Agricultural Protectionism and the Working Class
Learning from the History of the English Corn Laws

(From  "Storm Petrel" No.708-720, 1999)
Written by Masaru Machida
Translated by Roy West

CONTENTS

Introduction

1. The Focal Point of Early 19th Century Political Struggle: 
   −The Period from the Establishment to the Repeal of the Corn Laws

2. The Prototype of the Current Theories of "Food Security":
   −Malthus' Defense of the Corn Laws

3. Defending the Interests of Industrial Capital:
   −Ricardo's Criticism of Protectionism

4. The Formation of the Anti-Corn Law League:
   −A Lavishly Funded campaign

5. Piper Plays the Tune, but the Workers Don't Dance:
   −Catching on to the Deceit of the Anti-Corn Laws League

6. The Corn Laws are Ultimately Abolished:
   −Victory of the Industrial Capitalists over the Rural Aristocracy

7. Free Trade or Protectionism?
   −Fundamental Perspective of Marx and Engels

8. Protectionism is Already Reactionary:
   −Marx's Criticism of Protectionism

9. Exposing the Hypocrisy of Free Trade Advocates:
   −Marx's Speech on Free Trade (1)

10. Why "Support in Principle":
    −Marx's Speech on Free Trade (2)

11. Marxism and Romanticism:
    −Lenin's View of the Corn Laws Issue (1)

12. The Core of the Marxist Method:
    −Lenin's View of the Corn Laws Issue (2)

Introduction

Recently the Japanese government has decided to shift from a “minimum access” policy for rice imports to the method of tariffs.  It was determined that since the import quotas were rising every year, the use of high tariffs would be a more effective policy than import restrictions.  However, since the shift to tariffs leads, little by little, to overall trade liberalization it has sparked the indignation of the advocates of agricultural protectionism, beginning with the Japanese Communist Party (JCP).  How, then, should the working class view this question of agricultural imports?  Here we intend to address this question by examining the history of the Corn Laws in 19th century England.

1.  The Focal Point of Early 19th Century Political Struggle:
　−The Period from the Establishment to the Repeal of the Corn Laws

We will begin by considering what are the English Corn Laws, and provide an overview of the history spanning implementation up to repeal.  The Corn Laws were legislation that attempted to promote exports of agricultural products by prohibiting or limiting imports of such products as wheat, rye, oats, bean, and corn.  The origin of the laws can be traced back to the middle of the 15th century.  Since the late 17th century, the Corn Laws, along with the Navigation Acts (laws mandating that English vessels be used in colonial trade), represented an important pillar of the protectionist policies of mercantilism.

With the consolidation of capitalism in the latter half of the 18th century, however, the industrial bourgeoisie began to raise the banner of free competition and free trade, criticizing mercantilism.  The first person to theoretically express this view was Adam Smith.  In The Wealth of Nations, Smith heaped criticism on the subsidies for exports based on the Corn Laws and expounded a theory of free trade.  At the end of the 18th century, however, with the advance of the “industrial revolution” and increase in population, England, which had been a great agriculture exporter, became an importer of agricultural products.  With this change, the focus of the Corn Laws also shifted away from the policy of encouraging exports to that of limiting imports.

Still, with the outbreak of the French Revolution and the 25-year period of revolution and war that engulfed Europe, trade between England and the Continent was severed, as symbolized by the blockade of territories held by Napoleon.  As a result, even without relying on the Corn Laws to limit imports, the price of corn (this refers to grain in general) during this period rose quickly (52 shillings per quarter in 1789 to 126 shillings per quarter in 1812) and rent likewise rose two- or three-fold, thereby generating huge profits for the landowning aristocracy and tenant-farmers (agricultural capitalists).  But this all changed with the end of the Napoleonic wars, as Engels points out:

“When in 1814 peace removed the obstacles to import, the price of corn fell and the tenant-farmers, in view of the high rents, could no longer cover the cost of producing their corn.  Only two ways out were possible: either that the landowners should reduce the rent or that a real protective tariff should be imposed instead of the nominal one.  The landowners, who not only dominated the Upper House and the Ministry but also (prior to the Reform Bill) possessed fairly unrestricted power in the Lower House, naturally chose the latter course and in 1815 introduced the Corn Laws amid the furious outcry of the middle classes and the people, at that time still guided by the latter, and under the protection of bayonets.” (“History of the Corn Laws”)

The Corn Laws introduced in 1815, prohibited imports of corn altogether if the price in England remained under 80 shillings per quarter.  In this way, the decline in grain prices was stemmed, protecting the interests of the landowners and capitalist farmers.  Since the price of corn did not exceed 80 shillings throughout the country, this effectively amounted to a complete ban on corn imports.

There was a famous debate centering on the Corn Laws between Thomas Malthus, who represented the landowners in defense of the laws and, and David Ricardo, who opposed the Corn Laws from the standpoint of the industrial capitalists.  We will examine this debate in the next section, and point out that the arguments of Malthus form the theoretical basis for the reactionary agricultural protectionism of the JCP.

After some modifications were made to the Corn Laws in 1822, a system of import duties based on the sliding scale of Huskisson and Canning was introduced in 1828.  According to this system, when the price of corn was 66 shillings, the import duty would be 20 shillings and 8 pence, and this duty would rise one shilling for each 1-shilling drop in the price of the corn.  For example, if the price of corn were 52 shillings, the tax would reach 34 shillings and 8 pence. Therefore, this was basically a ban on imports.

Meanwhile, the bourgeoisie, which had made advances in parliament thanks to changes in the election laws in the 1832 Reform Act, formed the Anti-Corn Law League in the late 1830s.  The league was primarily led by Richard Cobden and developed into a powerful movement.  The bourgeoisie were able to win the appeal of the Corn Laws in 1846, but we will examine this period later. 

Because the bourgeoisie tried to win the working masses over to their side in the course of the anti-Corn Law movement, attempting to ally with the Chartists, Marx and Engels examined this movement on a number of occasions, beginning in the early 1840s.  Even today, there are many important lessons that we can draw from their criticism. 

2.  The Prototype of the Current Theories of "Food Security":
　−Malthus' Defense of the Corn Laws

In the previous section, we saw that the landowners in England were terrified that the revival of trade with the Continent following the Napoleonic Wars would result in a flood of cheap grain.  In response to this, the English government, which was dominated by this landowning class, proposed an amendment of the Corn Laws as early as 1813, and in 1815 the Corn Laws were modified so that a ban was placed on foreign corn if the domestic price of corn fell below 80 shillings per quarter.

