Marx and Engels, 1848

Marx and Engels, 1848

On the Question of Free Trade

Table of Contents:

Introduction, Engels 1888.Protective Tariffs or Free Trade System, Engels Jun 1 1847.The Protectionists, the Free Traders and the Working Class, Marx Sep 23 1847.The Free Trade Congress at Brussels, Engels Sep 30 1847.

Marx's Speech, On the Question of Free Trade, Jan 9 1848.The Klnische Zeitung on the State of Affairs in England, Engels Aug 1 1848.Free Trade and The Chartists, by Karl Marx in the New-York Herald Tribune.

On January 9, 1848, Marx spoke before the Democratic Association of Brussels about the topical question of free trade.

At the end of 1847, Brussels hosted a "Free Trade Congress" - which was intended to further the general Free Trade campaign English manufacturers were conducting. In 1846, the English bourgeoisie repealed England's Corn Laws and were now ready to take their cause abroad.

Marx requested a slot to speak, but the Congress closed before his name came up on the lists. Instead, he delivered his speech to the Democratic Association, of which he was a vice-president. His speech is presented below.

The Free Trade question again raged some 40 years later. Engels dug out Marx's speech and it 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, during the USA-Canada-Mexico free trade negotiations of the early 1990s, 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 by Joseph Weydemeyer, friend of Marx and Engels. The speech was appended to the first German edition of The Poverty of Philosophy (1886) as per Engels' wishes. In 1888, it was translated into English and distributed as a pamphlet.

Preface by Frederick Engels for the 1888 English edition pamphletTOWARDS the end of 1847, a Free Trade Congress was held at Brussels. It as a strategic move in the Free Trade campaign then carried on by the English manufacturers. Victorious at home, by the repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846, they now invaded the continent in order to demand, in return for the free admission of continental corn into England, the free admission of English manufactured goods to the continental markets.

At this Congress, Marx inscribed himself on the list of speakers; but, as might have been expected, things were not so managed that before his turn came on, the Congress was closed. Thus, what Marx had to say on the Free Trade question he was compelled to say before the Democratic Association of Brussels, an international body of which he was one of the vice-presidents.

The question of Free Trade or Protection being at present on the order of the day in America, it has been thought useful to publish an English translation of Marx's speech, to which I have been asked to write an introductory preface.

"The system of protection," says Marx, "was an artificial means of manufacturing manufacturers, of expropriating independent laborers, of capitalizing the national means of production and subsistence, and of forcibly abbreviating the transition from the medieval to the modern mode of production."

Such was protection at its origin in the 17th century, such it remained well into the 19th century. It was then held to be the normal policy of every civilized state in western Europe. The only exceptions were the smaller states of Germany and Switzerland -- not from dislike of the system, but from the impossibility of applying it to such small territories.

It was under the fostering wing of protection that the system of modern industry -- production by steam-moved machinery -- was hatched and developed in England during the last third of the 18th century. And, as if tariff protection was not sufficient, the wars against the French Revolution helped to secure to England the monopoly of the new industrial methods. For more than 20 years, English men-of-war [fighting ships] cut off the industrial rivals of England from their respective colonial markets, while they forcibly opened these markets to English commerce. The secession of the South American colonies from the rule of their European mother countries, the conquest by England of all French and Dutch colonies worth having, the progressive subjugation of India turned the people of all these immense territories into customers for English goods. England thus supplemented the protection she practiced at home by the Free Trade she forced upon her possible customers abroad; and, thanks to this happy mixture of both systems, at the end of the wars, in 1815, she found herself, with regard to all important branches of industry, in possession of the virtual monopoly of the trade of the world.

This monopoly was further extended and strengthened during the ensuing years of peace. The start, which England had obtained during the war, was increased from year to year; she seemed to distance more and more all her possible rivals. The exports of manufactured goods in ever growing quantities became indeed a question of life and death to that country. And there seemed but two obstacles in the way: the prohibitive or protective legislation of other countries, and the taxes upon the import of raw materials and articles of food in England.

Then the Free Trade doctrines of classical political economy -- of the French physiocrats and their English successors, Adam Smith and Ricardo -- became popular in the land of John Bull.

Protection at home was needless to manufacturers who beat all their foreign rivals, and whose very existence was staked on the expansion of their exports. Protection at home was of advantage to none but the producers of articles of food and other raw materials, to the agricultural interest, which, under then existing circumstances in England, meant the receivers of rent, the landed aristocracy. And this kind of protection was hurtful to the manufacturers. By taxing raw materials, it raised the price of the articles manufactured from them; by taxing food, it raised the price of labor; in both ways, it placed the British manufacturer at a disadvantage as compared with his foreign competitor. And, as all other countries sent to England chiefly agricultural products and drew from England chiefly manufactured goods, repeal of the English protective duties on corn and raw materials generally was at the same time an appeal to foreign countries to do away with -- or at least to reduce in turn -- the import duties levied by them on English manufactures.

After a long and violent struggle, the English industrial capitalists, already in reality the leading class of the nation, that class whose interests were then the chief national interests, were victorious. The landed aristocracy had to give in. The duties on corn and other raw materials were repealed. Free Trade became the watchword of the day. To convert all other countries to the gospel of Free Trade, and thus to create a world in which England was the great manufacturing centre, with all other countries for its independent agricultural districts, that was the next task before the English manufacturers and their mouthpieces, the political economists.

That was the time of the Brussels Congress, the time when Marx prepared the speech in question. While recognizing that protection may still, under certain circumstances, for instance in the Germany of 1847, be of advantage to the manufacturing capitalists; while proving that that Free Trade was not the panacea for all the evils under which the working class suffered, and might even aggravate them; he pronounces, ultimately and on principle, in favor of Free Trade.

To him, Free Trade is the normal condition of modern capitalist production. Only under Free Trade can the immense productive powers of steam, of electricity, of machinery, be full developed; and the quicker the pace of this development, the sooner and the more fully will be realized its inevitable results; society splits up into two classes, capitalists here, wage-laborers there; hereditary wealth on one side, hereditary poverty on the other; supply outstripping demand, the markets being unable to absorb the ever growing mass of the production of industry; an ever recurring cycle of prosperity, glut, crisis, panic, chronic depression, and gradual revival of trade, the harbinger not of permanent improvement but of renewed overproduction and crisis; in short, productive forces expanding to such a degree that they rebel, as against unbearable fetters, against the social institutions under which they are put in motion; the only possible solution: a social revolution, freeing the social productive forces from the fetters of an antiquated social order, and the actual producers, the great mass of the people, from wage slavery. And because Free Trade is the natural, the normal atmosphere for this historical evolution, the economic medium in which the conditions for the inevitable social revolution will be the soonest created -- for this reason, and for this alone, did Marx declare in favor of Free Trade.

Anyhow, the years immediately following the victory of Free Trade in England seemed to verify the most extravagant expectations of prosperity founded upon that event. British commerce rose to a fabulous amount; the industrial monopoly of England on the market of the world seemed more firmly established that ever; new iron works, new textile factories arose by wholesale; new branches of industry grew up on ever side. There was, indeed, a severe crisis in 1857, but that was overcome, and the onward movement in trade and manufactures soon was in full swing again, until in 1866 a fresh panic occurred, a panic, this time, which seems to mark a new departure in the economic history of the world.

