Well then! Why, when we have faith in a principle when it relates to domestic transactions, do we not have the same faith in this principle when it is applied to international transactions, which are certainly fewer in number and less difficult and complicated? And, if it is not necessary for the Prefecture of Paris to regulate our industries, balance our opportunities, profits, and losses, concern itself with the depletion of our money, and equalize the conditions governing our labor in domestic commerce, why is it necessary for the customs service to aspire to exercise protective action, which is beyond its fiscal mission, with regard to our foreign commerce?
PUBLISHING HISTORY:
Original title; “Indépendance nationale.”
Place and date of first publication: No date given. First published in book form.
First French edition as book or pamphlet: Economic Sophisms (First Series) (1846).
[print edition page 86]
Location in Paillottet’s edition of OC: Vol. 4. Sophismes économiques. Petits pamphlets I, pp. 97–99.
Previous translations: 1st English ed., 1846; 1st American ed., 1848; FEE ed., 1964.
Among the arguments put forward in favor of protectionism, we should not forget the one based on national independence.
“What will we do in case of war,” people say, “if we are subject to England’s discretion with regard to iron and coal?”
Monopolists in England, for their part, unfailingly proclaim:
“What would become of Great Britain in time of war if she were dependent on France for her food?”
We tend to disregard one fact, which is that this type of dependence resulting from trade and commercial transactions is mutual. We cannot be dependent on foreigners without these foreigners being dependent on us. This is the very essence of society. Breaking off natural relationships does not make us independent, but isolated.
And note this well: we isolate ourselves because of an expectation of war, but the very act of isolating ourselves is the first step to war. It makes it easier, less of a burden, and, because of this, less unpopular. If nations are constant markets for each other, if their relationships cannot be broken off without inflicting on them the twin suffering of deprivation and oversupply, they will no longer need the powerful navies that are ruining them and the massive armies now crushing them, the peace of the world will not be compromised by the caprices of M. Thiers1 or Lord Palmerston,2 and war will disappear for lack of incentive, resources, reasons, pretexts, and popular favor.3
[print edition page 87]
I am fully aware that I will be blamed (for this is the current fashion) for resting fraternity between nations on self-interest, vile and prosaic interest. People would prefer fraternity to be rooted in charity and love, with even a little self-sacrifice, and in hurting men’s material well-being, to possess the merit of generous sacrifice.
When will we ever be rid of this puerile moralism? When will we finally banish hypocrisy from science? When will we drop this sickening contradiction between our writings and our actions? We boo at, we shout down self-interest, that is to say, what is useful and good (since to say that all nations are interested in a thing is to say that this thing is intrinsically good), as though self-interest was not a necessary, eternal, and indestructible motive to which Providence has entrusted human progress! As if we were all angels of disinterestedness? As if the public was not beginning to see, and with disgust, that this affected language is blackening the very pages for which the public is expected to pay so dearly? Oh, such affectation! This is really the disease of this century.
What! Because well-being and peace are closely allied, because God was pleased to establish this fine harmony in the moral world, you do not want me to admire and adore his decrees and accept with gratitude laws that make justice a condition of happiness? You do not want peace unless it is to the detriment of well-being, and freedom weighs heavy on you because it does not impose sacrifice on you? And, if self-sacrifice has such attraction for you, what stops you including it in your private actions? Society would be grateful to you if you did, for at least someone would reap the benefit from it, but to wish to impose it on humanity on principle is the height of absurdity, for the self-sacrifice of all is the sacrifice of all and constitutes misfortune raised to the status of a theory.
But thank heaven we can write and read a great number of these ranting speeches without the world ceasing to obey its driving force, which is self-interest, like it or not.
After all, it is rather strange to see sentiments of the most sublime self-denial invoked in support of plunder itself. This is what this ostentatious disinterestedness leads to! These men, who are so poetically delicate that they do not want peace itself if it is based on men’s vile self-interests, are putting their hands into other people’s pockets, especially those who are poor, for what article of the tariff protects the poor? Yes, sirs, do whatever you like with what belongs to you, but likewise let us do what we want with the fruit from the sweat of our brows, to use it ourselves or to trade it. Make speeches on self-renunciation, for that is fine, but at the same time at least be honest.
[print edition page 88]
20. Human Labor and Domestic Labor
PUBLISHING HISTORY:
Original title: “Travail humain, travail national.”
Place and date of first publication: No date given. First published in book form.
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. 100–105.
Previous translations: 1st English ed., 1846; 1st American ed., 1848; FEE ed., 1964.
Smash the machines,1 reject foreign goods; these are two acts generated by the same doctrine.
We see men who clap when a great invention is revealed to the world and who nevertheless support protectionism. Such men are very inconsistent!
What is their objection to free trade? That it results in our having things made by foreigners who are more skillful or better situated than we, which otherwise we would produce ourselves. In a word, it is accused of damaging domestic labor.
By the same token, should these critics not be blaming machines for accomplishing through natural agents a production, which, without them, would fall to manual effort and consequently for damaging human labor?
Foreign workers who are better situated than French ones are veritable economic machines that crush the latter through their competition. Similarly, a machine that carries out an operation at a lower cost than a given number of hands is, with regard to this labor,