Engels and International Trade Policy

I devote this appendix to Engels's position on international trade, extending the discussion in Chapter Five, pp. 232–3 regarding principles of reform. I take note first of his review in 1888 of Marx's position of the 1840s: “[B]ecause Free Trade is the natural, the normal atmosphere for this historical evolution” – the process described by Marx – “the economic medium in which the conditions for the inevitable social revolution will be the soonest created, – for this reason, and for this alone, did Marx declare in favor of Free Trade” (“Protection and Free Trade” (1888; MECW 26: 524; see editorial note MECW 6: 696 n. 246). By insisting on this feature, Engels implies that at other periods or places the same objective might not justify free trade.

Consider a letter to Bebel in Berlin of 8 March 1892. Here Engels remarks that “unemployment [in Germany] might well get worse next year. For protectionism has had exactly the same effect as free trade – the flooding of individual national markets and this almost everywhere, although it's not so bad over here as where you are” (MECW 49: 373).