The unparalleled expansion of British manufactures and commerce between 1848 and 1866 was no doubt due, to a great extent, to the removal of the protective duties on food and raw materials. But not entirely. Other important changes took place simultaneously and helped it on. The above years comprise the discover and working of the Californian and Australian goldfields which increased so immensely the circulating medium of the world; they mark the final victory of steam over all other means of transports; on the ocean, steamers now superseded sailing vessels; on land, in all civilized countries, the railroad took the first place, the macadamized roads the second; transport now became four times quicker and four times cheaper. No wonder that under such favorable circumstances British manufactures worked by steam should extend their sway at the expense of foreign domestic industries based upon manual labor. But were the other countries to sit still and to submit to this change, which degraded them to be mere agricultural appendages of England, the "workshop of the world"?

The foreign countries did nothing of the kind. France, for nearly 200 years, had screened her manufactures behind a perfect Chinese wall of protection and prohibition, and had attained in all articles of luxury and of taste a supremacy which England did not even pretend to dispute. Switzerland, under perfect Free Trade, possessed relatively important manufactures, which English competition could not touch. Germany, with a tariff far more liberal than that of any other large continental country, was developing its manufactures at a rate relatively more rapid than even England. And America was, by the Civil War of 1861, all at once thrown upon her own resources, had to find means how to meet a sudden demand for manufactured goods of all sorts, and could only do so by creating manufactures of her own at home. The war demand ceased with the war; but the new manufactures were there, and had to meet British competition. And the war had ripened, in America, the insight that a nation of 35 million, doubling its numbers in 40 years at most, with such immense resources, and surrounded by neighbors that must be for years to come chiefly agriculturalists, that such a nation had the "manifest destiny" to be independent of foreign manufactures for its chief articles of consumption, and to be so in time of peace as well as in time of war. And then America turned protectionist.

It may now be 15 years ago, I traveled in a railway carriage with an intelligent Glasgow merchant, interested probably in the iron trade. Talking abut America, he treated me to the old Free Trade lubrications:

"Was it not inconceivable that a nation of sharp businessmen like the Americans should pay tribute to indigenous ironmasters and manufacturers, when they could buy the same, if not a better article, ever so much cheaper in this country?"

And then he gave me examples as to how much the Americans taxed themselves in order to enrich a few greedy ironmasters.

"Well," I replied, "I think there is another side to the question. You know that in coal, waterpower, iron, and other ores, cheap food, homegrown cotton, and other raw materials, America has resources and advantages unequalled by any European country; and that these resources cannot be fully developed except by America becoming a manufacturing country. You will admit, too, that nowadays a, great nation like the Americans' cannot exist on agriculture alone; that would be tantamount to a condemnation to permanent barbarism and inferiority; no great nation can live, in our age, without manufactures of her own. Well, then, if America must become a manufacturing country, and if she has every chance of not only succeeding but even outstripping her rivals, there are two ways open to her: either to carry on for, let us say, 50 years under Free Trade an extremely expensive competitive war against English manufactures that have got nearly a hundred years start; or else to shut out, by protective duties, English manufactures for, say, 25 years, with the almost absolute certainty that at the end of the 25 years she will be able to hold her own in the open market of the world. Which of the two will be the cheapest and the shortest? That is the question. If you want to go from Glasgow to London, you take the parliamentary train at a penny a mile and travel at the rate of 12 miles an hour. But you do not; your time is too valuable, you take the express, pay twopence a mile and do 40 miles an hour. Very well, the Americans prefer to pay express fare and to go express speed."

My Scotch Free Trade had not a word in reply.

Protection beings a means of artificially manufacturing manufacturers, may, therefore, appear useful not only to an incompletely developed capitalist class still struggling with feudalism; it may also give a life to the rising capitalist class of a country which, like America, has never known feudalism, but which has arrived at that stage of development where the passage from agriculture to manufactures becomes a necessity. America, placed in that situation, decided in favor of protection. Since that decision was carried out, the five and 20 years of which I spoke to my fellow traveller have about passed and, if I was not wrong, protection ought to have done its task for America, and ought to be now becoming a nuisance.

That has been my opinion for some time. Nearly two years ago, I said to a protectionist American:

"I am convinced that if America goes in for Free Trade, she will in 10 years have beaten England in the market of the world."

Protection is at best an endless screw, and you never know when you have done with it. By protecting one industry, you directly or indirectly hurt all others, and have therefore to protect them too. By so doing you again damage the industry that you first protected, and have to compensate it; but this compensation reacts, as before, on all other trades, and entitles them to redress, and so on ad infinitum. America, in this respect, offers us a striking example of the best way to kill an important industry by protectionism. In 1856, the total imports and exports by sea of the United State amounted to $641,604,850. Of this amount, 75.2 per cent were carried in American, and only 24.8 per cent in foreign vessels. British ocean steamers were already then encroaching upon American sailing vessels; yet, in 1860, of a total seagoing trade of $762,288,550, American vessels still carried 66.5 per cent.

The Civil War came on, and protection to American shipbuilding; and the latter plan was so successful that it has nearly completely driven the American flag from the high seas. In 1887, the total seagoing trade of the United States amounted to $1,408,502,979, but of this total only 13.8 per cent were carried in American, and 86.2 per cent in foreign bottoms. The goods carried by American ships amounted, in 1856, to $482,268,274; in 1860 to $507,247,757. In 1887, they had sunk to $194,356,746. Forty years ago, the American flag was the most dangerous rival of the British flag, and bade fair to outstrip it on the ocean; now it is nowhere. Protection to shipbuilding has killed both shipping and shipbuilding.

Another point. Improvements in the methods of production nowadays follow each other so rapidly, and change the character of entire branches of industry so suddenly and so completely, that what may have been yesterday a fairly balanced protective tariff is no longer so today. Let us take another example from the Report of the Secretary of the Treasury for 1887:

"Improvement in recent years in the machinery employed in combing wool has so changed the character of what are commercially known as worsted clothes that the latter have largely superseded woolen cloths for us as men's wearing apparel. This change... has operated to the serious injury of our domestic manufacturers of these (worsted) goods, because the duty on the wool which they must use is the same as that upon wool used in making woolen cloths, while the rate of duty imposed upon the latter when valued at not exceeding 80 cents per pound are 35 per cent ad valorem, whereas the duty on worsted cloths valued at not exceeding 80 cents ranges from 10 to 24 cents per pound and 35 per cent ad valorem. In some cases the duty on the wool used in making worsted cloths exceed the duty imposed on the finished article."

Thus what was protection to home industry yesterday turns out today to be a premium to the foreign importer, and well may the Secretary of the Treasury say:

"There is much reason to believe that the manufacturer of worsted cloths must soon cease in this country unless the tariff law in this regard is amended."

But to amend it, you will have to fight the manufacturers of woolen clothes who profit by this state of things; you will have to open a regular campaign to bring the majority of both Houses of Congress, and eventually the public opinion of the country round to your views, and the question is, Will that pay?

But the worst of protection is that when you once have got it, you cannot easily get rid of it. Difficult as is the process of adjustment of an equitable tariff, the return to Free Trade is immensely more difficult. The circumstances that permitted England to accomplish the change in a few years will not occur again. And even there the struggle dated from 1823 (Huckisson), commenced to be successful in 1842 (Peel's tariff), and was continued for several years after the repeal of the Corn Laws. Thus protection to the silk manufacturer (the only one which had still to fear foreign competition) was prolonged for a series of years and then granted in another, positively infamous form; while the other textile industries were subjected to the Factory Act -- which limited the hours of labor of women, young persons, and children -- the silk trade was favored with considerable exceptions to the general rule enabling them to work younger children, and to work the children and young persons longer hours, than the other textile trades. The monopoly that the hypocritical Free Traders repealed with regard to the foreign competitors, that monopoly they created anew at the expense of the health and lives of English children.