Naturally this law, which was intended to salvage the position of the landowners by preventing imports, met with fierce resistance from the bourgeoisie and working class.  In the midst of this tumultuous situation, Thomas Malthus, the author of An Essay on the Principle of Population and “darling” of the ruling class, rose in defense of the Corn Laws.  From 1814 to 1815, Malthus published three pamphlets in quick succession:  “Observations on the Effects of the Corn Laws, and of a Rise or Fall in the Price of Corn on the Agriculture and General Wealth of the Country,” “The Grounds of an Opinion on the Policy of Restricting the Importation of Foreign Corn,” and “An Inquiry into the Nature and Progress of Rent, and the Principles by which it is regulated.”

Malthus’ theory has various aspects, but at its core is the so-called theory of “food security” and “food self-sufficiency.”  Malthus was forced to generally recognize the significance of the theory of free trade formulated from the time of Adam Smith, admitting that “free trade in corn would in all ordinary cases not only secure a cheaper, but a more steady, supply of grain.” (“Observations”)  However, he then quickly rejects this same view:

“It is alleged, first, that security is of still more importance than wealth, and that a great country likely to excite the jealousy of others, if it becomes dependent for the support of any considerable portion of people upon foreign corn, exposes itself to the risk of its most essential supplies suddenly fail at the time of greatest need.” (Ibid)

He adds that:

“But it is not in the power of any single nation to secure the freedom of the foreign trade in corn. To accomplish this, the concurrence of many others is necessary; and this concurrence, the fears and jealousies so universally prevalent about the means of subsistence, almost invariably prevent.” (“The Grounds”)

In other words, corn (agricultural products) is viewed as something separate from “free trade,” and it is said that if the conflict between states is aggravated, and war occurs, problems will arise from the sudden cessation of imports. In this sense, free trade cannot exist for agricultural products because in each country there are “fears and jealousies” that are “universally present” concerning the “means of subsistence.”

For us, of course, there is nothing new about Malthus’ logic which introduces the idea of the “uniqueness” of agriculture (food) in order to warn of the danger of relying on foreign grain and oppose agricultural imports.  This is essentially identical to the hysterical arguments we frequently hear from reactionaries and the JCP about “what might happen if foreign countries have control over our stomachs!”  This sort of view leads to the conclusion that “food self-sufficiency” is important, and this is also the conclusion reached by Malthus:

“A system of restrictions so calculated as to keep us, in average years, nearly independent of foreign supplies of corn, will more effectually conduce to the wealth and prosperity of the country, and of by far the greatest mass of the inhabitants, than the opening of our ports for the free admission of foreign corn, in the actual state of Europe.” (Ibid)

In order to prove the disadvantage of agricultural free trade to everyone except certain sectors (those involved in such things as importing and finance), Malthus had to construct an elaborate dogma.  For example, he claimed that “high prices of corn” were not disadvantageous to workers, but rather in their interests.  He explained this on the basis of the dogma that “the price of corn determines wages,” offering up the following sophistry:

“But if [workers] are able to command the same quantity of necessaries, and receive a money price for their labour, proportioned to [corn’s] advanced price, there is no doubt that, with regard to all the objects of convenience and comfort, which do not rise in proportion to corn (and there are many such consumed by the poor), their condition will be most decidedly improved.” (“An Inquiry”)

Moreover, he speaks of the rent of the landowners as, affording “the most steady home demand for the manufactures of the country, the most effective fund for its financial support, and the largest disposable force for its army and navy” (“The Grounds”), thereby nakedly glorifying the unproductive expenditures of this class, arguing that ensuring high rents through import restrictions is important for the state.

Malthus is essentially identical to the JCP in terms of one-sidedly emphasizing the instability and “risk” inherent in trade between capitalist states, denying the historical progressiveness of capitalism in propelling production and exchange beyond the framework of the nation-state and developing relations of interdependence, and sacrificing the general social interests to maintain the particular interests of one class.  The only difference is the particular class that is being defended, with Malthus defending the landowning class while the JCP defends the small farmers.

We can see that the theory of “food security” that is currently in fashion is basically nothing more than a rehashing of a theory whose origins can be traced back well over a century to the reactionary Thomas Malthus.

3.  Defending the Interests of Industrial Capital:
　　−Ricardo's Criticism of Protectionism

Against Malthus’ theory of agricultural protectionism and defense of the Corn Laws from the standpoint of the landowners, Ricardo made the case for the opposing camp, representing the standpoint of the industrial bourgeoisie.  In response to the three pamphlets Malthus wrote between 1814-15 to defend the Corn Laws, Ricardo wrote a pamphlet in 1815 entitled “Essay on the Influence of a Low Price of Corn on the Profits of Stock” that refuted Malthus’ arguments.

Ricardo took up this subject again in 1822 in his essay “On Protection to Agriculture,” and prior to that, in 1817, he had published the first edition of Principles of Political Economy and Taxation, which included a chapter dealing with the theory of rent developed in Malthus’ pamphlets.  In this way, the Corn Laws debate represents an important moment in the establishment of the so-called Ricardian system.

Criticism of protectionist agricultural policies appears in a wide array of Ricardo’s writing, including his discussion of profit, rent and economic policies, but the main point he makes is that placing limitations on the importation of foreign agricultural products keeps their prices high, thereby driving up the cost of wages for which they form the main component part.  Since an increase in wages means a decrease in profits, this ran not only directly counter to the interests of the bourgeoisie, but also obstructed the accumulation of capital and inhibited the development of capitalism -- and for Ricardo and those of his era this was equivalent to the hindrance of the progress and development of society in general.

Based on his own theory of differential rent (according to which rent is the transformed part of the surplus production generated from superior land as compared to inferior land) and his law of diminishing returns to land (the dogma that with the expanded demand for grain accompanying the increase in capital and population, each country would be obliged to cultivate inferior land, which would result in soaring grain prices and wages, and diminished profits, Ricardo emphasized the following:

“Thus by bringing successively land of a worse quality, or less favourably situated into cultivation, rent would rise on the land previously cultivated, and precisely in the same degree would profits fall; and if the smallness of profits do not check accumulation, there are hardly any limits to the rise of rent, and the fall of profit.” (“Essay on the Influence”)

Ricardo’s policy to prevent a fall in profits had the following two points: (1) improvements in agriculture (bringing down the value of grain through increased productivity) and (2) importing grain at lower prices.  In other words, free trade for agricultural products.  From this perspective, Ricardo denounced the placing of restrictions on agricultural products. 

“There is no other way of keeping profits up but by keeping wages down. In this view of the law of profits, it will at once be seen how important it is that so essential a necessity as corn, which so powerfully affects wages, should be at a low price; and how injurious it must be to the community generally, that, by prohibitions against importation, we should be driven to the cultivation of our poorer lands to feed our augmenting population.” (“Protection to Agriculture”)

In this way, Ricardo frankly said that agricultural free trade was above all in the interests of the industrial bourgeoisie, and he argued that this would also promote the accumulation of capital, agree with the interests of the workers by expanding the demand for labor, and thus harmonize with the overall progress of society. At the same time, Ricardo openly said that, “the interest of the landlord is always opposed to the interest of every other class in the community” (Ibid) and that restrictions on the agricultural imports would sacrifice the overall interests of society to the interests of the landowning class.

