On the Question of Free Trade
Karl Marx
[Marx delivered this address before the
Democratic Association of Brusels, 9 January, 1848]
At the end of 1847, Brussels had hosted a "Free
Trade Congress," which was designed to further the general
Free Trade campaign English manufacturers were waging. In 1846,
the English bourgeoisie repealed England's Corn Laws and were
ready to take their cause abroad.
Marx asked for a slot to speak, but the Congress closed before
his name could come up on the lists. So instead he delivered his
speech to the Democratic Association -- of which he was among
the vice-presidents.
When the Free Trade question raged again in the late 1880s,
Marx's speech was reissued in English, with a lengthy
introduction by Engels. "Free Trade vs. Protectionism"
is a question that remains periodically relevant as long as
capitalism exists. Indeed, when the recent US-Canada-Mexico Free
Trade negotiations took place in the early 1990s, even the New
York Times felt compelled to quote Marx's speech.
Marx's speech was transcribed in French in February 1848 and
published in Brussels. Later that year, it was translated into
German and published in Germany.
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The Repeal of the Corn Laws in England is the greatest triumph of
free trade in the 19th century. In every country where manufacturers
talk of free trade, they have in mind chiefly free trade in corn and
raw materials in general. To impose protective duties on foreign
corn is infamous, it is to speculate on the famine of peoples.
Cheap food, high wages, this is the sole aim for which English
free-traders have spent millions, and their enthusiasm has already
spread to their brethren on the Continent. Generally speaking, those
who wish for free trade desire it in order to alleviate the
condition of the working class.
But, strange to say, the people for whom cheap food is to be
procured at all costs are very ungrateful. Cheap food is as
ill-esteemed in England as cheap government is in France. The people
see in these self-sacrificing gentlemen, in Bowring, Bright and Co.,
their worst enemies and the most shameless hypocrites.
Everyone knows that in England the struggle between Liberals and
Democrats takes the name of the struggle between Free-Traders and
Chartists.
Let us now see how the English free-traders have proved to the
people the good intentions that animate them.
This is what they said to the factory workers:
"The duty levied on corn is a tax upon wages; this
tax you pay to the landlords, those medieval aristocrats; if your
position is wretched one, it is on account of the dearness of the
immediate necessities of life."
The workers in turn asked the manufacturers:
"How is it that in the course of the last 30 years,
while our industry has undergone the greatest development, our wages
have fallen far more rapidly, in proportion, than the price of corn
has gone up?
"The tax which you say we pay the landlords is about 3 pence a
week per worker. And yet the wages of the hand-loom weaver fell,
between 1815 and 1843, from 28s. per week to 5s., and the wages of
the power-loom weavers, between 1823 and 1843, from 20s. per week to
8s.
"And during the whole of this period that portion of the tax
which we paid to the landlord has never exceeded 3 pence. And, then
in the year 1834, when bread was very cheap and business going on
very well, what did you tell us? You said, 'If you are unfortunate,
it is because you have too many children, and your marriages are
more productive than your labor!'
"These are the very words you spoke to us, and you set about
making new Poor Laws, and building work-houses, the Bastilles of the
proletariat."
To this the manufacturer replied:
"You are right, worthy laborers; it is not the
price of corn alone, but competition of the hands among themselves
as well, which determined wages.
"But ponder well one thing, namely, that our soil consists
only of rocks and sandbanks. You surely do not imagine that corn can
be grown in flower-pots. So if, instead of lavishing our capital and
our labor upon a thoroughly sterile soil, we were to give up
agriculture, and devote ourselves exclusively to industry, all
Europe would abandon its factories, and England would form one huge
factory town, with the whole of the rest of Europe for its
countryside."
While thus haranguing his own workingmen, the manufacturer is
interrogated by the small trader, who says to him:
"If we repeal the Corn Laws, we shall indeed ruin
agriculture; but for all that, we shall not compel other nations to
give up their own factories and buy from ours.
