BASTIAT, CLAUDE-FRÉDÉRIC. - French economist and politician, born at Mugron on 1 June 1801, died at Rome on 24 Dec. 1850. A member of the Constituent Assembly and the Legislative Assembly, he was a bitter opponent of socialism and the protectionist system; he championed free trade. On 23 Feb. 1846 he founded the Association for the Freedom of Trade.
He founded the newspaper *Le libre échange* (1846). His principal works are: *Cobden et la Ligue o L'agitation anglaise pour la liberté des échanges* (1845), written to make known the main ideas of Cobden on commercial freedom; *Sophismes économiques* (1847-48), against socialism and protectionism; *Capital et rente*, a pamphlet against free loans; *Paix et liberté*, a demonstration of the need to reduce governmental powers and expenditures, as well as a great number of articles published especially in the *Journal des Economistes*. His most important work, however, is *Les harmonies économiques*, of which only the first part was completed. In this work B. starts from the principle that disagreement in economic phenomena is only apparent and that, at bottom, harmony is to be found. All the oppositions of interest that seem to exist between producer and consumer, between capital and labor are not deep-seated oppositions, but secondary ones, which are lost in the general harmony that regulates society. In his analysis, B. studies economic phenomena from the triple viewpoint of private interest, general interest, and justice. He has no difficulty in proving that beyond transient conflicts there is a formal and definitive agreement. Harmony prevails everywhere. The more one proceeds with this outlook, the more the horizon widens and unforeseen consequences are composed. It is no longer a matter of economics but of the science of humanity. With these ideas B. more imperiously than anyone else embodied the optimistic tendency in economic life already inaugurated by Say. His fundamental error lay in having believed that human activities realizing economic order are subject to the same necessity as the forces of nature, whereas they are essentially free.