Posted on 01/05/2006 9:44:26 AM PST by jb6
Look what it did to Europe and Europe, on top of this, didn't have to worry about massive illegal immigrations in the 19th centuary. We have 10-20 million illegals futher depressing wages and causing a further break down of our middle class.
While Marx was writing this, America was busy building the greatest economy on earth through strict import tarrifs that caused American industry to build in America.
Now we are repeating the errors of the 19th centuary Europeans. Why?
"If instead of growing our own corn... we discover a new market from which we can supply ourselves... at a cheaper price, wages will fall and profits rise. The fall in the price of agricultural produce reduces the wages, not only of the laborer employed in cultivating the soil, but also of all those employed in commerce or manufacture."
[David Ricardo, Des principes de l'economie politique et de l'impot. Traduit de l'anglais par F. S. Constancio, avec des notes explicatives et critiques par J.-B.- Say. T. I., Paris 1835, p.178-79]
****
Finally, the more productive capital increases, the more it is compelled to produce for a market whose requirements it does not know, the more production precedes consumption, the more supply tries to force demand, and consumption crises increase in frequency and in intensity. But every crisis in turn hastens the centralization of capital and adds to the proletariat.
Thus, as productive capital grows, competition among the workers grows in a far greater proportion. The reward of labor diminishes for all, and the burden of labor increases for some.
***snip***
To sum up, what is free trade, what is free trade under the present condition of society? It is freedom of capital. When you have overthrown the few national barriers which still restrict the progress 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, it does not matter how favorable the conditions under which the exchange of commodities takes place, there will always be a class which will exploit and a class which will be exploited. It is really difficult to understand the claim 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 still more clearly.
***snip***
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
ping
And that is why modern marxists, such as castro and chavez hate free trade.(/Sarcasm)
Free trade works within a nation. We demonstrated that with our history (citizens of the United States trading with citizens of the United States). We created the largest free trade area of the world. And the world was dying to get in and be a part of it.
However, to gain access to our markets and protect our own industries, they had to pay a cover charge, or tariff.
There were exessive tariffs to be sure but the best ones just evened the playing field to compensate for wage differences, cost of transport etc.
Things started to go to pot when when started bringing our tariff rates to zero as Britain, etc. did before us.
Free trade itself is not akin to marxism. The way we practiced it in the beginning of our Republic is based on Adam Smith and Liberty.
Absolute free trade, however, is first cousin to marxism because it treats everybody and every nation the same ("from each according to his ability" etc.) and does not take into account such variable as governments and their regulations, wage differences between nations, travel costs, etc.
Don't mistake Free Trade with Free Markets, they are not the same thing. We have free markets in America. China, with whom we have Free Trade (really we have free trade and China practices merchantalism defending its markets) has a lot of monopolies dominated by government figures so not trully free markets.
I think you're missing a larger point here.
Let's review, for a moment, one of Marxism's greatest maxims. In so many words, what causes conflict in society is the lure of, and the distinction afforded by, material wealth. Particularly surplus material wealth. Eliminate surplus material wealth and distribute the remainder equally, and societies ill's would be cured, according to Marx, since most of societies ill's were caused by that old bugaboo; human nature, espeiclaly the more venal aspcets such as greed, jealousy and gluttony.
With the advent of the machine ecomony in Marx's day, the means existed, for the first time in human history, to produce enough goods, at affordable prices, for all of society to live at the same level of existance, and therefore there was no longer a need to indulge in distinctions based upon material goods (wealth)and the problems such distinctions posed to society. Provided, of course, there were well-intentioned Marxists around to decide how the goods got distributed. Marxists, you see, were not supposed to be subject to the whims of human nature.
Taken hand-in-hand with the newer theories of the planned economy coming into vogue at that time, and Marx kinda-sorta makes sense in a dispassionate,clinical way.
The problem with this theory is that a) the machine economy produced surplusses that it often was impossible NOT to distribute and b) human nature never actually goes away just because you conveniently ignore it. What Marx was getting at was a simple exchange of suprlusses in order to hold that which could not be controlled (human nature) in check.
For example, if Nation X is a fully-industrialized society and the bordering Nation Y is an agrarian one, then there is bound to be friction. Nation X has, in it's industrial potential, the ability to militarily and economically dominate Nation Y. It's citizens have a higher standard of living which incubates jealousy within it's neighbor's population. Nation Y, on the other hand, has to contend with a richer, militarily stronger neighbor which is a magnet to it's disaffected masses. The solution is Free Trade, in the sense that X trades it's surplus industrial goods for Y's surplus agricultural products. It is the simple exchange of goods with the idea that both sides should be satisfied in the name of parity.
