Speech, On the Question of Free Trade

Speech by Marx exposing the lies of the bourgeoisie concerning free trade, delivered at a public meeting held by the Democratic Association of Brussels. Written on January 9, 1848. It was issued in French in early February 1848 in Brussels in a single edition.

In September from 16 to 18, 1847, four months before the meeting of the Democratic Association of Brussels, the International Conference of Economists was held in Brussels to discuss the issue of free trade. The conference was attended by economists, industrialists and businessmen from all over the world who were advocates of the free trade. Marx, Engels and a young German poet George Weerth had attended the meeting. Weerth, was then the German proletariat’s first and most important poet. On the third day of the meeting, George Weerth attacked the hypocrisy of bourgeois economists and exposed the misery of the proletariat caused by free trade. Marx was going to speak in support of George Weerth, but he was unable to do it because the moderator of the meeting suddenly announced that he would stop the debate. On January 9, 1848, at the meeting of the Brussels Association for Democracy, Marx delivered the speech he had planned to make at the Conference of Economists in September, 1847.

In the Speech, On the Question of Free Trade, Marx clarified both the role and essence of protective tariff policy and free trade in the history of capitalist development, pointing out that neither protective tariff theory nor free trade theory can represent the interests of the working class. Free trade theorists claimed that the result of free trade was cheaper food, which could improve the situation of the working class, but this was totally a fallacy and propaganda. In fact, workers cannot benefit from the lower food prices, and even their wages become relatively lower. On the one hand, free trade aggravates the growth of productive capital, which implies the accumulation and the concentration of capital. The centralization of capital involves a greater division of labor and a greater use of machinery. The greater division of labor destroys the especial skill of the laborer; and by putting in the place of this skilled work labor which anybody can perform, it increase competition among the workers. On the other hand, if all commodities are cheaper, labor, which is a commodity too, will also fall in price, and, as we shall see later, this commodity, labor, will fall far lower in proportion than the other commodities. This happens more frequently and violently. Marx pointed out that the essence of free trade under capitalism is “the freedom of capital”, but only to remove some national barriers so that capital can move freely and more fully. Under the conditions of free trade, the accidents of the grain law, custom tariffs, urban import tax, all of which had previously covered up the poverty of workers, have disappeared completely, and the antagonism between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie has become more intense. Marx argued that free trade was the necessary condition for the development and extinction of capitalism in a revolutionary sense, because “the free trade system hastened the social revolution” and “pushed the antagonism of the proletariat and the bourgeoisie to the extreme”.

Speech, On the Question of Free Trade is an important literature of Marxism, which preliminarily analysed the relationship between free trade and working class by applying the political economy, revealed the essence of capitalist system and strongly promoted the development of workers’ movement.