Category Archives: Free Trade

Free trade and Socialism part 4 – Karl Marx on Free Trade ii

Posted on by
Reply

Much of the previous post setting out the circuit of capital accumulation is basic to the understanding of Marxists, although many would now not appreciate Marx’s view that socialists should not seek to destroy capitalism by simply trying to prevent it from working – by putting up barriers to trade and thus frustrate the conversion of money into commodities and commodities into money: M – C and C’ – M’.

The righting of the wrongs of capitalism can only be achieved by replacing the system of production and thus the way the reproduction of society takes place.  Since the precondition for this is the full development of capitalism, including creation of the working class as the immense majority of society, this cannot be done by seeking to make capitalism either not work, or seek to make it work differently from how it actually does and must work.

None of this prevents socialists fighting for reforms within capitalism, in order that workers’ lives are made better, but this objective cannot rely on the good intentions of the state and cannot even rely on the effects of trade union struggle.  As Marx puts it:

“the working class ought not to exaggerate to themselves the ultimate working of these everyday struggles [over wages]. They ought not to forget that they are fighting with effects, but not with the causes of those effects; that they are retarding the downward movement, but not changing its direction; that they are applying palliatives, not curing the malady.”

“They ought, therefore, not to be exclusively absorbed in these unavoidable guerilla fights incessantly springing up from the never ceasing encroachments of capital or changes of the market. They ought to understand that, with all the miseries it imposes upon them, the present system simultaneously engenders the material conditions and the social forms necessary for an economical reconstruction of society. Instead of the conservative motto: “A fair day’s wage for a fair day’s work!” they ought to inscribe on their banner the revolutionary watchword: “Abolition of the wages system!”

“ . . . Trades Unions work well as centers of resistance against the encroachments of capital. They fail partially from an injudicious use of their power. They fail generally from limiting themselves to a guerilla war against the effects of the existing system, instead of simultaneously trying to change it, instead of using their organized forces as a lever for the final emancipation of the working class that is to say the ultimate abolition of the wages system.”

So, restrictions on trade, as far as Marx was concerned, were not progressive and did not alter the basic relations of capitalist society.   And, of course, Marx was under no illusions as to what these relations were and what they entailed:

“To sum up, what is free trade under the present condition of society? Freedom of Capital. When you have torn down the few national barriers which still restrict the free development of capital, you will merely have given it complete freedom of action. So long as you let the relation of wage-labor to capital exist, no matter how favorable the conditions under which you accomplish the exchange of commodities, there will always be a class which exploits and a class which is exploited.”

“It is really difficult to understand the presumption of the free traders who imagine that the more advantageous application of capital will abolish the antagonism between industrial capitalists and wage-workers. On the contrary. The only result will be that the antagonism of these two classes will stand out more clearly.”

“Do not be deluded by the abstract word Freedom! Whose freedom? Not the freedom of one individual in relation to another, but freedom of Capital to crush the worker.”

This did not mean Marx sought to shackle capital, as those who seek to reform capitalism think can be achieved, or that its reactionary consequences can be fought by isolating their country from its international development – like leaving the ‘neoliberal’ EU and frustrating the globalisation of capital.

In concluding his speech on free trade Marx said this:

“Do not imagine, gentlemen, that in criticising freedom of commerce we have the least intention of defending protection. One may be opposed to constitutionalism without being in favor of absolutism.”

“Moreover, the protective system is nothing but a means of establishing manufacture upon a large scale in any given country, that is to say, of making it dependent upon the market of the world; and from the moment that dependence upon the market of the world is established, there is more or less dependence upon free trade too. Besides this, the protective system helps to develop free competition within a nation. 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 monarchy, as a means for the concentration of its own powers for the realization of free trade within the country.”

“But, generally speaking, the protective system in these days is conservative, while the free trade system works destructively. It breaks up old nationalities and carries antagonism of proletariat and bourgeoisie to the uttermost point. In a word, the free trade system hastens the Social Revolution. In this revolutionary sense alone, gentlemen, I am in favor of free trade.”

