I. General Neglect of Bastiat

French laissez faire liberal economist Frédéric Bastiat (June 30, 1801-December 24, 1850) has suffered over the years from a particularly bad press. Karl Marx called him "the shallowest and therefore the most successful representative of the apologists of vulgar economics." This portrait may have stemmed from Marx’s resentment towards a political writer whose writing was clear and who gained a large audience in his lifetime. There is no body of literature asking What Bastiat Really Meant, whereas a cottage industry arose in the case of Marx. And of course Bastiat was a great enemy and trenchant critic of socialism.

Bastiat has been dismissed by those who might have been expected to be friendlier towards him. Thus Joseph Schumpeter wrote: "I do not hold that Bastiat was a bad theorist. I hold that he was no theorist." English-speaking economists generally have regarded Bastiat as a "mere popularizer" of the ideas of the great Adam Smith.

For all the talk about the triumph of capitalism, it seems that the free market—the real thing and not someone's imagined conception of it—has very few friends in politics or the world of ideas. Thus do the writings Murray Rothbard, the leading defender of the market economy of his generation, still have the power to shock and clarify the essential ideological and political battles of our time. This essay in particular constitutes on commentary on his powerful piece from 1973: "A Future of Peace and Capitalism."

The traditional enemies on the left are all-too predictable in their insistence that market processes must be bent, shape, and chopped to conform to the demands of social justice, egalitarian ethics, or environmental concerns. On the right, the neoconservatives insist that global capitalism must be financed by credit expansion and escorted by the US global military empire in order to truly serve the interests of world order. Also on the right, the paleoconservatives cast aspersions on the market for its supposed disruptions of community life, its internationalism, and it baneful moral effects.