The Influence of Socialist Writers

by Frédéric Bastiat

　　How did politicians ever come to believe this weird idea that thelaw could be made to produce what it does not contain -- the wealth,science, and religion that, in a positive sense, constituteprosperity? Is it due to the influence of our modern writers on publicaffairs?

　　Present-day writers -- especially those of the socialist school ofthought -- base their various theories upon one common hypothesis:They divide mankind into two parts. People in general -- with theexception of the writer himself -- from the first group. The writer,all alone, forms the second and most important group. Surely this isthe weirdest and most conceited notion that ever entered a humanbrain!

　　In fact, these writers on public affairs begin by supposing thatpeople have within themselves no means of discernment; no motivationto action. The writers assume that people are inert matter, passiveparticles, motionless atoms, at best a kind of vegetation indifferentto its own manner of existence. They assume that people aresusceptible to being shaped -- by the will and hand of another person-- into an infinite variety of forms, more or less symmetrical,artistic, and perfected.

　　Moreover, not one of these writers on governmental affairshesitates to imagine that he himself -- under the title of organizer,discoverer, legislator, or founder -- is this will and hand, thisuniversal motivating force, this creative power whose sublime missionis to mold these scattered materials -- persons -- into a society.

　　These socialist writers look upon people in the same manner thatthe gardener views his trees. Just as the gardener capriciouslyshapes the trees into pyramids, parasols, cubes, vases, fans, andother forms, just so does the socialist writer whimsically shape humanbeings into groups, series, centers, sub-centers, honeycombs, laborcorps, and other variations. And just as the gardener needs axes,pruning hooks, saws, and shears to shape his trees, just so does thesocialist writer need the force that he can find only in law to shapehuman beings. For this purpose, he devises tariff laws, tax laws,relief laws, and school laws.