"What will the consequence be? I shall lose the customers that
I have at present in the country, and the home trade will lose its
market."
The manufacturer, turning his back upon the workers, replies to
the shopkeeper:
"As to that, you leave it to us! Once rid of the
duty on corn, we shall import cheaper corn from abroad. Then we
shall reduce wages at the very time when they rise in the countries
where we get out corn.
"Thus in addition to the advantages which we already enjoy we
shall also have that of lower wages and, with all these advantage,
we shall easily force the Continent to buy from us."
But now the farmers and agricultural laborers join in the
discussion.
"And what, pray, is to become of us?
"Are we going to pass a sentence of death upon agriculture,
from which we get our living? Are we to allow the soil to be torn
from beneath our feet?"
As its whole answer, the Anti-Corn Law League has contented itself
with offering prizes for the three best essays upon the wholesome
influence of the repeal of the Corn Laws on English agriculture.
These prizes were carried off by Messrs. Hope, Morse, and Greg,
whose essays were distributed in thousands of copies throughout the
countryside.
The first of the prize-winners devotes himself to proving that
neither the tenant farmer nor the agricultural laborer will lose by
the free importation of foreign corn, but only the landlord.
"The English tenant farmer," he exclaims, "need
not fear the repeal of the Corn Laws, because no other country can
produce such good corn so cheaply as England.
"Thus, even if the price of corn fell, it would not hurt you,
because this fall would only affect rent, which would go down, and
not at all industrial profit and wages, which would remain
stationary."
The second prize-winner, Mr. Morse, maintains, on the contrary,
that the price of corn will rise in consequence of repeal. He takes
infinite pains to prove that protective duties nave never been able
to secure a remunerative price for corn.
In support for his assertion, he cites the fact that, whenever
foreign corn has been imported, the price of corn in England has
gone up considerably, and then when little corn has been imported,
the price has fallen extremely. This prize-winner forgets that the
importation was not the cause of the high price, but that the high
price was the cause of the importation.
And in direct contradiction to his co-prize-winner, he asserts
that every rise in the price of corn is profitable to both the
tenant farmer and the laborer, but not to the landlord.
The third prize-winner, Mr. Greg, who is a big manufacturer and
whose work is addressed to the large tenant farmers, could not old
with such stupidities. His language is more scientific.
He admits that the Corn Laws can raise rent only by raising the
price of corn, and that they can raise the price of corn only by
compelling capital to apply itself to land of inferior quality, and
this is explained quite simply.
In proportion as population increases, if foreign corn cannot be
imported, less fertile soil has to be used, the cultivation of which
involves more expense and the product of this soil is consequently
dearer.
There being a forced sale for corn, the price will of necessity be
determined by the price of the product of the most costly soil. The
difference between this price and the cost of production upon soil
of better quality constitutes the rent.
If, therefore, as a result of the repeal of the Corn Laws, the
price of corn, and consequently the rent, falls, it is because
inferior soil will no longer be cultivated. Thus, the reduction of
rent must inevitably ruin a part of the tenant farmers.
These remarks were necessary in order to make Mr. Greg's language
comprehensible.
"The small farmers," he says, "who cannot
support themselves by agriculture will find a resource in industry.
As to the large tenant farmers, they cannot fail to profit. Either
the landlords will be obliged to sell them land very cheap, or
leases will be made out for very long periods. This will enable
tenant farmers to apply large sums of capital to the land, to use
agricultural machinery on a larger scale, and to save manual labor,
which will, moreover, be cheaper, on account of the general fall in
wages, the immediate consequences of the repeal of the Corn Laws."
Dr. Browning conferred upon all these arguments the consecration
of religion, by exclaiming at a public meeting,
"Jesus Christ is Free Trade, and Free Trade is Jesus
Christ."
One can understand that all this hypocrisy was not calculated to
make cheap bread attractive to the workers.
Besides, how could the workingman understand the sudden
philanthropy of the manufacturers, the very men still busy fighting
against the Ten Hours' Bill, which was to reduce the working day of
the mill hands from 12 hours to 10?