Unfortunately, today this approach is rejected by many calling themselves Marxist, who seek not only to protect “old nationalities” but actually to promote them, through for example support for Scottish separation. For them, the combined and uneven development of capitalism must be addressed through national separation on a more perfect basis, which unfortunately for those fooled by this scenario does not exist.

These Marxists might seek a way to demure from Marx’s words by stating that his views were particular to its time, when free trade represented the free development of a capitalism that was in some sense progressive as against reactionary feudal restrictions on free markets and development of the forces of production.

While this was certainly the situation that Marx quotes in the passage above, the current pursuit of national solutions against the development of international capitalist economic and political arrangements such as the EU, is equally reactionary since it also seeks to turn the clock back.

The defeats to the working class and socialism experienced in the twentieth century have been internalised into a predilection to state what you are against, with nothing beyond eschatological declarations of the need for revolution as something to say about what you are for.

So, in this view, socialism is to be built not on the foundation of capitalism and its achievements but on its collapse.  Capitalism must go back to national forms because the working class has failed to build itself an international unity, while this left fails to understand how impossible it would be for the working class to develop an international movement while capitalism is restricted within national economic and political forms.

The left that rails against free trade does not pause to think that the development of free trade within countries, such as Marx referred to above in relation to Germany, created exactly the same sort of circumstances for many workers as the freedom afforded to international trade does today. Yet these socialists are so limited by nationalism that they would find it incomprehensible to advocate restrictions on trade within countries.  As internationalists however, they should seek the minimisation of differences between the working classes of the different nations through the processes Marx stated above.

For many socialists internationalism has taken on a purely moralistic character because they reject the material foundations upon which it can become an immediate material need for workers.  This material need, an interest in fighting international capitalism can only be created through international capital accumulation creating an international working class more and more exposed to the reality that the system that exploits them and which they must resist is international and therefore the alternative to it must also international; there is no question of the alternative being a backward step in the socialisation of production.  As Marx says, this international development of capitalism “pushes the antagonism of the proletariat to the extreme point.  In a word, the free trade system hastens the social revolution.”

Back to part 3

Free Trade and Socialism part 3 – Karl Marx on Free Trade i

Posted on by
Reply

When Karl Marx reviewed his career in 1859 he highlighted four works that he had written – The Poverty of Philosophy, Communist Manifesto, Wage-Labour and Capital and a pamphlet on Free Trade.  The last was given as a speech in 1848 at a time when the Corn Laws had recently been repealed in Britain, a sign of the triumph of industrial capital over landed interests, who had stood in the way of free trade and the interests of manufacturers in reducing wages through cheaper food imports.

Since the purpose of free trade was to reduce the price of corn upon which workers depended, and so allow a reduction in their wages, it might seem that Marx would either oppose the repeal of these Corn Laws or at best take the view of “a plague on both their houses”, and take no side between industrial capital and landlords.  As Marx noted:

“The English workers have very well understood the significance of the struggle between the landlords and the industrial capitalists.  They know very well that the price of bread was to be reduced in order to reduce wages, and that industrial profit would rise by as much as rent fell.”

Perhaps, in fact, Marx would oppose this strategy of the workers’ most immediate, growing and more important class enemy and oppose free trade?

Today a similar situation arises in the debate over leaving the European Union.  Why should workers concern themselves with either side of a debate over a European free trade arrangement when again it is one carried on between different fractions of the class enemy?

After all, it is argued that the EU is irreformably neoliberal, although those that argue this often point out that it hasn’t always been such; although this also immediately raises the issue that some sorts of capitalist arrangements are better for workers than others – an anti-austerity policy is better than a neoliberal one for example.

For others, as I have noted, it all “depends”, and the question of free trade is bound up with a range of other issues, often involving development of less industrialised countries, national oppression, “unfair” trade and super- exploitation of workers in less developed countries.  However none of this prevents one from forming a view on the question of free trade itself and facing the implications for workers of such a policy.

This was the approach taken by Marx.  In doing so he was abundantly clear what the nature of the argument was for free trade put forward by the economists representing industrial capital:

“The whole line of argument amounts to this: Free trade increases productive forces. When manufactures keep advancing, when wealth, when the productive forces, when, in a word, productive capital increases, the demand for labour, the price of labour, and consequently the rate of wages, rises also.”

