Bastiat on Economic Harmony

Abstract

Frederic Bastiat’s last work was Economic Harmonies , published in 1851. He died while completing it, and although it had some uptake in the nineteenth century, in recent times scholarly interest has focused on his other work. In the Harmonies , he makes a remarkable claim: when properly understood, in a free market society all people’s economic interests are in harmony. If we consider that Karl Marx was arguing at the same time that those same societies are afflicted by an endemic class struggle that can end only with a communist revolution, the contrast is sharp. In this essay, I explore Bastiat’s rationale for his claim as a rejoinder to an influential argument mounted by Marx against economic liberty.