To give you an idea of the philanthropy of these manufacturers I
would remind you, gentlemen, of the factory regulations in force in
all the mills.
Every manufacturer has for his own private use a regular penal
code in which fines are laid down for every voluntary or involuntary
offence. For instance, the worker pays so much if he has the
misfortune to sit down on a chair; if he whispers, or speaks, or
laughs; if he arrives a few moments too late; if any part of the
machine breaks, or he does not turn out work of the quality desired,
etc., etc. The fines are always greater than the damage really done
by the worker. And to give the worker every opportunity for
incurring fines, the factory clock is set forward, and he is given
bad raw material to make into good pieces of stuff. An overseer not
sufficiently skillful in multiplying cases of infractions or rules
is discharged.
You see, gentlemen, this private legislation is enacted for the
especial purpose of creating such infractions, and infractions are
manufactured for the purpose of making money. Thus the manufacturer
uses every means of reducing the nominal wage, and of profiting even
by accidents over which the worker has no control.
These manufacturers are the same philanthropists who have tried
to make the workers believe that they were capable of going to
immense expense for the sole purpose of ameliorating their lot.
Thus, on the one hand, they nibble at the wages of the worker in the
pettiest way, by means of factory regulations, and, on the other,
they are undertaking the greatest sacrifices to raise those wages
again by means of the Anti-Corn Law League.
They build great palaces at immense expense, in which the League
takes up, in some respects, its official residence; they send an
army of missionaries to all corners of England to preach the gospel
of free trade; they have printed and distributed gratis thousands of
pamphlets to enlighten the worker upon his own interests, they spend
enormous sums to make the press favorable to their cause; they
organize a vast administrative system for the conduct of the free
trade movement, and they display all their wealth of eloquence at
public meetings. It was at one of these meetings that a worker cried
out:
"If the landlords were to sell our bones, you
manufacturers would be the first to buy them in order to put them
through a steam-mill and make flour of them."
The English workers have very well understood the significance of
the struggle between the landlords and the industrial capitalists.
They know very well that the price of bread was to be reduced in
order to reduce wages, and that industrial profit would rise by as
much as rent fell.
Ricardo, the apostle of the English free-traders, the most eminent
economists of our century, entirely agrees with the workers upon
this point. In his celebrated work on political economy, he says:
"If instead of growing our own corn... we discover
a new market from which we can supply ourselves... at a cheaper
price, wages will fall and profits rise. The fall in the price of
agricultural produce reduces the wages, not only of the laborer
employed in cultivating the soil, but also of all those employed in
commerce or manufacture."
[David Ricardo, _Des principes de l'economie politique et de
l'impot_. Traduit de l'anglais par F. S. Constancio, avec des notes
explicatives et critiqus par J.-B.- Say. T. I., Paris 1835,
p.178-79]
And do not believe, gentlemen, that is is a matter of indifference
to the worker whether he receives only four francs on account of
corn being cheaper, when he had been receiving five francs before.
Have not his wages always fallen in comparison with profit, and is
it not clear that his social position has grown worse as compared
with that of the capitalist? Besides which he loses more as a matter
of fact.
So long as the price of corn was higher and wages were also
higher, a small saving in the consumption of bread sufficed to
procure him other enjoyments. But as soon as bread is very cheap,
and wages are therefore very cheap, he can save almost nothing on
bread for the purchase of other articles.
The English workers have made the English free-traders realize
that they are not the dupes of their illusions or of their lies; and
if, in spite of this, the workers made common cause with them
against the landlords, it was for the purpose of destroying the last
remnants of feudalism and in order to have only one enemy left to
deal with. The workers have not miscalculated, for the landlords, in
order to revenge themselves upon the manufacturers, made common
cause with the workers to carry the Ten Hours' Bill, which the
latter had been vainly demanding for 30 years, and which was passed
immediately after the repeal of the Corn Laws.