Free trade, in the literal sense, extends beyond the mere exchange of goods. It also incorporates the exchange of labor, capital and ideas. None of these is necesarily amicable to the ideals of Marxism or to the idea of a planned economy.
Marx, therefore, is not a "Free Trader". He is simply someone who advocated the exchange of surplus wealth, where applicable, in order to prop up his fantasies of international brotherhood.
In the example cited above, there is nothing keeping Nation Y from matching the industrial output and stregth of it's neighbor X, except the notion that the citizens of Y should be content to suck off of X's teat in a symbiotic relationship. The overriding concerns in this example is not national greatness, equality or greed, it's supposed to be simple peace. In this regard, Y, in the name of peace, is to simply forego any attempt to equal the industrial capacity of X.
That is hardly "Free Trade" is it?
Yeah..yeah..I'm sure you can find Hitler said something that could be construed as supporting free-trade if you look hard enough.
That quote is not germane to today's global economy and you know it.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1552486/posts
As an example of what I mean when I say the machine economy produces goods that it is impossible NOT to distribute.
Bumpity bump bump!
Don't mistake Free Trade with Free Markets
Ok. Then to clarify, here's the question I want answered by a free trader: Why must our tariff rates be at zero?
A Five or ten percent tariff is not a trade barrier (is one percent a trade barrier?) Would people buy less t-shirts at Wal-Mart if they were 5% more?
As we increase tariffs, we can lower income taxes, the reverse of what has happened since the progressive era.
Don't mistake Free Trade with Free Markets
Also, when I said this I was referring to the Constitutional prohibition of duties, etc. between the states.
>>The most favorable condition for the worker is the growth of capital. This must be admitted. If capital remains stationary, industry will not merely remain stationary but will decline, and in this case the worker will be the first victim. He goes to the wall before the capitalist. And in the case where capital keeps growing, in the circumstance which we have said are the best for the worker, what will be his lot? He will go to the wall just the same. The growth of productive capital 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.<<
>> You thousands of workers who are perishing, do not despair! You can die with an easy conscience. Your class will not perish. It will always be numerous enough for the capitalist class to decimate it without fear of annihilating it. Besides, how could capital be usefully applied if it did not take care always to keep up its exploitable material, i.e., the workers, to exploit them over and over again?<<
>>Gentlemen! Do not allow yourselves to be deluded by the abstract word freedom. Whose freedom? It is not the freedom of one individual in relation to another, but the freedom of capital to crush the worker.<<
Low paid illegal alien workers are filling in just fine for the American workers who are being crushed.
>> 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.<<
Free-traders have no difficulties in understanding how within one country one class can enrich itself at the expense of another.
Hitler was a socialist, leader of the National Socialist Workers Party, slang Nazi, so yes, I'm sure he was pro-free trade too, since he wanted to make a european union order where national individuality was destroyed....oops, that sounds just like the EU doesn't it?
Last summer I finished taking a MBA course on global economics and the professor flat out stated, the goal of free trade was an equalizing effect of everyone's wages. Now calculate the numbers of Americans and Europeans and their average wages vs all the third worlders (China and India alone have 2.3 billion) and see what that means. While the third worlders rise up, we collapse and only the lords of free trade make off well over the peasants. Thus, killing the middle class which is the only buffer to keep the socialists/communists out of power.
Uh huh...Hitler wanted to sink Germans into "a european union order where national individuality was destroyed". You're demented about this.
Of course. If that weren't the case, Walmart or the distributor would already be pricing them 5% higher. How much sales would decrease is another matter.
As we increase tariffs, we can lower income taxes, the reverse of what has happened since the progressive era.
I don't object to that in theory (the income tax is truly evil, tariffs somewhat less so), but I suspect Congress would find some "emergency" preventing any reduction in taxes.
No, you just have a lacking of knowledge. The SS was set up as a European army. For example, Latvia contributed 160,000 men to the SS, not the Wehremacht, not the Auxilliries not the Hiwiis but the Hitler SS.
Belgium sent, per capita, more men then anyone else. There was 1 Russian brigade, 1 Luthianian Division, 1 Estonian, 2 Ukrainian, 1 Finish, 1 Albanian, 1 or 2 Croatian, 1 French Brigade (which fought till the last day of the battle of Berlin, in Berlin, the Charlemagne Brigade), 1 Bosniak, there were Swedish, Norwegean, Danish, Spanish SS. And these aren't individual volunteers but whole units.
The concepts of the monetary union of Europe were also first proposed and implementation was begun by the Reichsbank in 1942.
Do some reading before you start name calling.
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