“The most favourable condition for the workingman is the growth of capital. This must be admitted: when capital remains stationary, commerce and manufacture are not merely stationary but decline, and in this case the workman is the first victim. He goes to the wall before the capitalist. And in the case of the growth of capital, under the circumstances, which, as we have said, are the best for the workingman, what will be his lot? He will go to the wall just the same.”

“The growth of capital implies the accumulation and the concentration of capital. This centralisation involves a greater division of labour and a greater use of machinery. The greater division of labour destroys the especial skill of the labourer; and by putting in the place of this skilled work labour which any one can perform, it increases competition among the workers.”

“This competition becomes more fierce as the division of labour enables a single man to do the work of three. Machinery accomplishes the same result on a much larger scale. The accumulation of productive capital forces the industrial capitalist to work with constantly increasing means of production, ruins the small manufacturer, and drives him into the proletariat . . .”

“Finally, the more productive capital grows, the more it is compelled to produce for a market whose requirements it does not know—the more supply tries to force demand, and consequently crises increase in frequency and in intensity. But every crisis in turn hastens the concentration of capital, adds to the proletariat. Thus, as productive capital grows, competition among the workers grows too, and grows in a far greater proportion. The reward of labor is less for all, and the burden of labor is increased for some at least.”

For some modern Marxists many of these words of Marx make no sense – how many today would repeat his remark that “the most favourable condition for the workingman is the growth of capital”?  How many would welcome the increased accumulation of capital though it leads to crises and increased concentration of capital, because it adds to the proletariat?  When was the last time the growth of capital was welcomed even though it increases competition among workers?

Instead the depredations of capital are opposed on the basis that the effects of capitalism can be much reduced through trade union action, its evils ameliorated through state intervention, while confused notions are retained that revolution will spring naturally from capitalist crises and destroy the same state that introduced the reforms.

On only one aspect of his argument has it been widely accepted that it is not the job of socialists to prevent the development of capitalism, and this is the view that workers must be protected from the replacement of their labour by opposing the increased use of machinery.  As Marx notes – “there is no kind of manual labour which may not any day be subjected to the fate of the hand-loom weavers” whose labour was replaced by machinery, with the consequence that “the hand-loom weavers are on the verge of that state beyond which human existence can hardly be sustained. . .”

Yet today the view that free trade should be opposed in principle to protect workers from capitalist competition would be more widely held than the views expressed above.

For Marx, free trade was a moment in the accumulation of capital, as he set out in Capital Volume II in chapters one to three.  In the circuit of money capital, Marx sets out that money (M) is exchanged for commodities (C) which are then exchanged for another sum of money (M).  Obviously this has no purpose for a capitalist unless the second sum of money is larger than the first, or why bother?

Since at each stage in the exchange of money for a commodity and the commodity for money it is the exchange of equivalents, no one is short-changed, so where could a profit arise?  As Marx explains, the commodities purchased by money by the capitalist include machinery, raw materials etc. and labour power, which all go to create the newly created commodities which the capitalist sells for a larger amount of money than spent on buying the commodities used in production.  The increased value of the commodities sold for money by the capitalist arises in production so that in the circuit M – C – M’, the second M’ is larger than the first M and the whole point of the circuit for the capitalist becomes clear.

The sum of money M’ is larger than the original amount of M invested and the increase arises in production, from the employment of labour power, which is remunerated by wages.  Again the assumption is that wages equate to the value of labour power so that we again have an exchange of equivalents and no one is ‘cheated’.  The worker will receive wages to a value that will allow her or him to turn up for work every day in such a condition as will allow her or him to produce to the efficiency, quality and standard required in the particular society that exists at that time and place, and will allow new generations of workers to do the same.

However the value created by the worker in production, through their labour, is greater than the value they are paid in wages for their capacity to work, which is their handing over to the capitalist of their labour-power that the capitalist can direct with a view to producing a profit.  The circuit of capital is therefore better set out as M – C . . P . . C’ – M’; where the first C in the circuit includes the purchase of labour power for wages, P equals production carried out by the worker; the second C’ are the commodities produced by the worker and the second sum of money M’ includes the additional value created in production and included in the second C’. This is the output of production that can then be sold for a bigger sum of money that now includes the profit of the capitalist.