When Dr. Bowring, at the Congress of Economists [September 16-18,
1848; the following, among others, were present: Dr. Bowring, M.P.,
Colonel Thompson, Mr. Ewart, Mr. Brown, and James Wilson, editor of
the _Economist_], drew from his pocket a long list to show how many
head of cattle, how much ham, bacon, poultry, etc., was imported
into England, to be consumed, as he asserted, by the workers, he
unfortunately forgot to tell you that all the time the workers of
Manchester and other factory towns were finding themselves thrown
into the streets by the crisis which was beginning.
As a matter of principle in political economy, the figures of a
single year must never be taken as the basis for formulating general
laws. One must always take the average period of from six to seven
years -- a period of time during which modern industry passes
through the various phases of prosperity, overproduction,
stagnation, crisis, and completes its inevitable cycle.
Doubtless, if the price of all commodities falls -- and this is
the necessary consequence of free trade -- I can buy far more for a
franc than before. And the worker's france is as good as any other
man's. Therefore, free trade will be very advantageous to the
worker. There is only little difficulty in this, namely, that the
worker, before he exchanges his franc for other commodities, has
first exchanged his labor with the capitalist. If in this exchange
he always received the said franc for the same labor and the price
of all other commodities fell, he would always be the gainer by such
a bargain. The difficult point does not lie in proving that, if the
price of all commodities falls, I will get more commodities for the
same money.
Economists always take the price of labor at the moment of its
exchange with other commodities. But they altogether ignore the
moment at which labor accomplishes its own exchange with capital.
When less expense is required to set in motion the machine which
produces commodities, the things necessary for the maintenance of
this machine, called a worker, will also cost less. If all
commodities are cheaper, labor, which is a commodity too, will also
fall in price, and, as we shall see later, this commodity, labor,
will fall far lower in proportion than the other commodities. If the
worker still pins his faith to the arguments of the economists, he
will find that the franc has melted away in his pocket, and that he
has only 5 sous left.
Thereupon the economists will tell you:
"Well, we admit that competition among the workers,
which will certainly not have diminished under free trade, will very
soon bring wages into harm,only with the low price of commodities.
But, on the other hand, the low price of commodities will increase
consumption, the larger consumption will require increased
production, which will be followed by a larger demand for hands, and
this larger demand for hands will be followed by a rise in wages."
The whole line of argument amounts to this: Free trade increases
productive forces. If industry keeps growing, if wealth, if the
productive power, if, in a word, productive capital increases, the
demand for labor,the price of labor, and consequently the rate of
wages, rise also.
The most favorable condition for the worker is the growth of
capital. This must be admitted. If capital remains stationary,
industry will not merely remain stationary but will decline, and in
this case the worker will be the first victim. He goes to the wall
before the capitalist. And in the case where capital keeps growing,
in the circumstance which we have said are the best for the worker,
what will be his lot? He will go to the wall just the same. The
growth of productive capital implies the accumulation and the
concentration of capital. The centralization of capital involves a
greater division of labor and a greater use of machinery. The
greater division of labor destroys the especial skill of the
laborer; and by putting in the place of this skilled work labor
which anybody can perform, it increase competition among the
workers.
This competition becomes fiercer as the division of labor enables
a single worker to do the work of three. Machinery accomplishes the
same result on a much larger scale. The growth of productive
capital, which forces the industrial capitalists to work with
constantly increasing means, ruins the small industrialist and
throws them into the proletariat. Then, the rate of interest falling
in proportion as capital accumulates, the small rentiers, who can no
longer live on their dividends, are forced to go into industry and
thus swell the number of proletarians.
Finally, the more productive capital increases, the more it is
compelled to produce for a market whose requirements it does not
know, the more production precedes consumption, the more supply
tries to force demand, and consumption crises increase in frequency
and in intensity. But every crisis in turn hastens the
centralization of capital and adds to the proletariat.
Thus, as productive capital grows, competition among the workers
grows in a far greater proportion. The reward of labor diminishes
for all, and the burden of labor increases for some.
