The Militant (logo)  
   Vol. 69/No. 2           January 18, 2005  
 
 
Free trade: either way workers go to wall
(editorial)
 
In his January 1848 “Speech on the Question of Free Trade,” Karl Marx warned working people and democrats not to be “deluded by the abstract word Freedom!” Whose freedom? he asked. “Not the freedom of one individual in relation to another, but freedom of Capital to crush the worker.” Under capitalist social relations, Marx pointed out, whether free trade or protection happens to be current government policy, either way the worker “goes to the wall.” Since Marx prepared that speech for publication more than 150 years ago, the structure of world capitalism has changed significantly, with the rise of consolidation of the global imperialist order. What hasn’t changed, however, is the correctness of Marx’s concluding words: that in judging the trade policies of one or another capitalist government, the position of the workers movement should be determined by what “hastens the Social Revolution.”

The labor movement needs to start with the interests of the working class, which is an international class. There is no blueprint good for all times, all situations, and all places. With regards to products coming into the United States, our position on free trade is very simple: we’re for it. Revolutionists in any imperialist country take the same position with respect to “their own” governments. We’re unconditionally opposed to the rulers of the United States imposing protectionist barriers of any kind under any pretext on imported goods. And we’re opposed to Washington imposing an embargo on goods to Cuba, Korea, Iran—or any imperialist country either, for that matter!

The “free trade” demagogy of finance capital needs to be exposed. The trade policy of the U.S. rulers, or those in any other imperialist country, is a national policy. It aims to advance the national interests of the exploiting class, including balancing the conflicting needs of capitalist sectors that are vulnerable to competition on the world market to quite different degrees. That’s what the previous textile and apparel quotas, or the new restrictions to clothing and textile imports from China and elsewhere Washington has put in place or is contemplating, are all about.

Under the banner of free trade, the U.S. government uses so-called antidumping clauses, “environmental” and “labor standards” restrictions, “human rights” demagogy, and other measures to carry out brutal and aggressive trade wars not only against its imperialist competitors but with special ferocity against the semicolonial countries.

All the talk from the White House and Congress, and in the big-business press about the “complexities” and breakdowns of international negotiations to advance “free trade” is a self-serving smoke screen. The U.S. rulers need to do only one thing: declare that all goods coming into the United States are free of tariffs and nontariff barriers of any kind. That’s what revolutionists demand from Washington as well as the governments of Canada, France, Sweden, Iceland, Australia, New Zealand, United Kingdom, Japan, or any other imperialist country.

This is not what militant workers demand in most countries in the world today, however. Semicolonial countries, as well as those like Cuba or China where capitalism was overthrown in the past through popular revolutions, have a right to use trade barriers to protect their national sovereignty against decades of imperialist oppression and exploitation advanced through debt slavery and all the mechanisms through which finance capital dominates the world.  
 
 
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