after having vainly inflicted upon the social body so many systems, let them end where they ought to have begun — reject all systems, and try of liberty — liberty, which is an act of faith in God and in His work.

*Review by Mises Institute
**Full Text PDF

He was writing under the influence of Mises himself, of course, but he brought his own special gifts to the project. As just one example, this is the book that made the idea of the “broken window fallacy” so famous.

What thrills us in particular about this new edition is that it is beautiful, it is hardcover, and it is newly typeset for modern readers. It has a full index. It includes a wonderful foreword by Walter Block. It’s the right size, shape, and feel – perfect for making this book central to all educational efforts of the future.

This is the book to send to reporters, politicians, pastors, political activists, teachers, or anyone else who needs to know.

Professor Block explains that it was this book that turned him on to economics as a science. He believes that it is probably the most important economics book ever written in the sense that it offers the greatest hope to educating everyone about the meaning of the science.

Written for the non-academic, it has served as the major antidote to fallacies in the popular press, and has appeared in dozens of languages and printings. It’s still the quickest way to learn how to think like an economist. And this is why it has been used in the best classrooms more than sixty years.

Many writers have since attempted to beat this book as an introduction, but have never succeeded. Hazlitt’s book remains the best. Even if you own this book already, or have several past editions, you will want to have this book as your own as a wonderful testament to its place in the world of ideas.

*Review sniped from mises.org.
** PDF full text here.

As an example, Mises demolishes the central core of Marxist economics in a few brilliant pages. Marx famously claimed to have discovered the “laws of motion” of capitalism. How does the capitalist transform his initial monetary investment into a larger sum of money at the close of production? For Marx, the answer did not lie in trickery.

Quite the contrary, Marx claimed to show that the capitalist could extract profit even if all commodities exchanged at their value. The capitalist buys labor and raw materials at their value and sells the product manufactured with their aid at its value. Why does it turn out that the second sum is greater than the first? Why, in other words, are not the prices of the factors of production bid up to absorb anticipated profits?

The answer, Marx thought, lies in the exploitation of labor. By the labor theory of value, which Marx professed, all goods exchange at the value of the labor required to produce them. Labor, then, obtains as wages what is required to produce the laborer. In brief, labor earns a subsistence wage.

Once the capitalist has purchased labor, his fortune is made. He now gets whatever value the labor he has purchased adds to his raw materials. (Remember, in Marx’s theory labor is the source of economic value.) In the usual case, this value exceeds the subsistence costs of labor. The result of this surplus, which Marx terms the rate of exploitation, is profit, and our pretended Newton on economics has here unveiled his new scientific law.

I have gone on at some length about labor exploitation, as this notion is vital to Marxism. Destroy it, and the whole of Marxist economics collapses. And this is just what Mises proceeds to do. He at once locates the central fallacy in Marx’s argument.

Even if one accepts the labor theory of value, Marx’s explanation of wages fails. Except under special conditions, the price of labor is not determined by the costs of subsistence. “The `iron law of wages’ and the essentially identical Marxian doctrine of the determination of `the value of labor power’ by `the working time necessary for its production’…are the least tenable of all that has ever been taught in the field of catallactics …. [I]f one sees in the wage earner merely a chattel and believes that he plays no other role in society, if one assume that he aims at no other satisfaction than feeding and proliferation …one may consider the iron law as a theory of the determination of wage rates” (p. 602).

The conditions required for Marx’s view to hold practically never obtain, as Marx himself had to admit. Workers’ wages under capitalism rise far above subsistence. Rather than acknowledge that his theory failed, Marx changed its terms. He now contended that what constitutes subsistence is a question of history: for workers in a given society, “subsistence” may mean relative luxury. As Mises mordantly notes, this is to abandon completely the attempt at a theory of wages. “What he [Marx] has in mind is no longer the `indispensable necessaries,’ but the things considered indispensable from a tradition point of view…. The recourse to such an explanation means virtually the renunciation of any economic or catallactic elucidation of the determination of wage rates” (p. 603).

Let us turn from Marx to the fall of the Roman Empire. (As we shall later see, the topics are linked.) Why did the Roman Empire, long able to contain barbarian assaults, eventually fall victim to them? Mises finds the answer in an unexpected place: economics. By the second century A.D., the Roman Empire had developed into a complex economy. “The various parts of the empire were no longer economically self-sufficient. They were mutually interdependent” (p. 761).

Unfortunately, governmental interference crippled the economy, thus opening the way for invaders. Price control and currency debasement were the chief culprits: “The Roman Empire crumbled to dust because it lacked the spirit of liberalism and free enterprise. The policy of interventionism …decomposed the mighty empire as it will by necessity always disintegrate and destroy any social entity” (p. 763). Mises’s account extends the analysis of Michael Rostovtzeff, whom he cites.

