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To: Pelham
Somebody should have warned Alexander Hamilton, the author of our first protective tariff, and his boss George Washington who signed the bill into law.

The same Washington who after fighting a war against the British in opposition to unfair taxes wasted no time in waging one against Pennsylvania farmers?

Well, meet the new boss...

The ruling class always uses state force to extract taxes.

36 posted on 03/17/2016 7:07:22 PM PDT by Poison Pill
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To: Poison Pill

Good to see that you aren’t trying to pretend that the First Congress didn’t pass a protective tariff. As did the majority of Congresses for a hundred years afterwards.

But according to your definition that makes Washington and Hamilton “marxists”. Adam Smith must have been too, as he admitted that the use of retaliatory tariffs could be useful.

But they may well be “marxists”, since Karl Marx in fact wrote in favor of free trade in 1848. Not exactly for the usual reasons, but because he believed it would hasten the “revolution”:

“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 favour of free trade.”


76 posted on 03/17/2016 7:26:31 PM PDT by Pelham (more than election. Revolution)
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