Ricardo also rejected Malthus’ vulgar theory of “food security” in the following manner:

“If we became a regularly importing country, and foreigners could confidently rely on the demand of our market, much more land would be cultivated in corn countries with a view to exportation. When we consider the value of even a few weeks consumption of corn in England, no interruption could be given to the export trade, if the continent supplied us with any considerable quantity of corn, without the most extensively ruinous commercial distress?distress which no sovereign, or combination of sovereigns, would be willing to inflict on their people; and, if willing, it would be a measure to which probably no people would submit.” [Ibid]

To illustrate this, Ricardo cites the example of Napoleon’s failure to Russia’s crop exports.  prevent the export of raw produce in Russia. Moreover, whereas Malthus said that the flood of cheap produce through free trade would destroy the agricultural capital that had already been invested, Ricardo pointed out that this was as reactionary as opposing the introduction of new machinery because it would destroy the value of the old machinery. Such arguments amount to an opposition to the progress and development of production, thereby exposing their own reactionary nature.

As we can see, much of the criticism Ricardo advanced against protectionism remains convincing today. Still, his logic is marked by some confusion and errors. Fundamentally, Ricardo does not venture beyond the boundaries of bourgeois rationalism and liberalism. Workers, therefore, cannot absolutize Ricardo’s theory of free trade. We will examine this point later when we introduce Marx and Engels’ evaluation of the Corn Laws, including their views on Ricardo’s famous theory of “comparative costs.”

4.  The Formation of the Anti-Corn Law League:
　−A Lavishly Funded campaign

From 1815, movements against the Corn Laws emerged in regions throughout England, particularly during periods when the price of crops rose due to poor harvests, and this was at times marked by popular riots. As a result, the Tory government was forced to take a conciliatory approach, reforming the laws in 1822 and shifting to a “sliding scale” in 1828. However, this was not the sort of simple problem in which the opposition could be placated and contained by such cosmetic reforms. Still, since the opposition was initially dispersed regionally, the movement had little success.

The turning point came in 1838, with the simultaneous occurrence of an agricultural slump and industrial crisis. The crisis, which began in the cotton mills, continued until 1842, and marked one of the worst depressions in the 19th century. At the same time, due to a lean harvest, the price for a quarter of corn, which had been 40 shillings in 1835, rose to 65 shillings in 1838 and 70 shillings the following year.  This situation, in which widespread unemployment was aggravated by the rise in the price of corn, sparked the rapid growth of the movement against the Corn Laws.

In the spring of 1839 a group was formed to unite all of the organizations throughout the country that were opposed to the Corn Laws, and this became the Anti-Corn Laws League. The founders and leaders of the League were Richard Cobden and Joe Bright, who were cotton-spinning industrialists Manchester, which was the heart of the textile industry. The two men complained that the soaring price of grain had resulted in 20 million pounds being shifted away from the purchase of clothing to the purchase of food.

In his book, Manchesutaa ha keizai shiso kenkyu [A Study of the Economic Thought of the Manchester School], Kumagai Jiro writes:

“The cotton-spinners of Manchester thought that this sort of rise in grain prices from the poor harvest and decrease in the demand for clothing items would not have occurred, or would have occurred in a milder form, had the free importation of grain been allowed, and that the limitation of foreign grain imports shrank England’s overseas markets because the countries that were unable to freely sell grain to England had less power to purchase English goods, and that this would also result in a rise in manufacturing in foreign countries, thereby fostering rivals to English industry. Amidst this serious economic depression and poor harvests, the argument that the Corn Laws limiting the free importation of grain were the primary factor impeding the prosperity of manufacturing, gained momentum and were more strongly propagated, centering in Manchester, and this developed into the movement against the Corn Laws mentioned above.” (p. 7)

Having achieved a nationwide organization and leadership, the bourgeoisie opened a general attack against the Corn Laws, which they called “the great tree of Monopoly.” The bourgeoisie raised “free trade” as the new article of faith and generously financed the movement against the Corn Laws. In 1843, the League amassed contributions of 50,000 pounds, and the following year the enormous sum of 100,000 pounds was raised. Years later Cobden confided the following in a letter:

“The big capitalists formed the solid foundation of the anti-Corn Laws movement. This was because they had unlimited financial resources. They opened their purse strings, however, not simply for reasons of their own financial interests, but because they were involved in a crisis that placed their price as ‘a class’ at risk” (1857 letter--translated from the Japanese version)

With this wealth of resources, the league launched a huge campaign in which it “started a subscription fund, founded a journal (the Anti-Bread-Tax Circular), sent paid speakers from place to place and set in motion all the means of agitation customary in England for achieving its aim” (Engels, “History of Corn Laws”). In terms of its scale, in 1843 alone, over nine million copies of various pamphlets were issued, and 650 public meetings were held throughout the country. And the method of agitation was full of wit.

“At the public meetings, the speakers of Anti-Corn Laws League would show three loafs of bread of different sizes that cost the same price in three countries: France, England, and Russia. England was the country with the smallest loaf, which thus meant that the English people were the most deprived.” (Andre Maurois, Histoire D’Angleterre?translated from French by R.W.)

Incidentally, although political campaigns with large-scale literature distribution and public meetings are taken for granted today, they were a new phenomenon at the time. The movement of the Anti-Corn Laws League established a new style of political struggle and can thus be considered groundbreaking.

With the reform of the election law of 1832, the bourgeoisie were able to establish a certain footing within parliament, but the Tories, representing the landowners, still boasted overwhelming power, and the Whigs, for their part, didn’t go beyond an enlightened standpoint of the old government. For this reason, in order to achieve its goal of totally abolishing the Corn Laws, it was necessary for the bourgeoisie to win the working class over to its side, and bring the force of mass pressure to bear on the old government.

From the beginning, Cobden and Bright strove to bring the working masses into their camp, but the year prior to the formation of the Anti-Corn Laws League in 1837, almost as if on cue, the Chartist movement emerged as the first independent political movement of the working class in the world. For this reason, the efforts of Cobden and Bright to win over the working class placed the emphasis on approaching the Chartist movement, and we will look at this in the next section.

5.  Piper Plays the Tune, but the Workers Don't Dance:
　−Catching on to the Deceit of the Anti-Corn Laws League

Since the bourgeoisie was compelled to involve the working class in the movement against the Corn Laws it was necessary for them to demonstrate the repeal of these laws was in the interest of the working class. This meant, however, that Ricardo’s schema demonstrating that “liberalization of corn imports a lower prices of corn a decreased wages a increased profits” was not suitable, since it clearly showed that the repeal of the Corn Laws ultimately served the interests of capital.

