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147 [vol. 4, p. 394. “Propriété et spoliation.” Originally published in the 24 July 1848 issue of Le Journal des débats.] First Letter July 1848 The National Assembly has been set an immense question, the answer to which is of the greatest interest to the prosperity and peace of France.2 A new right is knocking on the door of the Constitution: the right to work. Not only is it demanding a place for itself, but also it claims to take, in all or in part, the place of the right to property. M. Louis Blanc has already provisionally proclaimed this new right with the success we have seen.3 M. Proudhon claims the right to work in order to put paid to property. M. Considérant claims it in order to strengthen it by making it legitimate. Thus, according to these political writers, property carries within it something that is unjust and wrong, a germ of death. I pretend to demonstrate that it is truth and justice itself and that what it carries within itself is the very basis of progress and life. 2. On 17 May 1848 the Constituent Assembly elected an eighteen-member commission to prepare a draft constitution (Considérant was among the members, but so was Tocqueville). It started by elaborating a preamble, the “declaration of rights and duties,” in which the right to work was prominent. The final preamble, though, referred only to the duty of the republic to protect the citizens’ work and to provide work, within the limits of state resources, for the needy. 3. Written at Blanc’s initiative, the decree of 25 February 1848 stated: “The provisional government guarantees the existence of the worker through work.”  10  Property and Plunder1 1. The following five letters were formally addressed to Le Journal des débats, which is why Bastiat refers to them several times as “the articles.” However, in his mind they were intended as letters to Victor Considérant. In them he explains his notions of rent, services, and value as they will be developed later in Economic Harmonies. 148 Property and Plunder They appear to believe that, in the combat about to take place, the poor have an interest in the triumph of the right to work and the rich in the defense of the right to property. I believe I can prove that property rights are essentially democratic and that everything that denies or violates them is fundamentally aristocratic and anarchical. I hesitated to ask for space in a journal for a dissertation on social economy . The following may perhaps justify this attempt: First of all, there is the seriousness and topicality of the subject. Second, MM Louis Blanc, Considérant, and Proudhon are not merely political writers. They are also the heads of schools with a number of enthusiastic disciples, as is shown by their presence in the National Assembly. Their doctrines today exercise considerable influence, which I think disastrous , on the world of business; and, what is no less serious, they may be strengthened by concessions at odds with the orthodoxy of the masters of political economy. Last, and why should I not admit it, something in the depths of my conscience tells me that at the heart of this burning controversy it might be given to me to cast an unexpected ray of light to illuminate the terrain on which the schools most in opposition may sometimes be reconciled. This is enough, I hope, for these letters to be accepted by their readers. First of all, I have to set out the criticism made of property. In short, this is how M. Considérant explains it. I do not think I am distorting his theory by summarizing it.4 All men legitimately possess the thing that their activity has created. They may consume it, give it, exchange it, and transmit it without any person, even the whole of society, having any concern with it. Landowners therefore legitimately possess not only the products they have created on the land but also the added value they have given to the land itself through farming. However, there is one thing that they have not created, which is the fruit of no work, and that is the ground in its natural state, the original capital and the productive power of the agents of nature. However, landowners have taken over this capital. In this lie usurpation, confiscation, injustice, and constant illegitimacy. 4. (Bastiat’s note) See the small...

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