The inequality in capitalism, including different levels of exploitation and power, and the resulting insecurity, stress and degrees of poverty are a result of what arises in production and the class relations that are founded in this production.  To seek to right the wrongs of capitalism through opposition to trade, through trying to make it ‘fair’, or to seek to limit in any fundamental way the inequality and exploitation that capitalism gives rise to through changes to trade, is to miss the point.  All these are a result of the class relations resting in production.  To seek to limit trade is to seek to disrupt C’ – M’; to disrupt the accumulation of capital – or to make it ‘fair’ – when the problem lies within the whole circuit of capital, with the existence of production based on capital itself.

As Marx explained, in all the exchanges within this circuit we have the exchange of equivalents; before the commodities denoted as C’ are produced for sale other commodities, including machinery, raw materials and labour power are also sold and purchased.  Trade unions try to determine the level at which labour power is sold through fighting for “a fair days’ work for a fair days’ pay”, but even they cannot overturn the way capitalism works and cannot fundamentally alter the drive for profit that animates the circuit of capital. Trade unions can no more make capitalism fair than demands for fair trade can prevent exploitation or inequality in the class relations based on production.

Back to part 2

Forward to part 4

Free Trade and Socialism part 2 – the UK general election

Posted on by
Reply

Thersa May’s call for a general election has been hailed by the ‘Financial Times’ as a smart move that will give her and the pragmatic Tories some room to negotiate a trade deal with the EU that would be opposed by the zealot Brexiteers.  Today’s paper has a column by the chair of the Institute of Directors praising May while calling for some time for business to adjust to Brexit.  The rise in value of the pound after the news is seen as the smartest guys in the room welcoming the election announcement on precisely these grounds.  Whether this works or not is quite another matter and a decisive victory based on making sure Brexit happens is just as likely to strengthen the rabid demands of those clamouring for a hard Brexit as strengthen its more pragmatic supporters.

The election is therefore set to be all about Brexit and trust in May’s ‘leadership’, or rather her Tory arrogance that is sold as no-nonsense competence, seriousness and proficiency, which a certain section of workers still buy into on the basis of the everyday nationalism and class deference fed to them by the media.  However, even the newly moderated claims for Brexit are undeliverable: she says that she wants “a deep and special partnership between a strong and successful European Union and a United Kingdom that is free to chart its own way in the world”.

The relationship after Brexit can’t be “as deep and special” as the current one so it’s a loss on that one, and the UK will not be “free to chart its own way in the world” no matter how hard it fantasises.  In an issue of the same pink paper last week (and also today) its readers learn that the EU are about to freeze-out British companies’ participation in the European space programme and other EU contracts and funding.  It sounds much better to the ears of Brexiteers when they threaten to just pull the plug and leave without a deal but not quite so comforting when it is reported that the EU bureaucracy is drawing up plans to do exactly the same.

It was also reported in the FT that yet another Minister was visiting India trying to sell it something; Sir Michael Fallon being the empty-handed messenger this time.  The paper reported that ‘military experts say it is a sign of how the UK has been left behind. “If you look at the main four or five players in India, the UK is not there at this point in time”, and It reports that British arms exports fell from £966m in 2010 to £34m in 2015.

So instead of selling arms, Britain now wants to sell India its “arms procurement expertise” because the British might “help them decide what they need.”   The same (or perhaps different) British official thinks reminding the Indians that “the Indian army was created from the British army” and “we share . . an overall ethos” is good sales patter.  This ‘expertise’, the Indians have pointed out, includes ordering two aircraft carriers “that are seven years late . . . (and) are running massively over budget”, and this is without also considering that other problem arising in this British procurement exercise – ordering another aircraft carrier without aircraft for it to carry.

So, Britain is not going to find it easy to chart its own way in the world”; in fact it’s going to find it so hard it’s going to be charting not its own but other, bigger player’s ways in the world, especially as everyone knows, the US way.

Even thinking from first principles – how can you make your “own way” with trade?  Surely you need someone to trade with, someone who will want some say on the rules that govern it; someone who is very likely to be bigger and more powerful than Britain, or will have joined a trading arrangement that makes them bigger and more powerful.  A common strategy – except now for the Brits!

