A few extracts from this small volume have appeared in the Journal des économistes.
In a criticism that was incidentally very benevolent, published by the Vicomte de Romanet5 (see the issues of Le Moniteur industriel dated 15 and 18 May 1845),6 he assumed that I was asking for customs dues to be abolished. M. de Romanet is mistaken. What I am asking for is the abolition of the protectionist regime. We do not refuse taxes to the government; what we would like, if possible, is to dissuade those being governed from taxing each other. Napoléon said: “Customs dues ought not to be a fiscal instrument, but a means of protecting industry.”7 We plead the contrary and say: “Customs dues must not be an instrument of mutual plunder in the hands of workers, but it can be a fiscal instrument that is as good as any other.” We are so far, or
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to involve only me in the conflict, I am so far from demanding the abolition of customs dues that I see in them a lifeline for our finances.8 I believe that they are likely to produce huge revenues for the Treasury, and if my idea is to be expressed in its entirety, at the snail’s pace that sound economic doctrine takes to circulate, I am counting more on the needs of the Treasury than on the force of enlightened public opinion for trade reform to be accomplished.
But finally what are your conclusions, I am asked.
I have no need of conclusions. I am opposing sophisms, that is all.
But, people continue, it is not enough to destroy, you have to build. My view is that in the destruction of an error the truth is created.
After that, I have no hesitation in expressing my hope. I would like public opinion to be persuaded to ratify a customs law that lays down terms of approximately this order:
| Objects of prime necessity shall pay an ad valorem duty of | 5 percent |
| Objects of normal usefulness | 10 percent |
| Luxury objects | 15 or 20 percent |
Furthermore, these distinctions are taken from an order of ideas that is totally foreign to political economy as such, and I am far from thinking that they are as useful and just as they are commonly supposed to be. However, that is another story.
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PUBLISHING HISTORY:
Original title: “Abondance, disette.”
Place and date of first publication: JDE 11 (April 1845): 1–8.
First French edition as book or pamphlet: Economic Sophisms (First Series) (1846).
Location in Paillottet’s edition of OC: Vol. 4. Sophismes économiques. Petits pamphlets I, pp. 5–14.
Previous translations: 1st English ed., 1846; 1st American ed., 1848; FEE ed., 1964.
What is better for mankind and society, abundance or scarcity?
What, people will exclaim, is that a question to ask? Has it ever been stated or is it possible to assert that scarcity is the basis of man’s well-being?
Yes, that has been claimed; yes, it has been asserted. It is asserted every day, and I have no fear in saying that the theory of scarcity is by far the more popular. It is the subject of conversation in the journals, books, and on the rostrum, and although this may appear extraordinary, it is clear that political economy will have fulfilled its task and its practical mission when it has popularized and made irrefutable this very simple proposition: “Mankind’s wealth lies in the abundance of things.”
Do we not hear this every day: “Foreigners are going to swamp us with their products”? We therefore fear abundance.
Has M. de Saint-Cricq1 not said: “Production is too high”? He therefore feared abundance.
Do workers not smash machines? They are therefore terrified of excess production or, in other words, abundance.
Has M. Bugeaud2 not pronounced these words: “Let bread become expensive
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and farmers will be rich!”? Well, bread can become expensive only if it becomes scarce; therefore M. Bugeaud was recommending scarcity.
Has not M. d’Argout3 used the very fact of the productive capacity of the sugar industry as an argument against it? Has he not said: “Beetroot has no future, and its cultivation could not be expanded, since if just a few hectares per département were allocated to it this would meet the entire consumption needs of France.” Therefore, in his eyes, good lies in lack of production, or scarcity, and harm in fertility and abundance.
Do La Presse, Le Commerce, and the majority of daily newspapers4 not publish one or more articles each morning to demonstrate to the Chambers and the government that it would be sound policy to raise the price of everything by law through the operation of tariffs? Do the three powers of state5 not comply every day with this injunction from the regular press? Now tariffs raise the price of things only because they decrease the quantity offered in the marketplace! Therefore the papers, the Chambers, and the government put into practice the theory of scarcity, and I was right to say that this theory is by far the most popular one.
How has it come about that in the eyes of workers, political writers, and statesmen abundance is shown as something to be feared and scarcity as being advantageous? I propose to go back to the source of this illusion.
We note that men become rich to the extent that they earn a good return from their work, that is to say, from what they sell at the highest price. They sell at the highest price in proportion to the rarity, that is to say, the relative shortage, of the type of good their efforts produce. We conclude from this that, as far as they are concerned at least, scarcity makes them rich. When this reasoning is applied successively to all people who work, the theory of scarcity is thereby deduced. From this we move to its application, and in order to benefit all these people, high prices and the scarcity of all goods are provoked artificially by means of prohibition, restriction, the suppression of machines, and other similar means.
This is also true for abundance. We observe that when a product is plentiful
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it is sold at a low price and therefore producers earn less. If all producers are in this situation, they all become poor, and it is therefore abundance that ruins society. And, since all beliefs attempt to become reality, in a great many countries, we see laws made by men combating the abundance of things.
This sophism, expressed as a general statement, would perhaps have little effect; but when it is applied to a particular order of facts, to such and such a branch of production, or to a given class of workers, it is extremely specious, and this can be explained. It is a syllogism that is not false but incomplete. Now, whatever truth there is in a syllogism is always and necessarily available to cognitive inspection. But the incomplete element is a negative phenomenon, a missing component which is very possible and even very easy not to take into account.
Man produces in order to consume. He is both producer and consumer. The reasoning that I have just set out considers him only from the first of these points of view. From the second, the opposite conclusion would have been reached. Could we not say in fact:
The consumer is all the richer when he buys everything cheaply. He buys things cheaply the more abundant they are; therefore abundance makes him rich. This reasoning, when extended to all consumers, would lead to the theory of abundance!
It is the way in which the concept of trade is imperfectly understood that produces these illusions. If we look to our own personal interest, we will recognize immediately that it