Is this quotation from Engels supposed to be a damning condemnation of tariffs today? If you think so, you are mistaken. Read the cited essay; it is a series of observations of tariffs under different conditions, analyzing the specifics of each case. It is not a small set of principles to varied instances.
The condition today is globalization, which at its core is capital's transfer of production to a lower wage country. U.S. workers are right to oppose it. Tariffs are one tool against it, that is, “a Wage Gap Tariff (WGT) – a charge on imports equal to the gap between the wage paid the workers who made the product in China or wherever and the U.S. wage. If it took two hours to make the product, multiply the hourly wage gap by two, and that is the charge per item. A WGT tells businesses that it will not pay to bring in products whose principal market advantage is cheap labor.” (“ Trade, Trump, and Us ( https://mltoday.com/trade-trump-and-us/ ) ” – this essay also exposes Trump’s game on this topic when he first ran for president.) And U.S. workers are right to fight globalization as part of the international working class. Pushing U.S. workers down in order to hasten capitalist development in China, Bangladesh, the Philippines or wherever is not a communist principle. It is a petty bourgeois moral stand, most common among educated professionals who have much less to fear from globalization but want to feel good about themselves. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#33724): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/33724 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/109762258/21656 -=-=- POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. #4 Do not exceed five posts a day. -=-=- Group Owner: [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/13617172/21656/1316126222/xyzzy [[email protected]] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