But no country will again be able to pass from Protection to Free Trade at a time when all, or nearly all, branches of its manufactures can defy foreign competition in the open market. The necessity of the change will come long before such a happy state may even be hoped for. That necessity will make itself evident in different trades at different times; and from the conflicting interests of these trades, the most edifying squabbles, lobby intrigues, and parliamentary conspiracies will arise. The machinist, engineer, and shipbuilder may find that the protection granted to the iron master raises the price of his goods so much that his export trade is thereby, and thereby alone, prevented. The cotton cloth manufacturer might see his way to driving English cloth out of the Chinese and Indian markets, but for the high price he has to pay for the yarn, on account of protection to spinners, and so forth.

The moment a branch of national industry has completely conquered the home market, that moment exportation becomes a necessity to it. Under capitalistic conditions, an industry either expands or wanes. A trade cannot remain stationary; stoppage of expansion is incipient ruin; the progress of mechanical and chemical invention, by constantly superseding human labor and ever more rapidly increasing and concentrating capital, creates in every stagnant industry a glut both of workers and of capital, a glut which finds no vent everywhere, because the same process is taking place in all other industries.

Thus the passage from a home to an export trade becomes a question of life and death for the industries concerned. But they are met by the established rights, the vested interests of others who as yet find protection either safer or more profitable than Free Trade. Then ensues a long and obstinate fight between Free Traders and Protectionists; a fight where, on both sides, the leadership soon passes out of the hands of the people directly interested, into those of professional politicians, the wire-pullers of the traditional political parties, whose interest is not a settlement of the question, but its being kept open forever; and the result of an immense loss of time, energy, and money is a series of compromises favoring now one, then the other side, and drifting slowly though not majestically in the direction of Free Trade -- unless Protection manages, in the meantime, to make itself utterly insupportable to the nation, which is just now likely to be the case in America.

There is, however, another kind of protection, the worst of all, and that is exhibited in Germany. Germany, too, began to feel, soon after 1815, the necessity of a quicker development of her manufactures. But the first condition of that was the creation of a home market by the removal of the innumerable customs lines and varieties of fiscal legislation formed by the small German states -- in other words, the formation of a German Customs Union, or Zollverein. That could only be done on the basis of a liberal tariff, calculated rather to raise a common revenue than to protect home production. On no other condition could the small states have been introduced to join.

Thus the new German tariff, though slightly protective to some trades, was, at the time of its introduction, a model of Free Trade legislation; and it remained so, although, ever since 1830, the majority of German manufacturers kept clamoring for protection. Yet, under this extremely liberal tariff, and in spite of German domestic industries based on hand labor being mercilessly crushed out by the competition of English factories worked by steam, the transition from manual labor to machinery was gradually accomplished in Germany too, and is now nearly complete. The transformation of Germany from an agricultural to a manufacturing country went on at the same pace, and was, since 1866, assisted by favorable political events: the establishment of a strong central government, and federal legislation, ensuring uniformity in the laws regulating trade, as well as in currency, weights, and measures, and, finally, the flood of the French billions. Thus, about 1874, German trade on the market of the world ranked next to that of Great Britain, and Germany employed more steam power in manufactures and locomotion than any Continental European country. The proof has thus been furnished that even nowadays, in spite of the enormous start that English industry has got, a large country can work its way up to successful competition in the open market with England.

Then, all at once, a change of front was made: Germany turned protectionist at a moment when more than ever Free Trade seemed a necessity for her. The change was no doubt absurd; but it may be explained. While Germany had been a corn-exporting country, the whole agricultural interest, not less than the whole shipping trade, had been ardent Free Traders. But in 1874, instead of exporting, Germany required large supplies of corn from abroad. About that time, America began to flood Europe with enormous supplies of cheap corn; wherever they went, they brought down the money revenue yielded by the land, and consequently its rent; and from that moment, the agricultural interest all over Europe began to clamor for protection.

At the same time, manufacturers in Germany were suffering from the effect of the reckless overtrading brought on by the influx of the French billions, while England, whose trade ever since the crisis of 1866 had been in a state of chronic depression, inundated all accessible markets with goods unsalable at home and offered abroad at ruinously low prices. Thus it happened that German manufacturers, though depending above all upon export, began to see in protection a means of securing to themselves the exclusive supply of the home market. And the government, entirely in the hands of the landed aristocracy and squirearchy, was only too glad to profit by this circumstance in order to benefit the receivers of the rent of land by offering protective duties to both landlords and manufacturers. In 1878, a highly protective tariff was enacted both for agricultural products and for manufactured goods.

The consequence was that henceforth the exportation of German manufactures was carried on at the direct cost of the home consumers. Wherever possible, "rings" or "trusts" were formed to regulate the export trade and even production itself. The German iron trade is in the hands of a few large firms, mostly joint stock companies, who, betwixt them, can produce about four times as much iron as the average consumption of the country can absorb. To avoid unnecessary competition with one another, these firms have formed a trust which divides amongst them all foreign contracts and determines in each case the firm that is to make the real tender. This "trust", some years ago, had even come to an agreement with the English iron masters, but this no longer subsists. Similarly, the Westphalian coal mines (producing about 30 million tons annually) had formed a trust to regulate production, tenders for contracts, and prices. And, altogether, any German manufacturer will tell you that the only thing the protective duties do for him is to enable him to recoup himself in the home market for the ruinous prices he has to take abroad.

And this is not all. This absurd system of protection to manufacturers is nothing but the sop thrown to industrial capitalists to induce them to support a still more outrageous monopoly given to the landed interest. Not only is all agricultural produce subjected to heavy import duties which are increased from year to year, but certain rural industries, carried on large estates for account of the proprietor, are positively endowed out of the public purse. The beet-root sugar manufacture is not only protected, but receives enormous sums in the shape of export premiums. One who ought to know is of opinion that if the exported sugar was all thrown into the sea, the manufacturer would still clear a profit out of government premium. Similarly, the potato-spirit distilleries receive, in consequence of recent legislation, a present out of the pockets of the public of about $9 million a year. And as almost every large landowner in northeastern Germany is either a beet-root sugar manufacturer or a potato-spirit distiller, or both, no wonder the world is literally deluged with their production.

This policy, ruinous under any circumstances, is doubly so in a country whose manufactures keep up their standing in neutral markets chiefly through the cheapness of labor. Wages in Germany, kept near starvation point at the best of times, through redundancy of population (which increases rapidly, in spite of emigration), must rise in consequence of the rise in all necessaries caused by protection; the German manufacturer will then no longer be able, as he too often is ow, to make up for a ruinous price of his articles by a deduction from the normal wages of his hands and will be driven out of the market. Protection, in Germany, is killing the goose that lays the golden egg.

France, too, suffers from the consequences of protection. The system in that country has become, by its two centuries of undisputed sway, almost part and parcel of the life of the nation. Nevertheless, it is more and more becoming an obstacle. Constant changes in the methods of manufacture are the order of the day; but protection bars the road. Silk velvets have their backs nowadays made of fine cotton thread; the French manufacturer has either to pay protection price for that, or to submit to such interminable official chicanery as fully makes up for the difference between that price and the government drawback on exportation; and so the velvet trade goes from Lyons to Crefeld, where the protection price for fine cotton thread is considerably lower.

