Mises Fellow Louis Rouanet writes:
Mark Thornton wrote in his paper “Bastiat as an Austrian economist” (2001): “Bastiat advanced the theory of value beyond Say and took a major step toward the modern theory of value as developed by the Austrian school of economics.” This point was recognized more than 100 years ago by H.K. Asser, a lawyer and admirer of Bastiat. In March 1893, in the Journal des Economistes, he wrote a 10 page paper called “Frédéric Bastiat et les néo-économistes autrichiens” [Frédéric Bastiat and the Austrian neo-economists]. The neo-economists Asser was speaking of are Eugen von Bohm-Bawerk and Friedrich Wieser. He criticized these two Austrians for having used Bastiat’s ideas without acknowledging his contribution. He wrote:
The foundation of political economy is the theory of value, and I will try to show in these pages that the value system of neo-economists is none other than that of Bastiat; the reform for which they are so proud is not new for those who have read Bastiat.
H.K. Asser also thinks that Bohm-Bawerk and Wieser made economics too subtle and therefore too inaccessible for the common man:
I will say that these authors have substituted for Bastiat’s clear treatise endless arguments which are so confused and vague, adorned with so many distinctions and definitions, that they are incomprehensible to anyone who does not have the profound intelligence of Germans.
We need not agree with everything H.K.Asser says to recognize that Bastiat was a forerunner of the Austrian School.
[Translations from the French provided by Louis Rouanet.]
