Harmonies of Political Economy

Harmonies of Political Economy is an 1850 book by the French classical liberal economist Frédéric Bastiat, in which the author applauds the power and ingenuity of the intricate social mechanism, "every atom of which ... is an animated thinking being, endued with marvelous energy, and with that principle of all morality, all dignity, all progress, the exclusive attribute of man - LIBERTY."[1] While it is regarded as Bastiat's magnum opus, it was incomplete when it was published.[2]

In the book, Bastiat writes of "the measureless disproportion" between what each of us contributes to society and what each of us receives in return.[3] The American economist Amasa Walker commented that, "Of all the writers on the subject, no one seems to have been more full and clear in the definition and illustration of value" than Bastiat, in the distinction he draws in Economic Harmonies between value and utility.[4]

Bastiat dedicated Harmonies of Political Economy to the youth of France.

References
  1. Schwartz, Hillel (31 July 2014). "On the Origin of the Phrase "Social Problems"". Soc Probl. 44 (2): 276–296. doi:10.2307/3096946. JSTOR 3096946.
  2. Sorinel, Cosma (2013-02-02). "Bastiat: To See or Not To See". Ideas.repec.org. Retrieved 2017-04-10. Abstract: One of the most important liberal theorists of his time, Claude Frédéric Bastiat began as an economic journalist and lobbyist for the free-trade. It took him some years before he made the transition from journalist to theorist, when discovering he had both a facility for writing and some profound insights into how the free market operates. But then he ran out of time when his illness ended his life and he did not have time to flourish fully. Bastiat was indeed a superb writer. His brilliant and witty essays are remarkable to this very day. He was the first, and one of the very few, to be able to convincingly communicate the basic propositions of economics. Bastiat strongly believed that what was really needed was a science of economics that would explain the harmony of a free society. He made a major contribution to this end himself by publishing his incomplete magnum opus Harmonies of Political Economy
  3. Russell, Daniel C. (January 4, 2017). "When Does Income Cost Too Much? A View from Aristotle". When Does Income Cost Too Much? A View from Aristotle - Springer. International Handbooks in Business Ethics. Link.springer.com. pp. 33–45. doi:10.1007/978-94-007-6510-8_112. ISBN 978-94-007-6509-2.
  4. Walker, Amasa (1867). The Science of Wealth: A Manual of Political Economy. Boston, Little, Brown, and company.
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