To respond to this, Cobden and others declared Ricardo’s law of an inverse relation between wages and profit a “fallacy,” and they struggled to cover up this “Achilles heel in the propaganda of the Anti-Corn Laws League. They proposed a new schema to replace that of Ricardo, wherein: “liberalization of corn imports a increase demand for English manufactured goods abroad a rise in commodity prices and increased profits a increase in demand for labor a increase in wages.” (Incidentally, the landowning class appropriated Ricardo’s schema to try to convince workers of the meaningless of repealing the Corn Laws.)

The new schema was based on the “theory of supply and demand” of Adam Smith, which Marx called a vulgar theory, but “by dint of repeating this theory day after day and year after year the official representatives of the League, shallow economists as they were, could at last come out with the astounding assertion that wages rose and fell in inverse ratio, not with profits, but with the price of food; that dear bread meant low wages and cheap bread high wages.” (Engels, “The Wages Theory of the Anti-Corn Law League”)

In this way, the Anti-Corn Law League, based on what was later called the Manchester School of (vulgar) economics, made it seem as if the repeal of the Corn Law was solely in the interests of the working class, and attempted to draw in the Chartist movement. However, the workers did not go along with the deceptive call of the bourgeoisie. This is because although Chartism brought to the forefront the demand for universal suffrage included in the “six points” (secret ballots, payment for MPs, etc.), this was not simply a movement demanding political democracy, but was “of essentially social character” (Engels). That is, for the working class the real task involved so-called “knife and fork question.”

In its initial stages, the Chartist movement mingled with the radical bourgeoisie, who, in line with the Anti-Corn Laws League, tried to make the repeal of the Corn Laws and struggle for free trade the main tasks of the movement.  But, as Engels wrote: 

“The Chartist working-men, on the contrary, espoused with redoubled zeal all the struggles of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie. Free competition has caused the workers suffering enough to be hated by them; its apostles, the bourgeoisie, are their declared enemies. The working-man has only disadvantages to await from the complete freedom of competition. The demands hitherto made by him, the Ten Hours’ Bill, protection of the workers against the capitalist, good wages, a guaranteed position, repeal of the New Poor Law, all of the things which belong to Chartism quite as essentially as the ‘Six Points,’ are directly opposed to free competition and Free Trade. No wonder, then, that the working-men will not hear of Free Trade and the repeal of the Corn Laws (a fact incomprehensible to the whole English bourgeoisie), and while at least wholly indifferent to the Corn Law question, are most deeply embittered against its advocates. This question is precisely the point at which the proletariat separates from the bourgeoisie, Chartism from Radicalism; and the bourgeois understanding cannot comprehend this, because it cannot comprehend the proletariat.” (Condition of the Working Class in England)

Of course this does not mean that workers are opposed to the repeal of the Corn Laws and free trade or that this would be justified. Rather, to borrow the words of Engels in latter years, spoke of the “Chartist opposition not to Free Trade but to the transformation of Free Trade into the one vital national question.” (“England in 1845 and 1885,” MECW vol. 26, p. 297) Engels argued that it was correct to not bury the independent class struggles of the workers against capital beneath the anti-Corn Law movement of the bourgeoisie. Even though workers do not oppose free trade in general, this does not mean that they actively support the movement of the liberal bourgeoisie, becoming its appendage or tail. This was the consistent view of Marx and Engels and we will look at this in more detail later.

In the midst of these developments, the Prime Minister Peel (Tory Party) attempted to ride out the situation by partially reforming the Corn Laws in 1841. Encouraged by this, the bourgeoisie employed deceitful tactics to encourage workers to riot the following year, but this did not turn out well for them.

“On this point the Anti-Corn Laws League miscalculated. The masses who were driven to riot by the league, which hoped to force the repeal of the corn laws, was not thinking at all about the Corn Laws. The masses were seeking 1840 wages (a return to pre-depression wage levels) and the People’s Charter. When the league became aware of this, their former friends became their enemies. The members of the league swore allegience to the special police, and in for the sake of suppressing the riots they aided the government to which they were hostile by organizing a special militia.” (Kumagai Jiro, A Study of the Economic Thought of the Manchester School)

With this incident the conflict between the Chartist and the Anti-Corn Law League became decisive. And the attempt by the bourgeoisie to win over the workers ended in failure.

6.  The Corn Laws are Ultimately Abolished: 
    −Victory of the Industrial Capitalists over the Rural Aristocracy

In the last section we saw how the riots of 1842 marked the parting of the ways between the Anti-Corn Laws League and the Chartist movement. The League, which had earned the hatred of the workers, even became unable to hold public meetings in factory districts. For this reason they were forced to focus their efforts mainly on agricultural regions and claimed “their only achievement” as “freeing tenant farmers from the spiritual influence of the landed aristocracy.”

“Up to now, no one has been so indifferent to political issues as the English tenant farmers, i.e., the entire agricultural section of the nation. As a matter of course, the landlord was a Tory and evicted every tenant who voted against the Tories at the parliamentary elections. The result was that the 252 Members of Parliament which the agricultural districts in the United Kingdom have to elect were, as a rule, almost all Tories. Now, however, due to the effect of the Corn Laws and the publications of the League, distributed in hundreds of thousands of copies, the tenant farmer has been awakened to political consciousness. He has realized that his interests are not identical with those of the landlord, but are directly opposed to them, and that to no one have the Corn Laws been more unfavorable than to himself. Hence a considerable change has taken place among tenant farmers. The majority of them are now Whigs” (Engels, “The Corn Laws”)

Due to the bountiful harvests from 1842 and the following year, there was a temporary lull in the situation. The critical moment came in 1845. That year marked a state of collapse, with a huge drop in English grain production due to heavy rain and the outbreak of a potato blight in Ireland. For these reasons, England was forced to import a large amount of grain. Ireland, for its part, was struck by horrible devastation, with mass starvation and large-scale migration to the United States, resulting in a halving of the population of 4 million.

Voices demanding for the “liberalization of corn imports” spread and the Anti-Corn Law League pressed the government for the immediate enactment of this. Given this situation, Prime Minister Peel decided in October 1845 to repeal of the Corn Laws, and the laws were repealed by parliament in June of the following year, thereby finally brining the Corn Laws to an end.

After some provisional measures, starting in 1849 English grain imports became subject to a nominal tariff, while the tariffs on some 1,150 products was removed. In 1849, the Navigation Acts, the other great pillar of mercantilism along with the Corn Laws, were repealed. The repeal of the Corn Laws thus marked the shift in England to a system of free trade.