French exports, as said before, consist chiefly of articles of luxury where French taste cannot, as yet, be beaten; but the chief consumers all over the world of such articles are our modern upstart capitalists who have no education and no taste, and who are suited quite as well by cheap and clumsy German or English imitations, and often have these foisted upon them for the real French article at more than fancy prices. The market for those specialties which cannot be made out of France is constantly getting narrower, French export manufacturers are barely kept up, and must soon decline; by what new articles can France replace those whose export is dying out? If anything can help here, it is a bold measure of Free Trade, taking the French manufacturer out of his accustomed hothouse atmosphere and placing him once more in the open air of competition with foreign rivals. Indeed, French general trade would have long since begun shrinking were it not for the slight and vacillating step in the direction of Free Trade made by the [French-English] Cobden treaty of 1860, but that has well-nigh exhausted itself and a stronger dose of the same tonic is wanted.

It is hardly worthwhile to speak of Russia. There, the protective tariff -- the duties having to be paid in gold, instead of in the depreciated paper currency of the country -- serves above all things to supply the pauper government with the hard cash indispensable for transactions with foreign creditors. On the very day on which that tariff fulfills its protective mission by totally excluding foreign goods, on that day the Russian government is bankrupt. And yet that same government amuses its subjects by dangling before their eyes the prospect of making Russia, by means of this tariff, an entirely self-supplying country, requiring from the foreigner neither food, nor raw material, nor manufactured articles, nor works of art. The people who believe in this vision of a Russian Empire, secluded and isolated from the rest of the world, are on a level with the patriotic Prussian lieutenant who went into a shop and asked for a globe, not a terrestrial or a celestial one, but a globe of Prussia.

To return to America. There are plenty of symptoms that Protection has done all it could for the United States, and that the sooner it receives notice to quit, the better for all parties. One of these symptoms is the formation of "rings" and "trusts" within the protected industries for the more thorough exploitation of the monopoly granted to them. Now "rings" and "trusts" are truly American institutions, and, where they exploit natural advantages, they are generally though grumblingly submitted to. the transformation of the Pennsylvanian oil supply into a monopoly by the Standard Oil Company is a proceeding entirely in keeping with the rules of capitalist production. But if the sugar refiners attempt to transform the petition granted them, by the nation, against foreign competition, into a monopoly against the home consumer, that is to say against the same nation that granted the protection, that is quite a different thing. Yet the large sugar refiners have formed a "trust" which aims at nothing else. And the sugar trust is not the only one of its kind.

Now, the formation of such trusts in protected industries is the surest sign that protection has done its work and is changing its character; that it protects the manufacturer no longer against the foreign importer, but against the home consumer; that is has manufactured, at least in the special branch concerned, quite enough, if not too many manufacturers; that the money it puts into the purse of these manufacturers is money thrown away, exactly as in Germany.

In America, as elsewhere, Protection is bolstered up by the argument that Free Trade will only benefit England. The best proof to the contrary is that in England not only the agriculturists and landlords but even the manufacturers are turning protectionist. In the home of the "Manchester school" of Free Traders, on November 1, 1886, the Manchester chamber of commerce discussed a resolution

"that, having waited in vain 40 years for other nations to follow the Free Trade example of England, the chamber thinks the time has arrived to reconsider that position."

The resolution was indeed rejected, but by 22 votes against 21! And that happened in the centre of the cotton manufacture -- i.e., the only branch of English manufacture whose superiority in the open market seems still undisputed! But, then, even in that special branch inventive genius has passed from England to America. The latest improvements in machinery for spinning and weaving cotton have come, almost all, from America, and Manchester has to adopt them. In industrial inventions of all kinds, America has distinctly taken the lead, while Germany runs England very close for second place.

The consciousness is gaining ground in England that that country's industrial monopoly is irretrievably lost, that she is still relatively losing ground, while her rivals are making progress, and that she is drifting into a position where she will have to be content with being one manufacturing nation among many, instead of, as she once dreamt, "the workshop of the world". It is to stave off this impending fate that Protection, scarcely disguised under the veil of "fair trade" and retaliatory tariffs, is now invoked with such fervor by the sons of the very men who, 40 years ago, knew no salvation but in Free Trade. And when English manufacturers begin to find that Free Trade is ruining them, and ask the government to protect them against their foreign competitors, then, surely, the moment has come for these competitors to retaliate by throwing overboard a protective system henceforth useless, to fight the fading industrial monopoly of England with its own weapon: Free Trade.

But, as I said before, you may easily introduce Protection, but you cannot get rid of it again so easily. The legislature, by adopting the protective plan, has created vast interests, for which it is responsible. And not every one of these interests -- the various branches of industry -- is equally ready, at a given moment, to face open competition. Some will be lagging behind, while others have no longer need of protective nursing. This difference of position will give rise to the usual lobby-plotting, and is in itself a sure guarantee that the protected industries, if Free Trade is resolved upon, will be let down very easy indeed as was the silk manufacture in England after 1846. That is unavoidable under present circumstances, and will have to be submitted to by the Free Trade party so long as the change is resolved upon in principle.

The question of Free Trade or Protection moves entirely within the bounds of the present system of capitalist production, and has, therefore, no direct interest for us socialists who want to do away with that system.

Indirectly, however, it interests us inasmuch as we must desire as the present system of production to develop and expand as freely and as quickly as possible: because along with it will develop also those economic phenomena which are its necessary consequences, and which must destroy the whole system: misery of the great mass of the people, in consequence of overproduction. This overproduction engendering either periodical gluts and revulsions, accompanied by panic, or else a chronic stagnation of trade; division of society into a small class of large capitalist, and a large one of practically hereditary wage-slaves, proletarians, who, while their numbers increase constantly, are at the same time constantly being superseded by new labor-saving machinery; in short, society brought to a deadlock, out of which there is no escaping but by a complete remodeling of the economic structure which forms it basis.

From this point of view, 40 years ago Marx pronounced, in principle, in favor of Free Trade as the more progressive plan, and therefore the plan which would soonest bring capitalist society to that deadlock. But if Marx declared in favor of Free Trade on that ground, is that not a reason for every supporter of the present order of society to declare against Free Trade? If Free Trade is stated to be revolutionary, must not all good citizens vote for Protection as a conservative plan?

If a country nowadays accepts Free Trade, it will certainly not do so to please the socialists. It will do so because Free trade has become a necessity for the industrial capitalists. But if it should reject Free Trade and stick to Protection, in order to cheat the socialists out of the expected social catastrophe, that will not hurt the prospects of socialism in the least. Protection is a plan for artificially manufacturing manufacturers, and therefore also a plan for artificially manufacturing wage laborers. You cannot breed the one without breeding the other.

The wage laborer everywhere follows in the footsteps of the manufacturer; he is like the "gloomy care" of Horace, that sits behind the rider, and that he cannot shake off wherever he go. You cannot escape fate; in other words, you cannot escape the necessary consequences of your own actions. A system of production based upon the exploitation of wage labor, in which wealth increases in proportion to the number of laborers employed and exploited, such a system is bound to increase the class of wage laborers, that is to say, the class which is fated one day to destroy the system itself. In the meantime, there is no help for it: you must go on developing the capitalist system, you must accelerate the production, accumulation, and centralization of capitalist wealth, and, along with it, the production of a revolutionary class of laborers. Whether you try the Protectionist or the Free Trade will make no difference in the end, and hardly any in the length of the respite left to you until the day when that end will come. For long before that day will protection have become an unbearable shackle to any country aspiring, with a chance of success, to hold its own in the world market.

