Protection and Communism — Frédéric Bastiat
The Langenderfer Library: Classics in Tax, Economics, and AccountingShow Notes
Can protectionism be reconciled with private property and free exchange? In this sharp polemic, Frédéric Bastiat argues that protective tariffs rest on the same coercive principle as communism: both permit organized power to redirect the fruits of labor from those who earned them to favored groups.
Writing with characteristic clarity and irony, Bastiat challenges manufacturers who demand legal privileges while defending property rights elsewhere. His essay turns trade policy into a deeper argument about law, liberty, equality, and the boundary between legitimate government and legalized plunder—questions that still animate debates over tariffs and industrial favoritism.
More from The Langenderfer Library: Classics in Tax, Economics, and Accounting
Who really pays local property taxes—the legal taxpayer, the tenant, the landowner, or the consumer? Lawson Purdy examines how taxes on land and buildings affect rents, property values, development, and the distribution of municipal burdens.
How should a nation distribute the heavy fiscal burden left by war? Alfred Marshall evaluates income taxation, taxes on capital and expenditure, and duties on imports while weighing revenue needs against equity, saving, production, and economic recovery.
How should local taxes be distributed, and who ultimately bears rates imposed on land, houses, and other property? Francis Y. Edgeworth answers questions posed by Britain’s Royal Commission on Local Taxation, translating principles of incidence and equitable sacrifice into practical policy analysis.
What role should an income tax play in repairing state revenue systems? Thomas S. Adams examines the weaknesses of the general property tax and considers how income taxation can improve fairness, reach forms of wealth that escape assessment, and provide a more workable basis for public revenue.
What determines the distribution of national income among workers, capitalists, and landowners? David Ricardo develops a systematic account of value, wages, profits, rent, trade, money, and taxation—placing distribution at the center of political economy.