The fierce struggle centering on the Corn Laws between the landowners and industrial bourgeoisie, since the time of the debate between Malthus and Ricardo thus ended with the victory of the industrial bourgeoisie. And this “was the victory of the manufacturing capitalists not only over the landed aristocracy, but over those sections of capitalists too whose interests were more or less bound up with the landed interest: bankers, stock-jobbers, fundholders, etc.” (“England in 1845 and 1885,” p. 296).

The fundamental cause leading to the victory of the industrial bourgeoisie in this class conflict spanning a quarter of a century was, needless to say, the rapid development of capitalism since the industrial revolution and the increased power of the industrial bourgeoisie. The reform of the election law in 1832 was the first victory of the ascending bourgeoisie, and already at this point no power could stem this historical current.

Indeed, the fact that a government led by the Tory party, the stronghold of the landowning class, was compelled to take the decisive action in repealing the Corn Laws eloquently speaks to this. As we have already seen, with the tenant farmers moving to the side of the Whigs, the base of support for the Tories was shaken and splits within the party were aggravated. And the party leader Peel himself, although a dyed-in-the-wool Tory, had class origins belonging to the industrial bourgeoisie (his father a great weaver in Lancaster). He openly said that “the prosperity of agriculture restricts the prosperity of industry, and that more than the Corn Laws, agriculture depends on the prosperity of industry,” (A Study of the Economic Thought of the Manchester School), and he was certain that agriculture (landowners) had no future without adapting to the rule of capital.

For this reason, members of the Tory old-guard, such as Disraeli, warned of “betrayal” from Peel, and true to their fears Peel allied with the Whigs with the aim of pushing through the parliament the repeal of the Corn Laws. Immediately following this, the old-guard=landowners joined the Whigs to topple the Peel government, and the following year, in 1847, established legislation for a 10-hour workday in the face of opposition from the bourgeoisie, thereby enacting “revenge” on them for the repeal of the Corn Laws, even thought they already had no hope of restoring these laws.

The significance of the repeal of the Corn Laws was of course not simply limited to the liberalization of imports. This was also the penetration of free trade and free competition, the free development of capitalism, and the removal of all barriers to these objectives, which resulted in a transformation of the entire social system. This symbolized the ultimate victory of the industrial bourgeoisie over the landed aristocracy, and the fact that they had risen to become the ruling class in both name and reality. Indeed, Engels pointed out that capital declared itself the ultimate power in England, and herein lies the historical significance of the repeal of the Corn Laws.

7.  Free Trade or Protectionism?
    −Fundamental Perspective of Marx and Engels

In this section I would like to introduce the views of Marx and Engels on the English Corn Laws and questions generally concerning the choice between free trade and protectionism.

As we have seen from various sources quoted already, from the early 1840s up until the end of their lives, Marx and Engels dealt with this topic on a number of occasions which addressed each important issue. In this short paper, however, I won’t be able to introduce all of these writings, and will instead mainly look at Marx’s famous “Lectures on the Question of Free Trade” and Engels’ preface to the American edition of “On Taxes and Free Trade,” which deal with this topic in a comprehensive way.

In the final chapter of his early work “A Characterization of Economic Romanticism,” Lenin looks at Marx’s “Speech on the Question of Free Trade” and contrasts the approach of Marxists to this problem with that of petty-bourgeois romanticists, making it an excellent source for deepening the understanding of Marx’s view. Lenin deals with the views of Sismondi and the Narodniks, but the views they express are the same sort of reactionary romanticism seen today in the standpoint of the JCP. For this reason, this work of Lenin’s is even more interesting to us and I would like to introduce this work later as well.

We need to begin by first grasping the angle from which Marx and Engels raised this issue, how the discussed it, and their most fundamental standpoint. In his preface to Marx’s lecture, Engels traces the changes in policy in Europe and North America regarding this issue in the forty years following the repeal of the English Corn Laws, and characterizes the new tendencies in the following way: 

“The question of Free Trade or Protection moves entirely within the bounds of the present system of capitalist production, and has, therefore, no direct interest for us socialists who want to do away with that system. Indirectly, however, it interests us inasmuch as we must desire as the present system of production to develop and expand as freely and as quickly as possible: because along with it will develop also those economic phenomena which are its necessary consequences, and which must destroy the whole system: misery of the great mass of the people, in consequence of overproduction. This overproduction engendering either periodical gluts and revulsions, accompanied by panic, or else a chronic stagnation of trade; division of society into a small class of large capitalist, and a large one of practically hereditary wage-slaves, proletarians, who, while their numbers increase constantly, are at the same time constantly being superseded by new labor-saving machinery; in short, society brought to a deadlock, out of which there is no escaping but by a complete remodeling of the economic structure which forms it basis. From this point of view, 40 years ago Marx pronounced, in principle, in favor of Free Trade as the more progressive plan, and therefore the plan which would soonest bring capitalist society to that deadlock.” (“Protection and Free Trade,” MECW vol. 26, p. 535)

This is the unchanging, fundamental perspective from which Marx and Engels discussed this question. Engels said that this problem was of “indirect interest” for the working class, but not of “direct interest,” because the choice of “free trade or protectionism” is a problem that “moves entirely within the bounds of the present system of capitalist production” That is, the choice between free trade or protectionism is determined by the particular development stage of capitalism in the country involved, as well as the global development of capitalism, and in either case amounts to nothing more than a method or policy implemented by the bourgeoisie of a country for the sake of expanding production and markets in a manner that best suits its own interests, in line with the particular conditions and power relations of the time. In this sense, there is no difference between the two. At any rate, the implementation of either policy depends on the class interests of capital, and to this extent even though the choice between free trade or protectionism is a vital question that impacts the interests of the bourgeoisie, the same is not true in the case of the working class.

At the same time, however, Engels emphasizes that this question is not a matter of indifference to the working class. He says this is because this issue has a large impact on the development of capitalist production and consequently on the development of the contradictions particular to it as well, and because the emancipation of the workers through the fundamental transformation of capitalism?which is the “direct issue of concern” for the working class?and the “fate” of capitalism, depends on the development of productive power under capitalistic production and the intensification of its inherent contradictions, and on the concomitant development of the class struggle. Therefore, in examining “the question of free trade or protectionism,” the working class must adopt this perspective of evaluating the issue in terms of the effect on the development of capitalistic production, and the promotion of the class struggles of the workers against capital. Herein lies the consistent and fundamental standpoint of Marx and Engels regarding this question.

8.  Protectionism is Already Reactionary:
　−Marx's Criticism of Protectionism

In September 1847, a “Free Trade Congress” was held in Brussels that brought together scholars, politicians, and industrialists from throughout Europe. The conference was held because the English bourgeoisie, which had won the repeal of the Corn Laws the previous year, was calling for the opening of European markets to English manufactured goods in return for having opened the English market to foreign grain, and this was one link in the “strategic maneuvers” (Engels) of the free trade movement they were advancing.