In 1829, there were in Manchester 1,088 cotton spinners employed
in 36 factories. In 1841, there were no more than 448, and they
tended 53,353 more spindles than the 1,088 spinners did in 1829. In
manual labor had increased in the same proportion as the productive
power, the number of spinners ought to have reaches the figure of
1,848; improved machinery had, therefore, deprived 1,100 workers of
employment.
We know beforehand the reply of the economists. The men thus
deprived of work, they say, will find other kinds of employment. Dr.
Bowring did not fail to reproduce this argument at the Congress of
Economists, but neither did he fail to supply his own refutation.
In 1835, Dr. Bowring made a speech in the House of Commons upon
the 50,000 hand-loom weavers of London who for a very long time had
been starving without being able to find that new kind of employment
which the free-traders hold out to them in the distance.
We will give the most striking passages of this speech of Dr.
Bowring:
"This distress of the weavers... is an incredible
condition of a species of labor easily learned -- and constantly
intruded on and superseded by cheaper means of production. A very
short cessation of demand, where the competition for work is so
great... produces a crisis. The hand-loom weavers are on the verge
of that state beyond which human existence can hardly be sustained,
and a very trifling check hurls them into the regions of
starvation.... The improvements of machinery, ...by superseding
manual labor more and more, infallibly bring with them in the
transition much of temporary suffering.... The national good cannot
be purchased but at the expense of some individual evil. No advance
was ever made in manufactures but at some cost to those who are in
the rear; and of all discoveries, the power-loom is that which most
directly bears on the condition of the hand-loom weaver. He is
already beaten out of the field in many articles; he will infallibly
be compelled to surrender many more."
Further on he says:
"I hold in my hand the correspondence which has
taken place between the Governor-General of India and the East-India
Company, on the subject of the Dacca hand-loom weavers.... Some
years ago the East-India Company annually received of the produce of
the looms of India to the amount of from 6,000,000 to 8,000,000 of
pieces of cotton goods. The demand gradually fell to somewhat more
than 1,000,000, and has now nearly ceased altogether. In 1800, the
United States took from India nearly 800,000 pieces of cotton; in
1830, not 4,000. In 1800, 1,000,000 pieces were shipped to Portugal;
in 1830, only 20,000. Terrible were the accounts of the wretchedness
of the poor Indian weavers, reduced to absolute starvation. And what
was the sole cause? The presence of the cheaper English
manufacture.... Numbers of them dies of hunger, the remainder were,
for the most part, transferred to other occupations, principally
agricultural. Not to have changed their trade was inevitable
starvation. And at this moment that Dacca district is supplied with
yarn and cotton cloth from the power-looms of England.... The Dacca
muslins, celebrated over the whole world for their beauty and
fineness, are also annihilated from the same cause. And the present
suffering, to numerous classes in India, is scarcely to be
paralleled in the history of commerce."
[ Speech in the House of Commons, July 28, 1835. (Hansard,
Vol.XXIX, London 1835, pp.1168-70) ]
Dr. Bowring's speech is the more remarkable because the facts
quoted by him are exact, and the phrases with which he seeks to
palliate them are wholly characterized by the hypocrisy common to
all free trade sermons. He represents the workers as means of
production which must be superseded by less expensive means of
production. He pretends to see in the labor of which he speaks a
wholly exceptional kind of labor, and in the machine which has
crushed out the weavers an equally exceptional machine. He forgets
that there is no kind of manual labor which may not any day be
subjected to the fate of the hand-loom weavers.
"It is, in fact, the constant aim and tendency of
every improvement in machine to supersede human labor altogether, or
to diminish its cost by substituting the industry of women and
children for that of men; or that of ordinary laborers for trained
artisans. In most of the water-twist, or throstle cotton-mills, the
spinning is entirely managed by females of 16 years and upwards. The
effect of substituting the self-acting mule for the common mule, is
to discharge the greater part of the men spinners, and to retain
adolescents and children."