I have so far imagined a reader who dips into the book sporadically and tried to show how he can expect to find insight after insight. But such a reader will miss much. Human Action is unified by a central theme, which Mises always bears in mind.

Mises saw human beings as faced with a fundamental choice. Nature provides man with no automatic sustenance; and, if confined to living in small groups, human beings will find life hardly worth living. But the situation is not entirely bleak.

To escape from Darwinian struggle, man must take advantage of social cooperation through the division of labor. Here, in Mises’s view, lies the veritable key to civilization. But how can human societies best take advantage of the division of labor?

In the answer to this question lies Mises’s central point. Only if a method of calculation exists can human beings in a complex society take full advantage of the division of labor. Alternatives must be compared with one another, if people are to know how best to fulfill their desires for goods and services; and this can be done only if the alternatives can be reduced to a common denominator for assessment. This, in turn, can be accomplished only through market prices.

Now it is apparent that the two insights discussed above, far from being random remarks, fit exactly into Mises’s central strategy. The Marxist system proposes the destruction of capitalism-hence it must be rooted out and destroyed. Even more directly, Mises’s comments on the Roman history illustrate his principal thesis-interfere with economic calculation, and you are sunk.

Once you have grasped Mises’s leitmotif, everything falls into place, and the book takes on a relentless quality as Mises hammers home his case. Another illustration of the way in which Mises elaborates his theme of capitalism and calculation must here suffice.

Controversy over the effects of the Industrial Revolution on the standard of living of the working class has been a staple of modern historiography. Such eminences as E.P. Thompson and Eric Hobsbawm paint the plight of the working class in somber hues. (I do not think it altogether a coincidence that both of these writers once found a welcome haven in the British Communist Party.)

Mises refuted these supposed authorities in advance, with a simple but devastating point. Population in eighteenth-century Britain increased greatly. Unless the new industrial system was indeed more able than its predecessor to supply the wants of the workers, no such increase in numbers could have taken place. “But let us not forget that in 1770…England had 8.5 million inhabitants, while in 1831…the figure was 16 million. This conspicuous increase was mainly conditioned by the Industrial Revolution” (p. 617).

The Scholar’s Edition of Human Action reprints the first edition of Mises’s great work. As Jeffrey Herbener, Hans Hoppe, and Joseph Salerno make clear in their excellent introduction, this edition is superior to the later redactions-second thoughts are not always best. Its treatment of monopoly price includes important passages later dropped, and only this edition contains Mises’s brilliant account of the Nazi barter agreements (pp. 796-99). The Scholar’s Edition is even better than the original 1949 printing since it includes the aforementioned introduction comparing the various editions. Further, the book has been beautifully printed, as befits a work of this stature.

*Review taken from mises.org

Chapter One, “The False Choices of American Politics,” uncovers the fallacy of the left/right divide in American Politics. He shows that there is practically no substantive difference between the major parties. Their disagreements lay in application of power, not in the acquisition of it.

Chapter Two and Three provide us with a brief romp through early American history, with a focus on the constitutional approach the Founding Revolutionaries took toward foreign policy. Perhaps the ballsiest part of the book occurs when Dr. Paul throws down the gauntlet demanding that the neoconservative and liberal pols either openly condemn the founding fathers or else follow them.

Chapter Four, “Economic Freedom,” is a little meatier in substance. Dr. Paul dives into the world of capitalism, declaring that America does not practice laissez-faire capitalism, but actually finds herself approaching a sort of corporatist Fascism. He appeals to Liberals in exposing the over reach of corporations that have become de facto, if not de jure, extensions of government. He then reminds “paleoconservatives” that true free trade does not require our nation to abdicate its sovereignty as it did in NAFTA and the WHO agreements.

Chapter Five, “Civil Liberties and Personal Freedom,” finds Dr. Paul ramping up the rhetoric against the Neo-conservative doctrines which seek to forever disolve the limits the constitution places on government.

Chapter Six, “Money: The Forbidden Issue in American Politics,” is my favorite chapter. In a clear and simple manner, Dr. Paul unrolls the practices of America’s central bank, the Federal Reserve, and exposes its primary goal, the systematic devaluation of our currency. That devaluation comes in the form of inflation, which is explained not as increased prices (that is simply the effect of inflation), but as an increase in the money supply. The effects of inflation, as Dr. Paul explains, are not uniform. The Fed distributes dollars to politically connected institutions where those dollars are enjoyed before the price effects of inflation are fully felt. By the time those dollars trickle down to the middle class, the value is diluted. The Fed redistributes wealth from the poor and middle class to the rich.