Protective Tariffs Or Free Trade System

by Frederick Engels

Source: MECW Volume 6, p. 92;Written: at the beginning of June 1847;First published: in Deutsche-Brsseler-Zeitung June 10, 1847.

From the instant that lack of money and credit forced the King of Prussia to issue the Letters Patent of February 3 [65] no reasonable person could doubt any longer that the absolute monarchy in Germany and the Christian-Germanic management as it has hitherto existed, also known under the name of paternal government, had, in spite of all bristling resistance and sabre-rattling speeches from the throne, abdicated for ever. The day had now dawned from which the bourgeoisie in Germany can date its rule. The Letters Patent themselves are nothing but an acknowledgment, though still wrapped in a great deal of Potsdam mist and fog, of the power of the bourgeoisie. A good deal of this mist and fog has already been blown away by a little weak puffing from the United Diet, and very soon the whole Christian-Germanic misty phantom will be dissolved into its nothingness.

But as soon as the rule of the middle classes began, the first demand to be made was bound to be that the whole trade policy of Germany, or of the Customs Union,[66] should be wrested from the incompetent hands of German princes, their ministers, and arrogant, but in commercial and industrial matters utterly unimaginative and ignorant bureaucrats, and be made dependent upon and decided by those who possess both the necessary insight and the most immediate interest in the matter. In other words: the question of protective and differential tariffs or free trade must fall within the sole decision of the bourgeoisie.

The United Diet in Berlin has shown the Government that the bourgeoisie knows what it needs; in the recent tariff negotiations it was made clear to the Spandau System of Government [67] in pretty plain and bitter words, that it is incapable of grasping, protecting and promoting the material interests concerned. The Cracow affair[68] alone would have been sufficient to brand the foreheads of Holy-Alliance William [Frederick William IV] and his ministers with the stamp of the crudest ignorance of, or the most culpable treachery against, the welfare of the nation. To the horror of his all-highest Majesty and his Excellencies a host of other things came up for discussion, in the course of which royal and ministerial capabilities and discernment living as well as defunct could feel anything but flattered.

In the bourgeoisie itself, indeed, two different views dominate with regard to industry and trade. Nonetheless there is no doubt that the party in favour of protective, or, rather, differential tariffs is by far the most powerful, numerous and predominant. The bourgeoisie cannot, in fact, even maintain itself, cannot consolidate its position, cannot attain unbounded power unless it shelters and fosters its industry and trade by artificial means. Without protection against foreign industry it would be crushed and trampled down within a decade. It is quite easily possible that not even protection will help it much or for long. It has waited too long, it has lain too peacefully in the swaddling clothes in which it has been trussed so many years by its precious princes. It has been outflanked and overtaken on every side, it has had its best positions taken from it, while at home it peacefully let its knuckles be rapped and did not even have enough energy to rid itself of its partly imbecile, partly extremely cunning paternal schoolmasters and disciplinarians.

Now a new page has been turned. The German princes can henceforth only be the servants of the bourgeoisie, only be the dot over the i of the bourgeoisie. In so far as there is still time and opportunity for the latters rule, protection for German industry and German trade is the only foundation on which it may rest. And what the bourgeoisie wants and must want of the German princes, it will also be able to achieve.

There exists, however, alongside the bourgeoisie, a quite considerable number of people called proletarians the working and propertyless class.

The question therefore arises: What does this class gain from the introduction of the protective system? Will it thereby receive more wages, be able to feed and clothe itself better, house itself more healthily, afford somewhat more time for recreation and education, and some means for the more sensible and careful upbringing of its children?

The gentlemen of the bourgeoisie who advocate the protective system never fail to push the well-being of the working class into the foreground. To judge by their words, a truly paradisiacal life will commence for the workers with the protection of industry, Germany will then become a Canaan flowing with milk and honey for the proletarians. But listen on the other hand to the free trade men speaking, and only under their system would the propertyless be able to live like God in France, that is, in the greatest jollity and merriment.

Among both parties there are still plenty of limited minds who more or less believe in the truth of their own words. The intelligent among them know very well that this is all vain delusion, merely calculated, furthermore, to deceive and win the masses.

The intelligent bourgeois does not need to be told that whether the system in force is that of protective tariffs or free trade or a mixture of both, the worker will receive no bigger wage for his labour than will just suffice for his scantiest maintenance. From the one side as from the other, the worker gets precisely what he needs to keep going as a labour-machine.

It might thus appear to be a matter of indifference to the proletarian, to the propertyless, whether the protectionists or the free traders have the last word.

Since, however, as has been said above, the bourgeoisie in Germany requires protection against foreign countries in order to clear away the medieval remnants of a feudal aristocracy and the modern vermin by the Grace of God, and to develop purely and simply its own proper, innermost essence (!) then the working class also has an interest in what helps the bourgeoisie to unimpeded rule.

Not until only one class the bourgeoisie is seen to exploit and oppress, until penury and misery can no longer be blamed now on this estate, now on that, or simply on the absolute monarchy and its bureaucrats only then will the last decisive battle break out, the battle between the propertied and the propertyless, between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat.

Only then will the field of battle have been swept clean of all unnecessary barriers, of all that is misleading and accessory; the position of the two hostile armies will be clear and visible at a glance.

With the rule of the bourgeoisie, the workers, compelled by circumstances, will also make the infinitely important advance that they will no longer come forward as individuals, as at the most a couple of hundreds or thousands, in rebellion against the established order, but all together, as one class, with its specific interests and principles, with a common plan and united strength, they will launch their attack on the last and the worst of their mortal enemies, the bourgeoisie.

There can be no doubt as to the outcome of this battle. The bourgeoisie will and must fall to the ground before the proletariat, just as the aristocracy and the absolute monarchy have received their coup de grace from the middle class.

With the bourgeoisie, private property will at the same time be overthrown, and the victory of the working class will put an end to all class or caste rule for ever.

The Protectionists, The Free Traders and the Working Class [116]

By Marx

Source: MECW Volume 6, p. 279;Written: in the second half of September 1847;First published: in Zwei Reden ber die Freihandels- und Schutzzollfrage von Karl Marx, 1848.

The protectionists have never protected small industry, handicraft proper. Have Dr. List and his school in Germany by any chance demanded protective tariffs for the small linen industry, for hand loom-weaving, for handicraft production? No, when they demanded protective tariffs they did so only in order to oust handicraft production with machines and patriarchal industry with modern industry. In a word, they wish to extend the dominion of the bourgeoisie, and in particular of the big industrial capitalists. They went so far as to proclaim aloud the decline and fall of small industry and the petty bourgeoisie, of small farming and the small peasants, as a sad but inevitable and, as far as the industrial development of Germany is concerned, necessary occurrence.

Besides the school of Dr. list there exists in Germany, the land of schools, yet another school, which demands not merely a system of protective tariffs, but a system of import prohibition proper. The leader of this school, Herr v. Glich, has written a very scholarly history of industry and trade, which has also been translated into French. Herr v. Glich is a sincere philanthropist; he is in earnest with regard to protecting handicraft production and national labour. Well now! What did he do? He began by refuting Dr. List, proved that in Lists system the welfare of the working class is only a sham and a pretence, a ringing piece of hollow rhetoric, and then, for his part, he made the following proposals:

1. To prohibit the importation of foreign manufactured products;

2. to place very heavy import duties on raw materials originating abroad, like cotton, silk etc., etc., in order to protect wool and nationally produced linen;

3. likewise on colonial products, in order to replace sugar, coffee, indigo, cochineal, valuable timbers etc., etc., with national products;

4. to place high taxes on nationally produced machines, in order to protect handicraft production against the machine.