[Dr. Andrew Ure, _The Philosophy of Manufactures_ London 1835. Book
I, Chap.I, p.23]
These words of the most enthusiastic free-trader, Dr. Ure, serve
to complement the confessions of Dr. Bowring. Dr. Bowring speaks of
certain individual evils, and, at the same time, says that these
individual evils destroy whole classes; he speaks of the temporary
sufferings during the transition period, and at the very time of
speaking of them, he does not deny that these temporary evils have
implied for the majority the transition from life to death, and for
the rest a transition from a better to a worse condition. If he
asserts, farther on, that the sufferings of these workers are
inseparable from the progress of industry, and are necessary to the
prosperity of the nation, he simply says that the prosperity of the
bourgeois class presupposed as necessary the suffering of the
laboring class.
All the consolation which Dr. Bowring offers the workers who
perish, and, indeed, the whole doctrine of compensation which the
free-traders propound, amounts to this:
You thousands of workers who are perishing, do not despair! You
can die with an easy conscience. Your class will not perish. It will
always be numerous enough for the capitalist class to decimate it
without fear of annihilating it. Besides, how could capital be
usefully applied if it did not take care always to keep up its
exploitable material, i.e., the workers, to exploit them over and
over again?
But, besides, why propound as a problem still to be solved the
question: What influence will the adoption of free trade have upon
the condition of the working class? All the laws formulated by the
political economists from Quesnay to Ricardo have been based upon
the hypothesis that the trammels which still interfere with
commercial freedom have disappeared. These laws are confirmed in
proportion as free trade is adopted. The first of these laws is that
competition reduces the price of every commodity to the minimum cost
of production. Thus the minimum of wages is the natural price of
labor. And what is the minimum of wages? Just so much as is required
for production of the articles indispensable for the maintenance of
the worker, for putting him in a position to sustain himself,
however badly, and to propagate his race, however slightly.
But do not imagine that the worker receives only this minimum
wage, and still less that he always receives it.
No, according to this law, the working class will sometimes be
more fortunate. It will sometimes receive something above the
minimum, but this surplus will merely make up for the deficit which
it will have received below the minimum in times of industrial
stagnation. That is to say that, within a given time which recurs
periodically, in the cycle which industry passes through while
undergoing the vicissitudes of prosperity, overproduction,
stagnation and crisis, when reckoning all that the working class
will have had above and below necessaries, we shall see that, in
all, it will have received neither more nor less than the minimum;
i.e., the working class will have maintained itself as a class after
enduring any amount of misery and misfortune, and after leaving many
corpses upon the industrial battlefield. But what of that? The class
will still exist; nay, more, it will have increased.
But this is not all. The progress of industry creates less
expensive means of subsistence. Thus spirits have taken the place of
beer, cotton that of wool and linen, and potatoes that of bread.
Thus, as means are constantly being found for the maintenance of
labor on cheaper and more wretched food, the minimum of wages is
constantly sinking. If these wages began by making the man work to
live, they end by making him live the life of a machine. His
existence has not other value than that of a simple productive
force, and the capitalist treats him accordingly.
This law of commodity labor, of the minimum of wages, will be
confirmed in proportion as the supposition of the economists,
free-trade, becomes an actual fact. Thus, of two things one: either
we must reject all political economy based on the assumption of free
trade, or we must admit that under this free trade the whole
severity of the economic laws will fall upon the workers.
To sum up, what is free trade, what is free trade under the
present condition of society? It is freedom of capital. When you
have overthrown the few national barriers which still restrict the
progress of capital, you will merely have given it complete freedom
of action. So long as you let the relation of wage labor to capital
exist, it does not matter how favorable the conditions under which
the exchange of commodities takes place, there will always be a
class which will exploit and a class which will be exploited. It is
really difficult to understand the claim of the free-traders who
imagine that the more advantageous application of capital will
abolish the antagonism between industrial capitalists and wage
workers. On the contrary, the only result will be that the
antagonism of these two classes will stand out still more clearly.
