Marx on free trade

[Edwin Dickens]

I know this speech by Marx has come up here (or pen-l) before so I hate to
rehash it.  But Marx's support for free trade is explicitly based on the
immiseration of the proletariat thesis--that the
concentration/centralization of capital will bring about social revolution
by throwing small capitalists into the proletariat, and the resulting
increased competition for jobs will drive down the wage. Moreover, Marx's
speech predates the development of the concept of imperialism.  Marx
thought workers should support the bourgeoisie against the landed
aristocracy "in order to have only one enemy left to deal with."  It's hard
to see how these arguments can be transposed to our situation--which Doug
argues is defined by imperialism--and where there is only one enemy left to
deal with.  There may be a tendency on the left to romantize...but there is
also a tendency of the center/right to romantize the "post-Fordist" era: 
Services in a New Millennium have displaced manufactures in the same way
manufactures displaced agriculture at the dawn of the Modern Age.  I am
perhaps an "old dinosaur" as Doug used to say of himself, but I don't see
how there can be high wages and benefits for workers located in
distribution channels if there are not high wages and benefits for workers
at the sites of mass production.  After all, goods have to be produced
before they can be distributed.  That there are less and less workers
involved in mass production just increases their strategic importance. 
Doug reported the remarkable fact a while back that 5 million workers are
now employed as telemarketers.  If they try to organize, they can easily be
dispensed with in favor of other forms of advertising/marketing (over the
internet?).  Not so for workers at sites of mass production.  The latter
can be displaced through the internationalization of production, and
gradually reduced in numbers through increases in relative surplus value
(causing a declining rate of profit), but they cannot be dispensed
with...or perhaps the complete automation of mass production will define
the New Millenium.

Edwin (Tom) Dickens

Doug Henwood wrote:
> 
> Maybe I'm just too seduced by the conclusion of Marx's 1848 speech on
> free trade <http://csf.colorado.edu/psn/marx/Archive/1848-FT>:
> 
> "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."