For example, Perot ran for president as a representative of the U.S. nationalist capitalists against the two representatives of the transnational capitalists, Clinton and Bush. This split the conservative vote in the election. In general, working class politicians should consider how to aggravate this division and exploit it to advantage for the working class.
As James F. mentions below , the acceleration of the industiralization process that entered into Marx's opposition to protectionism is no longer an issue. Industrialization is complete historically.
I don't see supporting NAFTA or new GATT based on Marx's argument on this from 1860 with respect to accelerating proletarianization. We shouldn't support protectionism for the U.S. , but we should support protectionism for the neo-colonial countries to the extent those countries decide they want it for themselves.
Charles Brown
>>> James Farmelant <farmelantj at juno.com> 09/27/99 09:07AM >>>
On Mon, 27 Sep 1999 02:32:41 +0100 Jim heartfield
<jim at heartfield.demon.co.uk> writes:
>
>I don't think that 'the worse, the better' is Marx's central point.
>His
>opposition to protectionism was pretty straight forward. The anti-corn
>law league were more progressive than the landowners, who sought
>protection at the expense of the working class.
>
I think that it was also the case that Marx opposed protectionism in Britain because he saw it as a fetter on rapid industrialization. For one thing since as you say, the protection of British agriculture came at the expense of the working class, this drove up labor costs for industrial capitalists, since they had to pay their workers more just to keep them alive. This obviously put them at a competive disadvantage. The cheapening of grain that came with the abolition of the corn laws increased the real incomes of workers without requiring that industrial employers pay them higher wages.
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