In other words, even if the Financial Times and the money men were correct in the short term, which generally is how long they think about, that May will minimise the impact of Brexit, Britain is going to be worse off.  As I have said before, the threats of a deregulated UK after Brexit are an acknowledgement that the Tory way of attempting to pay the price of Brexit will be to deliver the bill to the working class.  This sugar coats the Brexit pill for business but there will be no sugar coating the poison for workers.

In my last post I argued against the view that the question of trade was one that socialists could not take a side on; or that it ‘depended’ on something else and was therefore perhaps of secondary importance.  In my exchange of views on Facebook set out in that post I said that something could be learned from what Karl Marx thought of free trade.  Then at least, we may have some clue as to what ‘depends’ actually depends on.  Marx obviously thought it was an important issue, just as it is now through the issue of Brexit, and he had a clear position on it.  But I will look at this in the next post.

It is important to understand first that Brexit is bad for trade and will therefore indirectly be bad for workers.  Many workers see the link much more directly – car workers hope that the cars they build can be exported easily into the rest of Europe; university staff seek maintenance of EU grants for their research work; airline staff hope the company retains its base in the UK; farmers hope that they continue to get subsidies; finance workers hope their firms don’t up sticks to Paris or Frankfurt or Brussels or wherever; the list is a very long one.

Because any deal can only be worse and the only thing worse than a bad deal is no deal, the more far-sighted Tories either oppose Brexit or seek a ‘soft’ one.  It is these people that the markets and the ‘Financial Times’ editor and commentators hope will come to the rescue.  Having backed the Tories in the last election, even though it was only they who could deliver them the disaster of Brexit, these people still cling to them again, even while the Tories swear to god that they will deliver it no matter what.  But even with the sugar-coated promise of deregulation, the Tories are going to dash their hopes – the Tories have already promised not to give them the single market or a customs union.  The continuing support of business for the Tories is yet more evidence of their wilful ideological blindness.

Their logic is completely without merit – if the balance of power lies with the EU and the pressure of time is all on Britain, this will very quickly become apparent, in fact it already has as May’s changed tone once article 50 was triggered has shown. May now talks not only the nonsense quoted above but also about a transitional deal, “controlling” immigration not lowering it, perhaps through voluntarily allowing cheap exploitable labour into agriculture when it is needed and then chucking it out afterwards.  Or allowing entry to skilled workers for companies that lobby for it.  Payments can still be made to the EU for some sort of trade access and EU courts will still have ultimate say.  To which it might be asked – what’s the point of leaving, although the Tories think that, with an election victory, answering such a question can at least be postponed.  After all, the May strategy in this election appears to be to say as little as possible.  And there’s a logic to this as well – the same logic.

The Tories cannot promise a ‘soft’ Brexit, or the detail of what it might involve, or even a transitional deal, which has become the favoured option of some business opinion who hope it might morph into something permanent that isn’t hard-on Brexit.  The Tories can’t do these things because those are decisions that are not theirs to take.

The EU will decide whether after less than two years the UK can get lost “making its own way”.  The EU will decide whether there is a transitional deal and what it will look like.  Making any sort of promise during an election would simply invite EU leaders to point out what the real situation is – ‘you say it best when you say nothing at all’ is therefore the only sensible thing to do.  It might make you look increasingly stupid during an election campaign but May is relying on an existing poll lead and a fully undeserved reputation for competence.  And, of course, a compliant media.  How could anyone believe that only she can be trusted to be a strong negotiator with the EU when she’s even afraid to negotiate her way round a TV studio in a leaders’ debate?

If a ‘soft’ Brexit does not exist for the Tories it cannot exist for Jeremy Corbyn either.  The defence of workers’ interests that is the Labour Party’s platform cannot be implemented while leaving the EU.  For those who believe that socialism arises simply from revolution against capitalism and that the EU is a neoliberal conspiracy this is incomprehensible. It is nevertheless true because socialism will be built upon the foundations of the productive forces of capitalism and from transforming its social relations, not merely overturning them.