It is evident that Herr v. Glich is a man who accepts the system with all its consequences. And what does this lead to? Not merely preventing the entry of foreign industrial products, but also hindering the progress of national industry.

Herr List and Herr v. Glich form the limits between which the system moves. If it wishes to protect industrial progress, then it at once sacrifices handicraft production, labour; if it wishes to protect labour, then industrial progress is sacrificed.

Let us return to the protectionists proper, who do not share the illusions of Herr v. Glich.

If they speak consciously and openly to the working class, then they summarise their philanthropy in the following words: It is better to be exploited by ones fellow-countrymen than by foreigners.

I do not think the working class will be for ever satisfied with this solution, which, it must be confessed, is indeed very patriotic, but nonetheless a little too ascetic and spiritual for people whose only occupation consists in the production of riches, of material wealth.

But the protectionists will say: So when all is said and done we at least preserve the present state of society. Good or bad, we guarantee the labourer work for his hands, and prevent his being thrown on to the street by foreign competition. I shall not dispute this statement, I accept it. The preservation, the conservation of the present state of affairs is accordingly the best result the protectionists can achieve in the most favourable circumstances. Good, but the problem for the working class is not to preserve the present state of affairs, but to transform it into its opposite.

The protectionists have one last refuge. They say that their system makes no claim to be a means of social reform, but that it is nonetheless necessary to begin with social reforms in ones own country, before one embarks on economic reforms internationally. After the protective system has been at first reactionary, then conservative, it finally becomes conservative-progressive. It will suffice to point out the contradiction lurking in this theory, which at first sight appears to have something seductive, practical and rational to it. A strange contradiction! The system of protective tariffs places in the hands of the capital of one country the weapons which enable it to defy the capital of other countries; it increases the strength of this capital in opposition to foreign capital, and at the same time it deludes itself that the very same means will make that same capital small and weak in opposition to the working class. In the last analysis that would mean appealing to the philanthropy of capital, as though capital as such could be a philanthropist. In general, social reforms can never be brought about by the weakness of the strong; they must and will be called to life by the strength of the weak.

Incidentally, we have no need to detain ourselves with this matter. From the moment the protectionists concede that social reforms have no place in their system and are not a result of it, and that they form a special question from this moment on they have already abandoned the social question. I shall accordingly leave the protectionists aside and speak of Free Trade in its relationship to the condition of the working class.

The Free Trade Congress at BrusselsFrederick Engels in The Northern Star

Source: MECW Volume 6, p. 282;Written: at the end of September 1847;First published: in The Northern Star, No. 520, October 9, 1847 with an editorial note: From Our German Correspondent

On the 16th, 17th, and 18th of September, there was held here (Brussels) a congress of political economists, manufacturers, tradesmen, etc., to discuss the question of Free Trade. There were present about 150 members of all nations. There assisted, on the part of the English Free Traders, Dr. Bowring, M. P., Col. Thompson, M. P., Mr. Ewart, M. P., Mr. Brown, M. P., James Wilson, Esq., editor of the Economist, etc.; from France had arrived M. Wolowski, professor of jurisprudence; M. Blanqui, deputy, professor of political economy, author of a history of that science, [Blanqui, Histoire de l'conomie an politique en Europe] and other works; M. Horace Say, son of the celebrated economists [Jean Baptiste Say]; M. Ch. Dunoyer, member of the Privy Council, author of several works upon politics and economy, and others. From Germany there was no Free Trader present, but Holland, Denmark, Italy, etc., had sent representatives. Seor Ramon de la Sagra, of Madrid, intended to come, but came too late. The assistance of a whole host of Belgian Free Traders need hardly be mentioned, it being a matter of course.

Thus the celebrities of the science had met to discuss the important question whether Free Trade would benefit the world? You will think the discussions of such a splendid assembly discussions carried on by economical stars of the first magnitude must have been interesting in the highest degree. You will say that men like Dr. Bowring, Colonel Thompson, Blanqui and Dunoyer, must have pronounced speeches the most striking, must have produced arguments the most convincing, must have represented all questions under a fight the most novel and surprising imaginable. Alas! Sir, if you had been present, you would have been piteously undeceived. Your glorious expectations, your fond illusions would have vanished within less than an hour. I have assisted at innumerable public meetings and discussions. I heard the League pour forth their Anti-Corn-Law[117] arguments more than a hundred times, while I was in England, but never, I can assure you, never did I hear such dull, tedious, trivial stuff, brought forward with such a degree of self-complacency. I was never before so disappointed. What was carried on did not merit the name of a discussion it was mere pot-house talk. The great scientific luminaries never ventured themselves upon the field of political economy, in the strict sense of the word. I shall not repeat to you all the worn-out stuff which was brought forward on the first two days. Read two or three numbers of the League or the Manchester Guardian, and you will find all that was said, except, perhaps, a few specious sentences brought forward by M. Wolowski, which he, however, had stolen from M. Bastiats (chief of the French Free Traders) pamphlet of Sophismes conomiques. Free Traders did not expect to meet with any other opposition, but that of M. Rittinghausen, a German Protectionist, and generally an insipid fellow. But up got M. Duchateau, a French manufacturer and Protectionist a man who spoke for his purse, just as Mr. Ewart or Mr. Brown spoke for theirs, and gave them such a terrible opposition, that on the second day of the discussion, a great number, even of Free Traders, avowed that they had been beaten in argument. They took, however, their revenge at the vote the resolutions passed, of course, almost unanimously.

On the third day, a question was discussed which interests your readers. It was this: Will the carrying out of universal Free Trade benefit the working classes? The affirmative was supported by Mr. Brown, the South Lancashire Free Trader, in a lengthy speech, in English; he and Mr. Wilson were the only ones who spoke that language, the remainder all spoke French Dr. Bowring, very well Colonel Thompson, tolerably Mr. Ewart, dreadfully. He repeated a part of the old League documents, in a whining tone, very much like a Church-of-England parson.

After him got up Mr. Weerth, of Rhenish Prussia. You know, I believe, this gentleman a young tradesman whose poetry is well known and very much liked throughout Germany, and who, during several years stay in Yorkshire, was an eye-witness of the condition of the working people. He has a great many friends amongst them there, who will be glad to see that he has not forgotten them. As his speech will be to your readers the most interesting feature of the whole Congress, I shall report it at some length. He spoke as follows[118]:

Gentlemen You are discussing the influence of Free Trade upon the condition of the working classes. You profess the greatest possible sympathy for those classes. I am very glad of it, but yet I am astonished not to see a representative of the working classes amongst you! The monied classes of France are represented by a peer those of England by several M.P.s. those of Belgium by an ex-minister and even those of Germany by a gentleman who gave us a faithful description of the state of that country. But where, I ask you, are the representatives of the working men? I see them nowhere; and, therefore, gentlemen, allow me to take up the defence of their interests. I beg to speak to you on behalf of the working people, and principally on behalf of those five millions of English working men, amongst whom I spent several of the most pleasant years of my life, whom I know and whom I cherish. (Cheers.) Indeed, gentlemen, the working people stand in need of some generosity. Hitherto they have not been treated like men, but like beasts of burden, nay like merchandise, like machines; the English manufacturers know this so well, that they never say, we employ so many workmen, but so many hands. The monied classes, acting upon this principle, have never hesitated a moment to profit by their services as long as they require them, and then turn them out upon the streets, as soon as there is no longer any profit to be squeezed out of them. Thus the condition of these outcasts of modern society has become such, that it cannot be made worse. Look wherever you like; to the banks of the Rhone; into the dirty and pestilential lanes of Manchester, Leeds, and Birmingham; on the hills of Saxony and Silesia, or the plains of Westphalia; everywhere you will meet with the same pale starvation, the same gloomy despair, in the eyes of men who in vain claim their rights and their position in civilised society. (Great sensation.)

