Frenchman Claude-Frédéric Bastiat was a notable economist and a prolific 19th century writer, responsible for a number of works which are remembered to this day. These include his booklet The Law, as well as his essay entitled Government; within these, Bastiat discusses the politics of plunder, and how, despite its job being to mitigate plunder, the politicians and the government as a whole tend toward the exact opposite outcome.

The dictionary defines plunder as “the violent and dishonest acquisition of property.” Bastiat classifies it as “involuntary transfer of wealth,” as we will later see. In Government, Bastiat states that the government’s purpose is to ensure liberty and to protect the rights of the people, imposing only negative sanctions in an effort to prevent plunder; but instead, it plunders them, harming the citizens by means of the same system of law which is intended to protect them. Politicians put forth laws to promote equality, ultimately leading to a society in which the masses are being stolen from.

Bastiat, a promoter of the concept of limited government, believes that the government should not be imposing positive sanctions; this is because in order for a government measure to benefit one group, it must take away from another. On the contrary, he feels that government should exist merely to increase the risk for those who plunder. Being an instrument of plunder itself, we can see that the government is thus acting in a manner that completely opposes what it is made to do. Politicians then fight to receive votes from the people so that they can become part of the plundering which they themselves have been subjected to as a member of the society.

Bastiat mentions the three approaches of plunder: the few plunder the many, everyone plunders everyone else, or nobody plunders anyone. Of course, the latter is preferable. However, he states that he believed at the time of his writing in 1850 that society increasingly was moving toward the second approach, as more greedy people desire to have some part in the plunder.

He rejects the socialist concepts of a deified system of government, in which politicians are responsible for providing “bread for all mouths, work for all hands, capital for all enterprises, credit for all projects, salve for all wounds, balm for all sufferings, advice for all perplexities, solutions for all doubts, truths for all intellects, diversions for all who want them, milk for infancy, and wine for old age.” This form of government, which can only be described as an attempt at playing god, is simply a recipe for disaster according to Bastiat. It leads society further down the path of plunder and results in excessive involvement of the government in the lives of the people, when instead Bastiat believes that government should exist solely to “secure everyone his own, and to cause justice and security to reign.”🔹