The final chapter, “The Revolution,” is a systematic approach, proposed in the form of a Presidential platform, that is intended for a one to two term President. He alludes to the fact that it would be impossible to fully restore the nation to its minarchal roots in eight years. However, his plan, as outlined in the book, is designed not to preempt the inevitable collapse of the American Empire, but to guide the nation in for a soft landing.

Obviously Dr. Paul didn’t win the election in 2008, and the current administration seems to be uber-neocon in ideology. I still hold out hope that Dr. Paul will run again in 2012. I have contacted his offices to offer my support. Though the nation may not be ready quite yet for an Austro-libertarian president, his campaign in 2007 advanced the liberty movement more than any single event in the last 100 years. I can only imagine what it would be like now.

The author adroitly condenses the Founders’ intentions into 27 principles. Examining each principle, he dives into a canon of American dogma. The weightier concepts include Natural Law, Public Virtue, religion, equality of rights, inalienable rights, divine law, sovereignty, republican democracy, property rights, free markets, checks and balances, public education, foreign alliances, national debt, and American Exceptionalism.

This is a great book for anyone hoping to find an introduction to the founding history of our nation and the role that Christianity played. It is a subject that has been prostituted by the political class for nearly 100 years. There was a time when Americans treated Washington, Jefferson, Adams, and Franklin with reverent awe. Today they are relegated to history’s trash heap, labeled as racists, sexists, and narcisists. Although it isn’t biographical in approach, this book restores the principles that motivated those Founding Fathers to build a nation that altered 5000 years of human history and launched it into the modern era.

Andrew, you always make one significant error in your evaluations of policy. You argue that the left/right divide is fluid and not static, thereby shifting the argument toward “what is center” and away from “what is correct.”

Jonah Goldberg’s book tries to use the left/right paradigm to explain the deviation from correct principles of individual rights, divisions of power, and limited government that the fascist regimes built by socialist movements sought to usurp. Perhaps framing the argument in a worn-out, hijacked paradigm was his greatest error. But he did so to reflect the difference between strict constructionist constitutional framing of government and historical fascist regimes (which intellectuals incessantly label as right of center – thus falsely correlating fascist methodology to conservative ideology) to his readers.

Among his greatest examples is the Nazi movement. A socialist movement that harnesses a countrys nationalism to deny individual rights, concentrate power, and expand the role of a government is no less to the left than the Bolshevik coup in Petrograd. Just because the communist party in Germany positioned itself to the left of the Nazis does not make the Nazi partys platform to the right of some preconceived static center. They both deviate from correct principles of good governance, as does the neo-Liberal (aka Progressive) movement… hence the title “Liberal Fascism”.

You would be wise do shed the old world paradigm of a left/right divide about a fluid center. As Aristotle would say, A=A. Rand, Existence exists. There is right and there is wrong. The principles espoused in the American Constitution represent the greatest firm point about which to build a government. There is no left of that point, there is no right of that point. There is only deviation from correct principles of government.

via Z Reviews: Liberal Fascism.

Again, I have much respect for Andrew. Check out his blog. He is becoming quite accomplished as he pursues a path through academia that will ultimately lead to influence in international and domestic policymaking circles. His Bio at Atlantic Review is as follows:

Originally from upstate New York, Andrew is currently pursuing a concurrent MA/MPA in International Economics and European Studies from Johns Hopkins University-SAIS and the Maxwell School at Syracuse University. He previously studied at the Free University of Brussels, University of Rome Tor Vergata, and Brigham Young University. He has also worked at the Foreign Affairs Committee of the European Parliament, the US Mission to the European Union, and as Assistant Editor for Scandinavian Studies. Andrew specializes in political economy, international finance, and EU-US relations.

via Atlantic Review: About The Atlantic Review.

I do believe after reading his posts, however, that he is mistaken and misguided, that he has allowed the myth of democracy to poison the virtue of republican governance in the preservation of individual rights. I believe that he espouses a transnational doctrine that sacrifices state economic sovereignty on the altar of global stability.  I will certainly keep a respectful eye on Andrew’s career.

Mr. Beck’s subject matter covers every political flash point from health care to gun control, education to home ownership, and unionization to immigration. As he make the argument for less government intervention, Beck draws on a wealth of well researched sources. Sources he encourages his readers to reference when engaged in an argument, rather than referencing “Arguing With Idiots” as the source.

I enjoyed the read. However, I realized that I didn’t learn anything new in terms principles, I only gained support for the things I already knew and believed. Nevertheless, the book reads fast, is enjoyable, and easily approached by the conservative reader.

It may not be the most thought provoking book, but the book delivers what it claims to be: a reference guide to lean on when arguing with idiots.