Mr. Weerth then declared his opinion to be, that the protective system in reality did not protect the working people, but that Free Trade and he told it them plainly and distinctly, although he himself was a Free Trader that Free Trade would never change their miserable condition. He did not at all join in the delusions of the Free Traders, as to the beneficial effects of the carrying out of their system upon the working classes. On the contrary, Free Trade, the full realisation of free competition, would force the working people as much into a keener competition amongst themselves as it would make capitalists compete more selfishly against each other. The perfect freedom of competition would inevitably give an enormous impulse to the invention of new machinery, and thus supersede more workmen than even now were daily superseded. It would stimulate production in every way, but for this very reason it would stimulate overproduction, overstocking of markets, and commercial revulsions, just in the same measure. The Free Traders pretended that those terrible revulsions would cease under a system of commercial freedom; why, just the contrary would be the case, they would increase and multiply more than ever. Possible, nay certain it was, that at first the greater cheapness of provisions would benefit the workpeople, that a lessened cost of production would increase consumption and the demand for labour, but that advantage very soon would be turned into misery, the competition of the working people amongst themselves would soon reduce them to the former level of misery and starvation. After these and other arguments (which appeared to be quite novel to the meeting, for they were listened to with the greatest attention, although The Times reporter deigns to rid himself of them with the impudent but significant sneer Chartist commonplace ["Free Trade Congress in Brussels in The Times, September 20, 1847]), Mr. Weerth concluded as follows:

And do not think, gentlemen, that these are but my individual opinions; they are the opinions, too, of the English working men, a class whom I cherish and respect, because they are intelligent and energetic men, indeed, (cheers, by courtesy) I shall prove that by a few facts. During full six years, the gentlemen of the League, whom we see here, courted the support of the working people, but in vain. The working men never forgot that the capitalists were their natural enemies; they recollected the League riots of 1842, [119] and the masters opposition against the Ten Hours Bill. It was only towards the end of 1845, that the Chartists, the Ante of the working classes, associated for a moment with the League, in order to crush their common enemy, the landed aristocracy. But it was for a moment only, and never were they deceived by the delusive promises of Cobden, Bright and Co., nor did they hope the fulfilment of cheap bread, high wages, and plenty to do. No, not for a moment did they cease to trust in their own exertions only; to form a distinct party, led on by distinct chiefs, by the indefatigable Duncombe, and by Feargus O'Connor, who, in spite of ail calumnies, (here Mr. Weerth looked at Dr. Bowring, who made a quick, convulsive movement) who, in spite of all calumnies, within a few weeks will sit upon the same bench with you in the House of Commons. [120] In the name, then, of those millions who do not believe that Free Trade will do wonders for them, I call upon you to seek for some other means to effectively better their condition. Gentlemen, I call upon you for your own interests. You have no longer to fear the Emperor of all the Russias; you dread not an invasion of Cossacks, but if you do not take care you will have to fear the irruption of your own workmen, and they will be more terrible to you than all the Cossacks in the world. Gentlemen, the workpeople want no more words from you, they want deeds. And you have no reason to be astonished at that. They recollect very well, that in 1830 and 31, when they conquered the Reform Bill for you in London, when they fought for you in the streets of Paris and Brussels, [121] that then they were courted, shaken hands with, and highly praised; but that when a few years after they demanded bread, then they were received with grape shot and the bayonet. (Oh! no, no! yes, yes! Buzanais, Lyons.)[122] I repeat, therefore, to you, carry your Free Trade, it will be well; but think, at the same time, about other measures for the working classes, or you will repent it. (Loud cheers.)

Immediately after Mr. Weerth, up got Dr. Bowring to reply.

Gentlemen, said he, I can tell you that the hon. member who has just sat down has not been elected by the English working people to represent them in this Congress. On the contrary, the English people generally have given us their suffrages for this purpose, and, therefore, we claim our places as their true representatives.

He then went on to show the beneficial effects of Free Trade, as proved by the increased importation of articles of food into England since the introduction of last years tariff. [i.e., the lifting of heavy duties on imported corn in 1846] So many eggs, so many cwt. of butter, cheese, ham, bacon, so many heads of cattle, etc., etc.; who could have eaten all that if not the working people of England? He quite forgot, however, telling us what quantities of the same articles have been produced less in England since foreign competition has been admitted. He took it for granted that increased importation was a decisive proof of increased consumption. He never mentioned wherefrom the working people of Manchester, Bradford, and Leeds, who now walk the streets and cannot get work, wherefrom these men got the money to pay for this supposed increase of consumption and Free Trade comforts, for we never heard of the masters making them presents of eggs, butter, cheese, ham, and meat, for not working at all. He never said a word about the present depressed state of the trade, which in every public paper is represented as really unexampled. He seemed not to know that all the predictions of the Free Traders since the carrying of the measures have proved just the reverse of reality. He had not a word of sympathy for the sufferings of the working classes, but, on the contrary, represented their present gloomy condition as the brightest, happiest, and most comfortable they could reasonably desire.

The English working people, now, may choose betwixt their two representatives. A host of others followed, who spoke about every imaginable subject upon earth, except upon the one under discussion. Mr. M'Adam, M. P. for Belfast (?), spun an eternally long yarn upon flax-spinning in Ireland, and almost killed the meeting with statistics. Mr. Ackersdijk, a Dutch professor, spoke about Old Holland and Young Holland, the university of Lige, Walpole, and De Witt. M. Van de Casteele spoke about France, Belgium, and the ministry. M. Asher, of Berlin, about German patriotism and some new article he called spiritual manufacture. M. Den Tex, a Dutchman, about God knows what. At last, the whole meeting being half asleep, was awakened by M. Wolowski, who returned to the question and replied to Mr. Weerth. His speech, like all speeches delivered by Frenchmen, proved how much the French capitalists dread the fulfilment of Mr. Weerths prophecies; they speak with such pretended sympathy, such canting and whining of the sufferings of the working classes, that one might take it all for good earnest, were it not too flagrantly contradicted by the roundness of their bellies, by the stamp of hypocrisy deeply imprinted on their faces, by the pitiful remedies they propose and by the unmistakably striking contrast between their words and their deeds. Nor have they ever succeeded in deceiving one single working man. Then, up got the Duc d'Harcourt, peer of France, and claimed, too, for the French capitalists, deputies, etc., present the right of representing the French working people. They do so in the same way as Dr. Bowring represents the English Chartists. Then spoke Mr. James Wilson, repeating most brazen-facedly the most worn-out League arguments, in the drowsy tone of a Philadelphia Quaker.

