Economic Sophisms and “What Is Seen and What Is Not Seen”. Bastiat Frédéric

names of people (like Jacques and Jean) instead of translating them into their English equivalents (Jack and John) because we wanted to keep a French flavor to the translation and believed that this would be readily understood by readers. We have also retained the use of French terms for land area (arpent), weight (kilogram), and currency (sou), as it seemed quite artificial to convert them into English or American terms. We have explained what they mean in the footnotes and several entries in the glossary.

      Finally, now and again Bastiat uses English words in his essays, such as “cheapness,” “go on,” “meeting,” “free-trader,” “drawback,” and “budget.” We have indicated where this occurs in the footnotes.

      [print edition page xxxi]

       Key Terms

      In addition to the longer discussion of economic terms in the Note on the Translation, we have added here a list of key terms most frequently encountered in the texts. We have provided a brief explanation of the different contexts in which Bastiat used these terms and how we translated them.

      ASSOCIATION, ORGANIZATION. When used with lowercase, Bastiat means any voluntary association which free individuals might create; when used with uppercase (as in Association), he is using the word in its socialist meaning of cooperative living and working arrangements.

      CLASSE. The word can be used in a descriptive fashion, as in la classe moyenne (the middle class), but Bastiat usually uses it to describe groups which had some kind of political privilege, such as la classe électorale (the electoral class, i.e., the very small group of taxpayers who were legally allowed to vote and stand for election), or la classe spoliatrice (the plundering class).

      DUPE, DUPERIE, RUSE. Bastiat believed that individuals were deprived of their property directly by means of la force (coercion or force) or indirectly by means of la ruse (fraud or trickery) or la duperie (deception). The beneficiaries of this force and fraud used les sophismes (misleading and deceptive arguments) to deceive ordinary people, whom he referred to as les dupes (dupes).

      ÉCONOMISTE. The Economists were the group of free-market and free-trade political economists, as in Le Journal des économistes, for which Bastiat wrote.

      INDUSTRIE, INDUSTRIEUX. Sometimes used in the modern sense of manufacturing industry but also used to mean any productive activity which produced goods and services for exchange in the free market. Individuals who engaged in these productive activities were called les industrieux.

      LAISSEZ-FAIRE. The policy prescription of laissez-faire favored by free-market economists like Bastiat requires no translation. However, Bastiat

      [print edition page xxxii]

      uses it in a number of ways which require careful translation, such as laissez-les faire (let them do these things), laissez-le entrer (let it freely enter), and laissez-passer (leave them free to move about).

      LIBERTÉ, LIBÉRAL. Liberté is usually translated as “liberty” except in cases such as la liberté des échanges (free trade), where the word “free” is more commonly used. Libéral has been translated as “liberal,” with the understanding that it should mean “classical liberal” and not “liberal” in the contemporary American sense of the word.

      MONNAIE. The word “money” is used in many senses by Bastiat, such as la numéraire (cash or gold or silver coins), la papier monnaie (paper money or notes), and l’argent (money in a general sense).

      PRIX. Bastiat uses many expressions to talk about price, such as le prix d’achat (the purchase price), le prix de vente (the sale price), le prix courant (the market price), le prix de revient (the cost price), le prix rémunérateur (the price which covers one’s costs), le prix débattu (the freely negotiated price), and le prix absolus (nominal or money price).

      PROHIBITIONISTE, PROTECTIONNISTE. Les prohibitionistes referred to the advocates of prohibiting imports so that domestic manufacturers had a monopoly of the home market, whereas les protectionnistes referred to the advocates of protectionism who wanted high tariffs in order to help domestic manufacturers compete with foreign manufacturers. The two different systems to which these policies gave rise Bastiat termed le régime prohibitif (the system of import prohibition) and le régime de la protection (the protectionist system) respectively.

      RÉGIME. Often translated as “regime,” “society,” or “system,” as in le régime de la protection (the protectionist system) or le régime de la liberté (the system of liberty or a free society).

      SPOLIATION. Translated here as “plunder.” There are several related terms, including spolier (to plunder), les spoliateurs (the plunderers), les spoliées (the plundered), la classe spoliatrice (the plundering class), les classes spoliées (the plundered classes), and the adjective spoliatrice (plunderous).

      TAXE, TARIF, DROIT. The payments which the government imposed on various goods and services, such as le droit (duty), le tarif (tariff), and la taxe (tax).

      TRAVAIL. Many different words are used to translate travail, such as “work,” “labor,” “production,” and “employment.” Related words include le travailleur

      [print edition page xxxiii]

      (worker or laborer) and la classe des travailleurs (the working or laboring class). Bastiat also carefully distinguished between these two different expressions involving work or labor: le droit au travail (the right to work or the right to a job), which was advocated by the socialists, and le droit du travail (the right to engage in work), which was advocated by the free-market economists.

      [print edition page xxxiv]

      [print edition page xxxv]

       Note on the Editions of the Œuvres complètes

      The first edition of the Œuvres complètes appeared in 1854–55, consisting of six volumes.1 The second edition, which appeared in 1862–64, was an almost identical reprint of the first edition (with only minor typesetting differences) but was notable for the addition of a new, seventh volume, which contained additional essays, sketches, and correspondence.2 In addition, the second edition contained a preface by Prosper Paillottet and a biographical essay on Bastiat by Roger de Fontenay (“Notice sur la vie et les écrits de Frédéric Bastiat”), both of which were absent in the first edition.

      While the second edition of the Œuvres complètes was being printed, a three-volume edition of Bastiat’s selected works, Œuvres choisies, appeared in 1863 using the same plates as the Œuvres complètes. Volumes 1 and 2 of the Œuvres choisies were reproductions of volumes 4 and 5 of the Œuvres complètes (containing Economic Sophisms First and Second Series and the Petits pamphlets), and volume 3 of the Œuvres choisies was the fourth edition of Economic Harmonies. Economic Harmonies appeared the following year (1864) as volume 6 of the Œuvres complètes and was called the fifth edition.

      Another difference between the first and second editions was in the sixth volume, which contained Bastiat’s magnum opus, Economic Harmonies. The first edition of the Œuvres complètes described volume 6 as the “third revised and augmented edition” of Economic Harmonies. This is somewhat confusing but does have some logic to it. The “first” edition of Economic Harmonies

      [print edition page xxxvi]

      appeared in 1850 during the last year of Bastiat’s life but in an incomplete form. The “second” edition appeared in 1851, after his death, edited by “La Société des amis de Bastiat” (most probably by Prosper Paillottet and Roger de Fontenay) and included the second half of the manuscript, which Bastiat had been working