Protection and Communism

Bastiat, Frédéric, 1801-1850Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

3.5

Word count: 91K words
Chapters: 10

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.Protection and Communism by Frédéric BastiatAuthor: Bastiat, Frédéric, 1801-1850,Language: English, Class: HF: Social sciences: Commerce, Release Date: Nov 10, 2013

Editor's review

Frédéric Bastiat was a major nineteenth-century French liberal economist. This book stages a debate between protectionism and communism, continuing his trademark sharp, accessible style. With clear logic and vivid analogies, it dismantles protectionist arguments, showing that restricting competition and artificially raising barriers ultimately harms consumers and ordinary workers. A public-domain classic of modest length, it distills the author's thinking on free exchange, private property, and limited government, and serves as an accessible introduction to classical liberal economic thought. Read it not as a contemporary policy manual but as an intellectual text in its historical context, appreciating its argumentative method and rhetorical skill. It suits chapter-by-chapter reading in spare moments—commutes, breaks between classes—or paired with the author's other works for a fuller grasp of the free-trade debate.

Who it's for

A good fit for

General readers interested in the history of economic thought
Students needing to understand the free-trade versus protectionism debate
Readers who enjoy logical reasoning and polemical prose
Readers seeking to improve their ability to read English social-science classics

Not a good fit for

Those seeking operational solutions for contemporary trade policy
Readers expecting a systematic textbook-style economics text
Those wanting only light storytelling for entertainment

Reading tips

Read the introduction or opening first to grasp the author's core argument, then proceed section by section.
Keep pen and paper handy to mark analogies and rebuttals for reviewing the argument's structure.
Read alongside background material on nineteenth-century free-trade debates to understand the context.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

FAQ

Is this book an English original? How difficult is it to read?

This is a public-domain ebook in English, written in a nineteenth-century polemical style with long but clear sentences. Readers with college-level English can get through it with a dictionary, focusing on grasping the arguments rather than reading word by word.

Are the book's views outdated?

The debate between protectionism and free exchange discussed here is a topic in intellectual history. The specific policy context has changed, but the argumentative method and the analysis of interest groups remain instructive. Read it as a text for understanding the classical liberal position, not as a direct basis for current policy.

Do I need an economics background to read it?

No systematic economics training is required. The author writes for the general public and often uses everyday analogies to make his points. Familiarity with basic supply-and-demand and trade concepts helps, but readers with no background can still grasp the main arguments.

Comments

Find this book

This site is an index: you start “Search all sources” in your browser, and the entries it lists all point to third-party sites; please judge their availability yourself.

About the author

Bastiat, Frédéric, 1801-1850 Author

Frédéric Bastiat (1801–1850) was a French economist and political writer known for defending free trade and criticizing protectionism. His writings often dismantle economic fallacies with sharp satire and clear logic: Economic Sophisms and Sophisms of the Protectionists debate tariffs and trade barriers, while What Is Free Trade? sets out the economic principles of free exchange in accessible prose. His work centers on political economy and public policy commentary, written in a lively style rich in analogy, and has been influential in popular economic writing. This collection holds fourteen of his works, including Essays on Political Economy and several volumes of collected writings, which shows the continuing value of his work for Chinese readers. Because public information is limited, biographical details are omitted here.