You see from this, what a nice discussion it was. Dr. Marx, of Brussels, whom you know as by far the most talented representative of German Democracy, had also claimed his turn to speak. He had prepared a speech, which, if it had been delivered, would have made it impossible for the congressional gents to vote upon the question. But Mr. Weerths opposition had made them shy. They resolved to let none speak, of whose orthodoxy they were not quite sure. Thus, Messrs Wolowski, Wilson, and the whole precious lot spoke against time, and when it was four o'clock, there were still six or seven gentlemen who wanted to speak, but the chairman closed the discussion abruptly, and the whole set of fools, ignorants, and knaves called a congress of political economists, voted all votes against one (the poor German fool of a Protectionist aforesaid) the Democrats did not vote at all that Free Trade is extremely beneficial to the working people, and will free them from all misery and distress.

As Mr. Marxs speech, although not delivered, contains the very best and most striking refutation of this barefaced lie, which can be imagined, and as its contents, in spite of so many hundred pages having been written pro and con upon the subject, will yet read quite novel in England, I enclose you some extracts from it.

Speech of Dr. Marx on Protection, Free Trade, and the Working Classes

There are two sects of protectionists. The first sect, represented in Germany by Dr. List, who never intended to protect manual labour, on the contrary, they demanded protective duties in order to crush manual labour by machinery, to supersede patriarchal manufacture by modern manufacture. They always intended to prepare the reign of the monied classes (the bourgeoisie), and more particularly that of the large manufacturing capitalists. They openly proclaimed the ruin of petty manufacturers, of small tradesmen, and small farmers, as an event to be regretted, indeed, but quite inevitable, at the same time. The second school of protectionists, required not only protection, but absolute prohibition. They proposed to protect manual labour against the invasion of machinery, as well as against foreign competition. They proposed to protect by high duties, not only home manufactures, but also home agriculture, and the production of raw materials at home. And where did this school arrive at? At the prohibition, not only of the importation of foreign manufactured produce, but of the progress of the home manufacture itself. Thus the whole protective system inevitably got upon the horns of this dilemma. Either it protected the progress of home manufactures, and then it sacrificed manual labour, or it protected manual labour, and then it sacrificed home manufactures. Protectionists of the first sect, those who conceived the progress of machinery, of division of labour,, and of competition, to be irresistible, told the working classes, At any rate if you are to be squeezed out, you had better be squeezed by your own countrymen, than by foreigners. Will the working classes for ever bear with this? I think not. Those who produce all the wealth and comforts of the rich, will not be satisfied with that poor consolation. They will require more substantial comforts in exchange for substantial produce. But the protectionists say, After all, we keep up the state of society as it is at present. We ensure to the working man, somehow or other, the employment he wants. We take care that he shall not be turned out of work in consequence of foreign competition. So be it. Thus, in the best case, the protectionists avow that they are unable to arrive at anything better than the continuation of the status quo. Now the working classes want not the continuation of their actual condition, but a change for the better. A last refuge yet stands open to the protectionist. He will say that he is not at all adverse to social reform in the interior of a country, but that the first thing to ensure their success will be to shut out any derangement which might be caused by foreign competition. My system, he says, is no system of social reform, but if we are to reform society, had we not better do so within our own country, before we talk about reforms in our relations with other countries? Very specious, indeed, but under this plausible appearance, there is bid a very strange contradiction. The protectionist system, while it gives arms to the capital of a country against the capital of foreign countries, while it strengthens capital against foreigners, believes that this capital, thus armed, thus strengthened, will be weak, impotent, and feeble, when opposed to labour. Why, that would be appealing to the mercy of capital, as if capital, considered as such, could ever be merciful. Why, social reforms are never carried by the weakness of the strong, but always by the strength of the weak. But it is not at all necessary to insist on this point. From the moment the protectionists agree that social reforms do not necessarily follow from, and that they are not part and parcel of their system, but form quite a distinct question, from that moment they abandon the question, which we discuss. We may, therefore, leave them in order to review the effects of Free Trade upon the condition of the working classes. The problem: What will be the influence of the perfect unfettering of trade upon the situation of the working classes, is very easy to be resolved. It is not even a problem. If there is anything clearly exposed in political economy, it is the fate attending the working classes under the reign of Free Trade. All those laws developed in the classical works on political economy, are strictly true under the supposition only, that trade be delivered from all fetters, that competition be perfectly free, not only within a single country, but upon the whole face of the earth. These laws, which A. Smith, Say, and Ricardo have developed, the laws under which wealth is produced and distributed these laws grow more true, more exact, then cease to be mere abstractions, in the same measure in which Free Trade is carried out. And the master of the science, when treating of any economical subject, tells us every moment that all their reasonings are founded upon the supposition that all fetters, yet existing, are to be removed from trade. They are quite right in following this method. For they make no arbitrary abstractions, they only remove from their reasoning a series of accidental circumstances. Thus it can justly be said, that the economists Ricardo and others know more about society as it will be, than about society as it is. They know more about the future than about the present. If you wish to read in the book of the future, open Smith, Say, Ricardo. There you will find described, as clearly as possible, the condition which awaits the working man under the reign of perfect Free Trade. Take, for instance, the authority of Ricardo, authority than which there is no better. What is the natural normal price of the labour of, economically speaking, a working man? Ricardo replies, Wages reduced to their minimum their lowest level. Labour is a commodity as well as any other commodity. [123] Now the price of a commodity is determined by the time necessary to produce it. What then is necessary to produce the commodity of labour? Exactly that which is necessary to produce the sum of commodities indispensable to the sustenance and the repairing of the wear and tear of the labourer, to enable him to live and to propagate, somehow or other, his race. We are, however, not to believe that the working man will never be elevated above this lowest level, nor that he never will be depressed below it. No, according to this law, the working classes will be for a time more happy, they will have for a time more than the minimum, but this surplus will be the supplement only for what they will have less than the minimum at another time, the time of industrial stagnation. That is to say, that during a certain space of time, which is always periodical, in which trade passes through the circle of prosperity, overproduction, stagnation, crisis that, taking the average of what the labourer received more, and what he received less, than the minimum, we shall find that on the whole he will have received neither more or less than the minimum; or, in other words, that the working class, as a class, will have conserved itself, after many miseries, many sufferings, and many corpses left upon the industrial battle field. But what matters, that? The class exists, and not only it exists, but it will have increased. This law, that the lowest level of wages is the natural price of the commodity of labour, will realise itself in the same measure with Ricardos supposition that Free Trade will become a reality. We accept every thing that has been said of the advantages of Free Trade. The powers of production will increase, the tax imposed upon the country by protective duties will disappear, all commodities will be sold at a cheaper price. And what, again, says Ricardo? That labour being equally a commodity, will equally sell at a cheaper price that you will have it for very little money indeed, just as you will have pepper and salt. And then, in the same way as all other laws of political economy will receive an increased force, a surplus of truth, by the realisation of Free Trade in the same way the law of population, as exposed by Malthus, will under the reign of Free Trade develop itself in as fine dimensions as can possibly be desired. Thus you have to choose: Either you must disavow the whole of political economy as it exists at present, or you must allow that under the freedom of trade the whole severity of the laws of political economy will be applied to the working classes. Is that to say that we are against Free Trade? No, we are for Free Trade, because by Free Trade all economical laws, with their most astounding contradictions, will act upon a larger scale, upon a greater extent of territory, upon the territory of the whole earth; and because from the uniting of all these contradictions into a single group, where they stand face to face, will result the struggle which will itself eventuate in the emancipation of the proletarians.

On the Question of Free Trade Works of Karl Marx 1848Speech to the Democratic Association of Brussels at its public meeting of January 9, 1848 [246]

Source, MECW Volume 6, p. 450;Written: 9 January 1848;First published: as a pamphlet in Brussels, February 1848.

Gentlemen,

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 hold 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 pam