129 years ago, Friedrich Engels died.

"Let us always honour the memory of Frederick Engels, a great fighter and teacher of the proletariat!"

Lenin wrote this 129 years ago in his famous eulogy, which the Comintern (SH) has published in 20 languages ​​of the world.

On occasion of the 129th Day of Death the Comintern (SH) publishes an article on:

Marx and Engels

ON PROTECTIVE TARIFFS

AND

FREE TRADE

(all sources from the German edition of the MEW)

Today, in the age of globalisation, the world bourgeoisie is pushing to abolish the national fragmentation of the means of production and to concentrate the property of the world's population in a few hands of the super-rich. The necessary consequence of this is globalised political centralisation, where tariffs serve the global class interests of the entire world bourgeoisie. In the quest for world domination, not only do two imperialist world camps face each other with a devastating policy of protective tariffs (USA-China), but even within their own world camp, the countries affiliated to it impose protective tariffs on each other.

Protective tariffs are not only at the expense of the proletariat of an affected country, but also at the expense of the world proletariat and all other labourers in the world.

Ultimately, tariffs serve to subjugate the world proletariat under the globalised system of exploitation and oppression of world imperialism. The fact that world imperialism cannot resolve its internal contradictions peacefully through tariffs can be seen in the current trade wars and their escalation into a Third World War.

With its protective tariff system, world imperialism is calling itself into question, jeopardising and destroying its own continued existence.

How does world imperialism overcome its protective tariff system? By creating an ever more powerful protective tariff system.

Using protective tariffs to harm each other and thus the entire capitalist world system instead of protecting it works into the hands of us Stalinist-Hoxhaists and eases our arduous path to world socialism.

"But the bourgeoisie has not only forged the weapons that bring it death. It has also begotten the men who will wield these weapons - the modern workers, the proletarians." (from: Marx and Engels: "Manifesto of the Communist Party")

And in the "Manifesto of the Communist Party" it says in the chapter on bourgeois socialism:

"Free trade ! in the interest of the labouring class; protective tariffs ! in the interest of the labouring class; cellular prisons ! in the interest of the labouring class.

That is the last, the only serious word of bourgeois socialism. The socialism of the bourgeoisie consists precisely in the assertion that the bourgeoisie are bourgeois - in the interests of the labouring class."

MEW Volume 4, pages 443 - 458

In his speech on the question of free trade on 9 January 1848 at the Democratic Society in Brussels, Marx said:

"If the free traders cannot understand how one country can enrich itself at the expense of another, we need not be surprised at this, since the same gentlemen are still less willing to understand how, within one country, one class can enrich itself at the expense of another. But do not think, gentlemen, that when we criticise freedom of trade we intend to defend the protective tariff system. Today, the protective tariff system is generally conservative, while the free trade system is destructive. It replaces the previous nationalities and pushes the opposition between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie to the extreme. In a word, the system of free trade accelerates the social revolution. And it is only in this revolutionary sense, gentlemen, that I vote in favour of free trade."

Friedrich Engels later wrote about this in 1888:

"If nowadays a country adopts free trade, it will certainly not do so as a favour to the socialists, but because free trade has become a necessity for the industrial capitalists. But if it rejects free trade and clings to tariff protection in order to cheat the socialists out of their expected social catastrophe, no one is more cheated than the country itself. The protective tariff is a means of artificially fabricating manufacturers and therefore also a means of artificially fabricating wage labourers. If you breed the one, you breed the other. ... You have no choice but to further develop the capitalist system. Whether you take the customs-protected or the free-trade road will make no difference to the result and hardly any difference to the length of time you have until the result occurs. For long before that, customs protection will have become an intolerable fetter for every country that is striving for an independent position on the world market with any prospect of success." (Friedrich Engels, Schutzzoll und Freihandel, MEW, Volume 21, page 375)

In: German Ideology - Chapter 1. Feuerbach, Marx and Engels divide the development of protective tariffs into three historical periods:

In the first period, protective tariffs appeared in the competitive struggle between different nations, which gave the emerging world trade its political significance. Trade and manufacture created the great bourgeoisie.

The customs duties arose from the taxes imposed by the feudal lords on the merchants travelling through their territory as a purchase of plunder, taxes which were later also imposed by the cities and which, with the emergence of modern states, were the nearest means for the treasury to obtain money." ("German Ideology, MEW, Vol. 3, pp. 56-57)

The second period began in the middle of the seventeenth century and lasted almost until the end of the eighteenth century. Here the English Navigation Act prevailed, the power of the English fleet to control world trade (- concentration of world trade in one country). The so-called differential tariffs charged goods of the same type differently according to their country of origin. They served to favour shipping, industry and trade in their own country. In the second period, capital still moved quite slowly due to the fragmentation of the world market into individual parts, the exclusion of competition between nations and the monetary system, which developed only slowly from the first period.