Let us assume for a moment that there are no more Corn Laws or
national or local custom duties; in fact that all the accidental
circumstances which today the worker may take to be the cause of his
miserable condition have entirely vanished, and you will have
removed so many curtains that hide from his eyes his true enemy.
He will see that capital become free will make him no less a slave
than capital trammeled by customs duties.
Gentlemen! Do not allow yourselves to be deluded by the abstract
word _freedom_. Whose freedom? It is not the freedom of one
individual in relation to another, but the freedom of capital to
crush the worker.
Why should you desire to go on sanctioning free competition with
this idea of freedom, when this freedom is only the product of a
state of things based upon free competition?
We have shown what sort of brotherhood free trade begets between
the different classes of one and the same nation. The brotherhood
which free trade would establish between the nations of the Earth
would hardly be more fraternal. To call cosmopolitan exploitation
universal brotherhood is an idea that could only be engendered in
the brain of the bourgeoisie. All the destructive phenomena which
unlimited competition gives rise to within one country are
reproduced in more gigantic proportions on the world market. We need
not dwell any longer upon free trade sophisms on this subject, which
are worth just as much as the arguments of our prize-winners Messrs.
Hope, Morse, and Greg.
For instance, we are told that free trade would create an
international division of labor, and thereby give to each country
the production which is most in harmony with its natural advantage.
You believe, perhaps, gentlemen, that the production of coffee and
sugar is the natural destiny of the West Indies.
Two centuries ago, nature, which does not trouble herself about
commerce, had planted neither sugar-cane nor coffee trees there.
And it may be that in less than half a century you will find there
neither coffee nor sugar, for the East Indies, by means of cheaper
production, have already successfully combatted his alleged natural
destiny of the West Indies. And the West Indies, with their natural
wealth, are already as heavy a burden for England as the weavers of
Dacca, who also were destined from the beginning of time to weave by
hand.
One other thing must never be forgotten, namely, that, just as
everything has become a monopoly, there are also nowadays some
branches of industry which dominate all others, and secure to the
nations which most largely cultivate them the command of the world
market. Thus in international commerce cotton alone has much greater
commercial than all the other raw materials used in the manufacture
of clothing put together. It is truly ridiculous to see the
free-traders stress the few specialities in each branch of
industry,throwing them into the balance against the products used in
everyday consumption and produced most cheaply in those countries in
which manufacture is most highly developed.
If the free-traders cannot understand how one nation can grow rich
at the expense of another, we need not wonder, since these same
gentlemen also refuse to understand how within one country one class
can enrich itself at the expense of another.
Do not imagine, gentlemen, that in criticizing freedom of trade we
have the least intention of defending the system of protection.
One may declare oneself an enemy of the constitutional regime
without declaring oneself a friend of the ancient regime.
Moreover, the protectionist system is nothing but a means of
establishing large-scale industry in any given country, that is to
say, of making it dependent upon the world market, and from the
moment that dependence upon the world market is established, there
is already more or less dependence upon free trade. Besides this,
the protective system helps to develop free trade competition within
a country. Hence we see that in countries where the bourgeoisie is
beginning to make itself felt as a class, in Germany for example, it
makes great efforts to obtain protective duties. They serve the
bourgeoisie as weapons against feudalism and absolute government, as
a means for the concentration of its own powers and for the
realization of free trade within the same country.
But, in general, the protective system of our day is conservative,
while the free trade system is destructive. It breaks up old
nationalities and pushes the antagonism of the proletariat and the
bourgeoisie to the extreme point. In a word, the free trade system
hastens the social revolution. It is in this revolutionary sense
alone, gentlemen, that I vote in favor of free trade.
Marx's speech appeared in French, in Brussels,
in early February 1848; translated into German the same year and
published in Germany by Joseph Weydemeyer -- friend of Marx and
Engels. In compliance with a wish expressed by Engels, this
speech was appended to the first German edition of The
Poverty of Philosophy (1885). It has usually been included
in appendix in printings of that book ever since.
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