At the congress, the question of whether free trade is in the interests of the world (and in particular the interests of the working class) was debated by the participants from each country over a period of three days.  Marx’s name was also on the list of presenters at the congress, but fearing his damning criticism, the advocates of free trade brought the conference to an end before he had a chance to speak.  The conference closed with the adoption of a declaration stating that “Free Trade is extremely beneficial to the working people, and will free them from all misery and distress.”

For this reason, Marx gave the speech he was planning to present at this congress at the Democratic Association of Brussels in January of the following year. The Democratic Association of Brussels was an international organization of revolutionary democrats mainly composed of German exiles and Marx was one of the vice-chairmen.

In his speech, Marx was mainly compelled to criticize free trade since it was the object of such ridiculous fantasies at the time, but his brief, simple references to protectionism brilliantly unearth its essential nature they grasp its essential nature (This criticism is not contained in Marx’s “Speech,” but rather in the draft for the speech entitled “The Protectionists, the Free-Traders, and the Working Class,” and also appears in a speech by Marx that is included in Engels’ “The Free Trade Conference at Brussels,” and the citations below come from these works.)

Marx looks at the example of Germany in his criticism of protectionism, but he also says that there are two currents of protectionism, and he distinguishes between the two.

The first current involves the bourgeoisie who base themselves on the ideologue List, which Marx characterizes in the following way:

“The protectionists never protected small industry, handicraft proper…when they demanded protective tariffs they did so only in order to oust handicraft production with machines and patriarchal industry with modern industry. In a word, they wish to extend the dominion of the bourgeoisie, and in particular of the big industrial capitalists. They went so far as to proclaim aloud the decline and fall of small industry and the petty bourgeoisie, of small farming and the small peasants, as a sad but inevitable and, as far as the industrial development of Germany is concerned, necessary occurrence. (“The Protectionists, the Free-Traders, and the Working Class”)

The other protectionist current was composed of the petty bourgeoisie. This current said that “in List’s system the welfare of the working class is only a sham and a pretence,” Marx characterized this tendency as follows:

“The second school of protectionists, required not only protection, but absolute prohibition. They proposed to protect manual labour against the invasion of machinery, as well as against foreign competition. They proposed to protect by high duties, not only home manufactures, but also home agriculture, and the production of raw materials at home.” (“Speech of Dr. Marx on Protection, Free Trade, and the Working Classes,” in Engels’ “The Free Trade Conference at Brussels”)

As we can see, the views of this second tendency are the sort of thoroughgoing protectionism that the JCP is calling for and is the inevitable outcome of this sort of logic.

Marx said that ultimately the conclusions of this tendency lead to “not merely preventing the entry of foreign industrial products, but also hindering the progress of national industry” (Ibid) and after referring to this sort of closed-nation policy as an “illusion” he returns to the criticism of the first school of protectionism.

After sarcastically pointing out that although this first school’s view that “it is better to be exploited by one’s fellow-countrymen than by foreigners” is “indeed very patriotic,” for the workers “is little too ascetic and spiritual” for the workers, Marx adds that:  for people whose only occupation consists in the production of riches, of material wealth.”

“But the protectionists will say: ‘So when all is said and done we at least preserve the present state of society. Good or bad, we guarantee the laborer work for his hands, and prevent his being thrown on to the street by foreign competition.’ I shall not dispute this statement, I accept it. The preservation, the conservation of the present state of affairs is accordingly the best result the protectionists can achieve in the most favorable circumstances. Good, but the problem for the working class is not to preserve the present state of affairs, but to transform it into its opposite.” (“The Protectionists, the Free-Traders, and the Working Class”)

Marx then draws the following conclusion:

“From the moment the protectionists concede that social reforms have no place in their system and are not a result of it, and that they form a special question ? from this moment on they have already abandoned the social question.” (Ibid)

The perspective from which Marx criticizes protectionism is clear. This is the same fundamental perspective of Marx and Engels that we examined in the last section on the question of “free trade or protectionism.” In other words, Marx develops his criticism on the criterion of whether or not the development of capitalism and the class struggle is advanced, thereby hastening the social revolution closer.

In the section on primitive accumulation in Capital, Marx provides us with a historical definition of the “system of protection” as being “an artificial means of manufacturing manufacturers, of expropriating independent laborers, of capitalizing the national means of production and subsistence, of forcibly abbreviating the transition from the medieval to the modern mode of production.”

While recognizing that the protectionist system in German at the time (1847) only played a partial role (the German Tariff Union centering on Prussia that was created in Prussia in 1834 still existed), Marx declared that, in line with the global developmental stage of capitalism, this protectionist system had already generally become conservative and reactionary and that workers could not support it principally.

9.  Exposing the Hypocrisy of Free Trade Advocates:
    −Marx's Speech on Free Trade (1)

“The Repeal of the Corn Laws in England is the greatest triumph of free trade in the 19th century.” (This and subsequent citations are taken from “On the Question of Free Trade”)

This is how Marx began a speech on the question of free trade that he delivered to the Democratic Association of Brussels at a public meeting in January 1948. While thus recognizing the historical significance of the repeal of the Corn Laws, Marx thoroughly exposed the hypocrisy of the dogma spouted by the Anti-Corn Law League and other advocates of free trade in order to win the support of workers--such as the idea that the repeal of the Corn laws and free trade would be in the workers’ interest because it would lead to cheap food and high wages--and he clarified the influence that free trade would have on the situation of the working class

Marx says that no workers could trust the bourgeoisie, since “on the one hand, they nibble at the wages of the worker in the pettiest way, by means of factory regulations” while on the other hand they claim to be “undertaking the greatest sacrifices to raise those wages again by means of the Anti-Corn Law League.” Marx adds that:

“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.”

Marx then mentions what was said by one worker at a meeting of the Anti-Corn Law League as an example of the hostility of the working class towards the bourgeoisie:

“If the landlords were to sell our bones, you manufacturers would be the first to buy them in order to put them through a steam-mill and make flour of them.”

As we have already seen, the League relegated to the background Ricardo’s view of the antagonism between wages and profit, which they replaced with a different “argument,” which Marx, speaking for the “economists,” sums up in the following way:

“Well, we admit that competition among the workers, which will certainly not have diminished under free trade, will very soon bring wages into harm, only with the low price of commodities.  But, on the other hand, the low price of commodities will increase consumption, the larger consumption will require increased production, which will be followed by a larger demand for hands, and this larger demand for hands will be followed by a rise in wages.”

