BASTIAT, FRDRIC

born June 29, 1801, Mugron, near Bayonne, France died Dec. 24, 1850, Rome, Papal States in full Claude-frdric Bastiat French economist, best known for his journalistic writing in favour of free trade and the economics of the Scotsman Adam Smith. In 1846 he founded the Associations for Free Trade and used its journal, Le Libre-change ("Free Trade"), to advance his antiprotectionist views. In a well-known satirical parable that appeared in his Sophismes conomiques (1845; Sophisms of Protection), Bastiat concocted a petition brought by candlemakers who asked for protection against the Sun, suggesting that candlemaking and related industries would greatly profit if the Sun were eliminated as a competitor in furnishing light. During the revolutionary years 1848-49 he wrote against the rise of socialism, which he identified with protectionism. It was primarily his campaign against socialism and communism that won for him a seat in the Constituent Assembly in 1849 and in the subsequent Legislative Assembly of the same year. Bastiat also carried on a vigorous, if unsystematic, polemic against Ricardian economics.