Lenin notes Sismondi's comments, which would not be out of place today amongst the opponents of globalisation, and just in time production.
“What will become of England’s honour if the Emperor of Russia is in a position, whenever be wishes, to obtain some concession or other from her, to starve her by closing the Baltic ports?” (p 255)
Of course, for a relatively small country, especially an island, such as Britain, such strategic issues cannot be ignored, but, today, it illustrates precisely why the answer lies not in the idiocy of autarky, and self-sufficiency, but in the joining together with others in the EU, or similar multinational blocs, in ensuring that both the advantages of free trade, and strategic security can be obtained.
“The concrete problem evoked by the conflict of definite interests in a definite system of economy is thus submerged in a flood of innocent wishes! But the interested parties themselves raised the issue so sharply that to confine oneself to such a “solution” (as romanticism does on all other problems) became utterly impossible.” (p 256)
So too was the abstentionist position of the CPGB in the Brexit debate. For Sismondi, the question resolved itself into a policy issue that involved damaging either the agricultural workers or the industrial workers, though he concludes that damaging the former means also damaging the latter, for the reasons described. So, he puts forward a compromise solution, whereby the Corn Laws would be modified but not repealed. It demonstrates the bankruptcy of romanticism when faced with a sharp practical issue.
“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. It is not surprising that these solutions were so charmingly simple and easy: they ignored only one little circumstance—the real interests, the conflict of which constituted the contradiction.” (p 257)
The same can be seen with the approach of romanticists today, for example, the position of liberal interventionists, who tell us that, when imperialism intervenes militarily across the globe, it does not have to inevitably result in it acting in its own interests, or committing atrocities to that end, and so on.
Lenin then turns to the method of Marx in dealing with the question of free trade. From the start, he approaches it not abstractly, not as a policy question, but as a question that is determined by the interests of different social classes.
“On January 9, 1848, Karl Marx delivered a “speech on Free Trade” at a public meeting in Brussels. Unlike the romanticists, who declared that “political economy is not a science of calculation, but a science of morality,” he took as the point of departure of his exposition precisely the plain and sober calculation of interests.” (p 258)
Marx shows how it is a conflict of interest between landowners and manufacturers. Both attempt to present their interest as the national interest, but landowners sought to preserve high prices as the basis of high rents and land prices, which was the basis of their power, whereas manufacturers sought lower raw material and food prices, to boost their profits and rate of profit.
“Unlike the romanticists, who had presented the problem in the shape of the considerations which a legislator must have in mind when carrying out the reform, the speaker reduced the problem to the conflict between the real interests of the different classes of English society. He showed that the entire problem sprang from the necessity of cheapening raw materials for the manufacturers. He described the distrust of the English workers who regarded “these self-sacrificing gentlemen, Bowring, Bright and their colleagues, as their worst enemies. . . .”” (p 258)
The same was true with the Brexit debate. The working-class had no reason to align themselves with the view put forward by the liberals/conservative social democrats, who sought to remain in the EU, on its existing capitalist basis, but they had even less reason to align themselves with the reactionary views put by the Brexiters and Lexiters, which sought to return to an even less mature form of capitalism, based on the interests of the petty-bourgeoisie. A key requirement of moving forward is not to move backwards.
Marx noted that the workers understood the basis of the debate, despite all the money the manufacturers put into their propaganda.
“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.” (p 258-9)
Nevertheless, the workers understood that to move forward, its necessary not to move backwards, and so, whilst they were not duped by the manufacturers' claims, they still allied with them against the landlords, and those that Marx and Engels describe, in The Communist Manifesto as Feudal Socialists.
“The aristocracy, in order to rally the people to them, waved the proletarian alms-bag in front for a banner. But the people, so often as it joined them, saw on their hindquarters the old feudal coats of arms, and deserted with loud and irreverent laughter.
One section of the French Legitimists and “Young England” exhibited this spectacle.
In pointing out that their mode of exploitation was different to that of the bourgeoisie, the feudalists forget that they exploited under circumstances and conditions that were quite different and that are now antiquated. In showing that, under their rule, the modern proletariat never existed, they forget that the modern bourgeoisie is the necessary offspring of their own form of society.
For the rest, so little do they conceal the reactionary character of their criticism that their chief accusation against the bourgeois amounts to this, that under the bourgeois régime a class is being developed which is destined to cut up root and branch the old order of society.
What they upbraid the bourgeoisie with is not so much that it creates a proletariat as that it creates a revolutionary proletariat.”
(Marx – The Communist Manifesto)
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