In response to this, Marx offers the following criticism. The passage is quite long, but since this is a view that is important for our understanding of the workers movement in general I will quote it in its entirety: 

“The whole line of argument amounts to this: Free trade increases productive forces.  If industry keeps growing, if wealth, if the productive power, if, in a word, productive capital increases, the demand for labor, the price of labor, and consequently the rate of wages, rise also.

“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.”

Marx then adds:

“The growth of productive capital, which forces the industrial capitalists to work with constantly increasing means, ruins the small industrialist and throws them into the proletariat…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.”

Marx concludes that:

“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.”

This is in fact the fate of the working class under capitalism.  Even supposing that the schema of the free traders according to which “the liberalization of the market a fall in prices a increase in consumption a expanded production a increased demand for labor,” which is that this is the “most favorable condition for the worker,” this remains the fate that of the workers.  The hypocrisy of the arguments of the free-traders should be clear.

Such views, however, are not the exclusive property of the free traders of Marx’s time, but are rather still being repeated by bourgeois trade unionists today.  The view that workers must cooperate with management for the sake of the expansion of production and prosperity of capital, which will in turn lead to their own happiness, is basically the same as the above schema of the free traders.  A look at the situation facing workers in Japan shows us where such ideas lead, and this is precisely how Marx envisaged it occurring.

10.  Why "Support in Principle":
      −Marx's Speech on Free Trade (2)

Let’s examine further Marx’s speech on free trade. 

Marx criticized another hypocritical argument peddled by the free traders, which sought to “palliate” the workers by telling them that although it is true that the development of the division of labor and machinery will displace many older male workers from factories in favor of unskilled female and child workers, those that lose their jobs will probably find others.  Marx says that this “whole doctrine of compensation” amounts to the following:

“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?” (“On the Question of Free Trade”)

In this way, Marx thoroughly exposed the hypocrisy of the advocates of free trade who said that free trade would bring about a dramatic improvement in the condition of the working class.

(In subsequent years Marx and Engels often heaped scorn on those who viewed free trade as a cure-all, and in his 1864 “Inaugural Address of the First International,” Marx exposed the fact that, ultimately, this comes down to the accumulation of wealth for capital at one pole, and the immiseration of labor at the other pole. In his 1848 speech “On the Question of Free Trade, Marx makes it clear that law of capitalism in which “the working class will have maintained itself as a class after enduring any amount of misery and misfortune, and after leaving many corpses upon the industrial battlefield,” becomes increasingly certain with the realization of free trade, and he concludes his speech as follows:  

“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.”

Marx says that in the case of free trade and free competition, “freedom” means nothing more than the “freedom of capital to crush the worker,” and the idea that free trade and the international division of labor allows “each country the production which is most in harmony with its natural advantage” really amounts to calling “cosmopolitan exploitation universal brotherhood.” Marx warns workers: “Do not allow yourselves to be deluded by the abstract word freedom! At the same time, Marx emphasizes that the repeal of the Corn Laws means the elimination of those other elements that the bourgeoisie could blame for the wretched condition of the working class so that the conflict between capital and wage labor assumed a more pure and open form?and this precisely is the significance of free trade according to Marx. And Marx underlines this point, saying: “Do not imagine, gentlemen, that in criticizing freedom of trade we have the least intention of defending the system of protection.” He ends his speech with the following:

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

“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.” 

As we have seen, Marx does not mechanically or absolutely juxtapose free trade and protectionism, but rather grasps their reciprocal relationship in a dialectical historical way, elucidating the fact that in the world-historical stage of capitalism of the time, protectionism had already become “conservative” and free trade unavoidable, and it had become clear that with the development of capitalism and emergence of enormous productive power, that free trade would further propel the development of capitalism, foster the emergence of enormous productive power and the contradictions particular to capitalism, and intensify the class struggle.  Marx indicates that the only possible solution to these contradictions is social revolution, and expresses an attitude of support to free trade only for this “revolutionary” reason, or to the words of Engels, because “free trade is the natural, the normal atmosphere for this historical evolution, the economic medium in which the conditions for the inevitable social revolution will be the soonest created” (Engels’ 1888 preface to “On the Question of Free Trade”).

In the next section the significance of Marx’s approach to the question of free trade will become clearer when we examine a work by Lenin that contrasts this approach to that of Sismondi and the Narodniks.

11.  Marxism and Romanticism:
     −Lenin's View of the Corn Laws Issue (1)

In the last chapter of Lenin’s book A Characterization of Economic Narodism, In which he criticizes the economic theories of the Narodniks who adhered to the views of Sismondi (18th century petty-bourgeois Swiss economist and creator of the theory of “underconsumption”), Lenin takes up the issue of the Corn Laws and their repeal, and throws into bold relief the fundamentally different approach of Marx and Sismondi concerning this “practical problem” that is also “one of the biggest, most fundamental problems of capitalism.”

In the final two sections of this paper, I would like to introduce Lenin’s book, which clarifies the method and characteristics of the Marxist theory concerning the issue of free trade..

In his work published in 1827, Nouveaux Principes d’Economie Politique, Sismondi refers to the English Corn Laws. Lenin says that Sismondi, like Marx, recognizes that the issue of the Corn Laws “was by no means a specific problem relating to tariff policy, but the general problem of Free Trade, of free competition, of the ‘destiny of capitalism.’” (Lenin).

However, Sismondi “overlooks the general trend of capitalist development in agriculture and the inevitable acceleration of this process with the repeal of the Corn Laws,” and equates the decline of the small tenant farmer resulting from the liberalization of agricultural imports with the general decline of agriculture in England. His argument is as follows:

“What will become of the 540,000 families who will be denied work?  Even assuming that they will be fit for any kind of industrial work, is there, at the present time, an industry capable of absorbing them?…Can a government be found that will voluntarily subject half the nation it governs to such a crisis?…Will those to whom the agriculturists are thus sacrificed benefit by it to any extent? After all, these agriculturists are the nearest and most reliable consumers of English manufactures. The cessation of their consumption would strike industry a blow more fatal than the closing of one of the biggest foreign markets”

In this way, Sismondi notes his concern that the repeal of the Corn Laws would lead to the “shrinking of the home market,” cries out about the “dangers” of the system of capitalist agriculture and how it is “dangerous to subordinate the whole of agriculture to a system of speculation,” “resorts to every possible argument,” including “the threatening competition of Polish and Russian grain” and the theory of food security (worrying about what would become of “England’s honor” if the Emperor of Russia were in a position to cut off grain exports to gain concessions), argues that the repeal of the Corn Laws even harmed the interests of industrial capitalists, calls the path being followed by the “English fatherland” a “wrong one,” demands measures to “raise the significance of the small farms,” and emphasizes the importance of a self-sufficient lifestyle.

