Who prevents the inhabitants of a commune to freely and voluntarily set up a socialist experiment on themselves, at their own cost? 

Frédéric Bastiat
Complete Works, Volume 7, pages 227 à 230 (in French)
La République française, March 2nd, 1848

The advent of the second French Republic created hope for all those who were dreaming about a different political organisation, notably the constructivists. In this article, Frédéric Bastiat responds to those who would like to see the creation of a “Ministry of progress and labour organisation”. One of their proposals was to create territorial entities in the size of a square league in which socialism would be implemented in order to extend it later at the national level. The question was then to assess if such an entity would be inhabited voluntarily but also if they would be financed autonomously or by the rest of the nation. Of course, in the latter case, we could expect a success. If the national taxes finance a local socialist experiment, there could not be a financial failure but it would not be possible to extend it to the whole country without creating a fatal financial imbalance.

However, if the idea was to create really autonomous entities similar to the kibboutz implemented a century later in Israel in which the population was free to join voluntarily, Frédéric Bastiat does not see any reason to oppose it (today’s quote) and demands that the privilege be also granted to the liberals to implemented a capitalist experiment and not only a socialist experiment. He then describes how such a liberal experiment would be successful and rejoices about it. In a way, he was anticipating both the socialist and capitalist experiments that will be implemented in the 20th century – the kibboutz and their ambivalent results as well as Hong Kong and the success that we have observed since.