The more Corbyn stands up for the living standards and rights of working people the more this will conflict with a Brexit agenda, although again and again he turns away from this truth and damages his own case and the prospects for winning over the Remain voters.  The election will truly have revealed the bankruptcy of the bourgeois electoral process if May can keep her mouth shut about what Brexit actually entails and Corbyn can maintain that he will defend workers’ rights without threatening Brexit.

As for the prospects for the election itself; at the start of the campaign the press is clear that Labour is finished.  It must become clear quickly that this is not the case and even by doing this Labour will have registered a success.  Simply by standing up it can continue to fight and by continuing to stand prove the pundits wrong.  Tory arrogance can then first be halted, then challenged, and then thrown back in their faces.  The worst sort of defeat is when you don’t fight, and if you fight there’s always the possibility to win.

Back to part 1

Forward to part 3

Free Trade and Socialism part 1

Posted on by
1

My last post on the potential effects of Brexit on Ireland or even worse, the effects of the Irish State leaving the EU, led to the following exchange of views on Facebook:

PF:  This piece could have been written by a not especially radical employee of whatever the Industrial Development Authority is now called. …… workers will suffer because their main trading partner is leaving the neo-liberal EU? At least the Sticky 1977(?) plan for Southern capitalism had the merit of claiming a class analysis.

Sráid Marx:  But is it true?

PF:  Depends!

Sráid Marx:  On what?

PF:  It depends on the standpoint. Our man on the Dublin omnibus views everything through the prism of Brexit. Right at the end he says the Brit ruling class is undermining itself. There is, no doubt an ongoing debate, with most of big capital (and their media) opposing BREXIT (the Economist looks forward to it being overturned) while more ‘domestic’ capital – about 90% of firms – in the main support it. Not much to do with intelligence; much more to do with class interests.

As far as the interests of workers go, he suggests that wages will fall, with the implication that if Britain remained, they wouldn’t. Real wages in Britain have fallen over the past period, well before the Referendum. So this is a bit of a dodgy argument anyway.

For the rest of the piece he speculates on tariffs, foreign direct investment, the benefits of WTO rules, migration between the 26 Counties and the UK, the value of trade between the EU, Britain and the Republic and finishes with a swipe at Corbyn, the most left wing leader of the LP – EVER.

All of the economic analysis can be seen in any broadsheet newspaper any day – but the main point is not its orthodoxy. That surely is a problem from someone whose tag line contains the word Marx? The problem is this: everything is viewed through the apparent stupidity of Brexit. He takes sides in an argument between two factions of the capitalist class and berates them for not really understanding their own interests. What’s Marxist about that?

Where does this orthodox analysis lead? To an attack on Corbyn. For not saving the British capitalist class from its apparent Brexit folly by mobilising more Labour voters to support Remain? The political conclusion is even more bizarre. Presumably, the LP should ditch Corbyn and would soar to electoral victory on the promise of the heavenly ‘single market’. Since when has ‘free trade’ been a socialist demand?

If he really wants to see where this leads he should look to ‘Open Labour’, the recent creation of O’Jones and others. In order to advance their ‘Left’ coup against Corbyn, they must shut out the Left. Jones’ diatribes against Stop the War and Stand Up to Racism are designed precisely for this purpose. If the coup from the ‘Left’ succeeds (Momentum, itself divided, has been far too timid in fighting the Right in the apparatus) the Corbyn project is a goner and we’ll be back to a soft left leadership kowtowing to the well funded Blairite right. And they’ll have the right line on Brexit, immigration controls and so on. But they’ll still lose – at least while workers remember what they were like.

Sráid Marx:  So it depends on your standpoint, does it? So barriers to trading the goods and services produced by workers won’t have any effect – is that what you are saying? Less investment won’t have any effect on employment?

In my series of posts on Europe I advance an argument that I think allows workers to take a standpoint independent of the small capital that seems mainly to want out of the EU and the big capital that doesn’t. As for the socialist standpoint on free trade, if you simply google ‘Marx and free trade’ you should get an answer to ponder.

And please don’t put words in my mouth about wanting Corbyn replaced by some soft left alternative that would inevitably pave the way for a Blairite. Some more familiarity with my blog would quickly disabuse you of that speculation. And finally, there really shouldn’t be a debate about whether Brexit will lower wages because it is already happening.