However, “when [Sismondi] dropped from his world of fantasy into the maelstrom of real life and conflict of interests, he did not even have a criterion of how concrete problems are to be solved,” and ultimately he is unable to offer any real solution. Lenin characterizes the impotence of Sismondi’s “romanticism” in the following way:

“Recall how easily and simply romanticism “solved” all problems in “theory"! Protection is unwise, capitalism is a fatal blunder, the road England has taken is wrong and dangerous, production must keep in step with consumption, while industry and commerce must keep in step with agriculture, machines are advantageous only when they lead to a rise in wages or to a reduction of the working day, means of production should not be alienated from the producer, exchange must not run ahead of production, must not lead to speculation, and so on, and so forth. Romanticism countered every contradiction with an appropriate sentimental phrase, answered every question with an appropriate innocent wish, and called the sticking of these labels upon all the facts of current life a “solution” to the problems.”

There is of course a big difference between the tenant farmers (capitalist farmers) that predominated in England in Sismondi’s time and the family farmers prevalent in Japan today, but still it is striking how the views of the JCP resemble those of Sismondi. If the followers of Sismondi in Russia were the Narodniks, in contemporary Japan they are undoubtedly the members of the JCP.

Like the Narodniks, the JCP opposes the liberalization of agricultural imports because it would ruin the small-scale family, viewing this as equivalent to the decline of agriculture in Japan in general.  They declare that the liberalization policies of the bourgeois government are “mistaken,” mobilize every sort of argument, starting with the concept of “food security,” to support this position, shout so energetically about measures to protect small farmers and achieve food self-sufficiency that they put Sismondi to shame, and generally clamor for retrograde, reactionary policies that ultimately would not salvage the workers or the even the farmers (and are only intended to win the popularity of the latter).  In terms of treating these policies as some sort of arbitrary “choice” unrelated to the developmental stage of capitalism and its real relations, the JCP are truly petty-bourgeois romanticists. In short, the scornful criticism heaped on the Narodniks can, in terms of its most fundamental points, also be directed against the Japanese Communist Party.

12.  The Core of the Marxist Method:
　 −Lenin's View of the Corn Laws Issue (2)

In examining Sismondi’s views, Lenin draws from Marx’s “Speech on Free Trade,” and compares Sismondi’s method to Marx’s approach to the problem.

Lenin first of all points out that Marx’s “very presentation of the problem is quite different from that of Sismondi.” The task Marx proposed was “firstly, to explain the attitude of the different classes of English society towards the problem from the angle of their interests; and secondly, to throw light on the significance of the reform in the general evolution of the English social economy.” Unlike Sismondi, who abstractly posed the problem in terms of what path England should choose, Lenin says that Marx “forthwith presents the question on the basis of the present-day social and economic system” and asks himself “what must be the next step in the development of this system following the repeal of the Corn Laws?”

Marx’s response to the question he poses here is different from Sismondi, in that he expected that the repeal of the Corn Laws would not lead to the decline of English agriculture, but rather promote its capitalistic development, and Lenin says that “history has confirmed his forecast.” Lenin next points out that Marx, like Sismondi, also “admits that the ruination of the small farmers and the impoverishment of the workers in industry and agriculture will be the inevitable consequences of Free Trade,” so that it seems at first glance that Marx has slipped into the same “hopeless dilemma” as Sismondi. In fact, however, this is not the case, and Lenin stresses that it is here that “the radical difference between the new theory and romanticism begins.” That is: “The romanticist turns from the concrete problems of actual development to dreams, whereas the realist takes the established facts as his criterion in definitely solving the concrete problem.”

Lenin then provides a detailed examination of the passage of Marx’s speech that we have already introduced concerning the influence that free trade has on the development of capitalism and the conditions of the working class, and after citing the conclusion that “Free Trade signifies nothing but freedom for the development of capital,” he says that Marx, by means of this sort of scientific analysis of capitalist reality, “was able to find a criterion for the solution of the problem.”

“The criterion is the development of the productive forces. It was immediately evident that the problem was treated from the historical angle: instead of comparing capitalism with some abstract society as it should be (i.e., fundamentally with a utopia), the author compared it with the preceding stages of social economy, compared the different stages of capitalism as they successively replaced one another, and established the fact that the productive forces of society develop thanks to the development of capitalism. By applying scientific criticism to the arguments of the Free Traders he was able to avoid the mistake usually made by the romanticists who, denying that the arguments have any importance, “throw out the baby with the bath water"; he was able to pick out their sound kernel, i.e., the undoubted fact of enormous technical progress.”

Here we have what can be called the core of Marx’s method of approaching the question of free trade.“The development of the productive forces of society though the development of capitalism”--on the basis of this scientific criterion, one can uncover, within the necessary historical process of intensified capitalist contradictions, the development of the class struggle, and the inescapable arrival of social revolution, fundamental solution to the question of free trade.

Of course, Romanticists who lack this perspective (such as Sismondi, the Narondiks, and JCP members) could only conclude, to borrow the words of Lenin, that Marx had “openly taken the side of big capital against the small producer” and was nothing more than “an apologist of money power.” They are utterly incapable of understanding that “to admit that big capital is progressive as compared with small production, is very, very far from being ‘apologetics’” and that Marx “described the contradictions that accompany the development of big capital much more exactly, fully, straightforwardly and frankly than the romanticists ever did.” Unlike the romanticists, Marx “never descended to uttering a single sentimental phrase bewailing this development” and “never uttered a word anywhere about a possibility of ‘diversion from the path.’” -- Herein lies the decisive difference between Marx and the romanticists.

Lenin ends this discussion by saying that, “the above-mentioned fully scientific criterion enabled [Marx] to solve this problem while remaining a consistent realist” and he offers the following explanation of the concluding party of Marx’s speech (already quoted in the section ten):

“‘Do not imagine, gentlemen,’ said the speaker, ‘that in criticizing freedom of trade we have the least intention of defending the system of protection.’ And he went on to point out that under the contemporary system of social economy both Free Trade and protection rested on the same basis, briefly referred to the ‘breaking-up’ process of the old economic life and of the old semi-patriarchal relationships in West-European countries carried through by capitalism in England and on the Continent, and indicated the social fact that under certain conditions Free Trade hastens this ‘break-up.’ And he concluded with the words: “It is in this sense alone, gentlemen, that I vote in favor of Free Trade.”

In this series of twelve articles, we have traced the history of the English Corn Laws and considered the standpoint of workers towards protectionism and free trade.  It is clear that workers cannot generally support protectionism, but on the other hand, even though workers support free trade in principle, this does not mean that workers must tail after the economic liberalization and rationalization of the bourgeoisie.  In order to avoid slipping into this tendency or deviation, it is essentially to have a solid understanding of the Marxist perspective on the issue of free trade.