KH:  What about CETA and the Fiscal Compact – that effectively wipes out possibilities of reflation/deflation as well as ability to control inflation rates. It is a completely symbolic gesture if you cannot mandate your own Central Bank to carry out your own sovereign economic and monetary policies, which instead, will be set out entirely in the interests of German rather than Scottish economy.

Only a fool would voluntarily give away national control over fiscal and monetary policy. Six years of EU austerity policies and three structural adjustment programs brokered in a bid to save a massively dysfunctional currency as well as corporate and financial interests have probably guaranteed the election of at least two neo-fascist governments in the next few years.

Wages have been lowered to such an extent in the EU since 2008 that you are happy to accept the election of Wilders et al due entirely to the austerity policies imposed by your beloved ECB.

PF: “So barriers to trading the goods and services produced by workers won’t have any effect – is that what you are saying?” Nation states, including the South of Ireland, used such barriers to protect the economy up to about 1960’s. And the majority of the 26 County working class supported Fianna Fail for exactly the same reason. It only ended when the US ruling class decided post-War that they wanted to muscle in on the pickings of the British Empire (Commonwealth). ‘Free trade’ (one of the reasons the Democrats lost and the AFL-CIO sit on Trump’s Economic Advisory Council) is no more socialist than protectionism.

*           *          *

There are a number of obiter dicta that could be made about the objections to my post on Brexit and Ireland including exhibition of a left-wing variant of ‘Gove’s disease’; that is an aversion to ‘experts’; a reincarnation of that other pathology – ‘project fear’ – which seemed to be a Pavlovian aversion to some variant of capitalist arguments, but in this particular case capitalist arguments you don’t have a convincing response to.

The left-wing Gove’s disease consists of an ability to dismiss argument or evidence that comes from bourgeois experts or those who place some reliance on the argument and evidence they present because:

  1. You don’t like them,
  2. No one on the left should employ them and
  3. You don’t have answer to them (or not one that addresses the point).

Unfortunately, workers are often impressed, confused or frustrated by these arguments and only rarely simply dismiss them, as we have been invited to do.  Socialists therefore need to understand and respond to them, extracting what is of value from them for the benefit of our class.  By analogy – much like Marx did with all those hours in the British library, where he didn’t spend his time simply reading socialist writers.

We have, then, an allegation of bourgeois ‘orthodoxy’ and then an assertion that what we need is “reflation as well as ability to control inflation rates.”  You must be able to “mandate your own Central Bank to carry out your own sovereign economic and monetary policies, which instead, will be set out entirely in the interests of German rather than Scottish economy.”

So, what we have is not an alternative to some sort of bourgeois orthodoxy but a different sort of bourgeois orthodoxy, one that is false.  It is orthodox because what it asserts is state (‘national’) intervention – presumably on behalf of workers – which is nothing to do with socialism since socialism is based on the power of the working class, including the power to destroy and supplant the capitalist state.

The only assumption that could make the demand for different orthodox capitalist economic policies legitimate is that some capitalist policies provide better conditions upon which workers can fight for their own interests, although never forgetting that the bourgeois alternative is ultimately to the benefit of capitalist system and cannot suspend forever its contradictions.

But I am criticised for wanting to take one side in an inter-capitalist dispute (a charge I reject) while it is asserted that socialists should fight for “your own sovereign economic and monetary policies, which instead [in the EU], will be set out entirely in the interests of German rather than Scottish economy”.  Now this really is taking sides on an inter-capitalist dispute.

It is false because, if the capitalist state could, through monetary policy, control the price of money capital, it would equally be able to control the price of all commodities, and why would this not include the value of labour power?  Being able to do so, why could it not plan the operation of the capitalist system through suitable prices so that it could avoid austerity, allow ‘sovereign’ control in the interest of ‘our’ economy (Scottish, Irish, insert country of choice) and in doing so provide well-paid and secure employment, welfare and public services for everyone?

But these are digressions.  The main point is that the original post argued that the disruption to existing free trade arrangements etc. would be bad for the working class and that there is a socialist position on this development.

So what then is the socialist position on free trade and is it one of ‘depends’?

Forward to part 2