In the third period, competition soon forced every country that wanted to retain its historical role to protect itself with new tariffs, because the old tariffs no longer helped against the emergence of large-scale industry:

"In spite of these means of protection, large-scale industry universalised competition (it is the practical freedom of trade, the protective tariff is in it only a palliative [= palliative - editor], a counteraction in the freedom of trade), produced the means of communication and the modern world market, subjugated trade, transformed all capital into industrial capital and thus produced the rapid circulation and centralisation of capital. It created world history in so far as it made every civilised nation and every individual in it dependent on the whole world for the satisfaction of its needs and destroyed the hitherto natural exclusiveness of individual nations." (ibid. page 58 - 60)

The problem of protective tariff policy cannot be solved within national walls. Only when the class war of one country turns into the global class war, only when the world proletariat has defeated the world bourgeoisie on a world scale, when the world market has fallen into the hands of the world proletariat, when the world socialist revolution has triumphed and the world socialist republic has been founded, will there be no more room for the capitalist protective customs policy.

We Stalinists-Hoxhaists distinguish two other periods of protective measures of the economy - under the conditions of socialism.

The first was the protection of the economy of the Soviet state and the socialist Albanian state from the penetration of foreign capital through the creation of the monopoly of foreign trade under the dictatorship of the proletariat - namely, under the conditions of the simultaneous existence of capitalism and socialism in the world (peaceful coexistence).

And the last period is the period of world socialism, where the protective customs policy of world capitalism has been suspended and where it is only a matter of eliminating the last remnants of the protective customs policy from the old world.

In world communism there are no more nations and therefore no need for protective measures of one nation against those of other nations.

Friedrich Engels , MEW; Volume 1, pages 457-458

from: The Internal Crisis

In order to protect the source of its wealth, the industrialised state must keep the industrial products of other countries away from itself with prohibitive tariffs. Since, however, domestic industry raises the prices of its products by means of customs duties on foreign products, it is also necessary here to continually increase customs duties so that foreign competition remains excluded in accordance with the assumed principle. Thus, from two sides, an endless process would result, and the contradiction inherent in the concept of the industrialised state is already apparent here.

This repression is ... The fault of the prohibitive system, which has raised the prices of all necessities of life and with them the wages of labour to a disproportionate height. Industry enriches a country, but it also creates a class of non-owners, of absolute paupers, living from hand to mouth, which cannot be abolished afterwards, a class which multiplies rapidly because it can never acquire stable property. The slightest stagnation in trade makes a large part of this class, a great commercial crisis makes the whole class breadless. But the benefit that has resulted for the dispossessed remains. It is the realisation that a revolution by peaceful means is an impossibility, and that only a violent upheaval of the existing unnatural conditions, a radical overthrow of the aristocracy and industrial aristocracy can improve the material situation of the proletarians. In a short period of general breadlessness of the proletarians, the fear of starvation will be stronger than the fear of the law. This revolution ... is inevitable ..., but as in everything ... interests, and not principles, will start and carry out this revolution. Only from the interests can the principles develop, that is, the revolution will not be a political but a social one.

The so-called material interests can never appear in history as independent, guiding purposes, but they always serve, unconsciously or consciously, a principle that guides the threads of historical progress."

Friedrich Engels wrote this remarkable commitment to the inevitable and armed proletarian revolution as early as 30 November and 10 December 1842 (!) in the "Rheinische Zeitung" No. 343 and 344 - 6 years before the "Manifesto of the Communist Party" appeared.

This quote conveys the revolutionary and militant spirit of Marxism when it was still in its infancy. And Marxism cannot become obsolete, because it is and remains a guide to creative research and active, revolutionary action.

In this sense, Lenin further developed Marxism under imperialist conditions. And the two following classics, Josef Stalin and Enver Hoxha, as well as the Comintern (SH), constantly added new insights to this enormous edifice of Marxism-Leninism. The teachings of Marx and Engels continue to be enriched, supplemented and at the same time confirmed anew by every scientific discovery. Therein lies the global significance of Marxism for the history of the development of humanity as a whole, its inexhaustible vitality and topicality.

After the death of Friedrich Engels, the opportunists in the labour movement attempted to strip the teachings of Marxism of their revolutionary content and carried bourgeois ideologies into the working class. This temporary victory of the opportunist forces at the expense of the teachings of the founders of Marxism was one of the main reasons why the world bourgeoisie was able to drive the workers against each other into the First World War and prevent the victory of the world revolution. But the First World War did not lead to the destruction of Marxism, but to its victory in the October Revolution of Lenin and Stalin and thus to the beginning of the world socialist revolution.

Today's process of world socialist revolution and Stalinism-Hoxhaism as the current highest stage of Marxism-eninism cannot be destroyed. This would require the destruction of the world proletariat itself. But instead of destroying this gravedigger of capitalism, the world bourgeoisie will have enlarged the army of the world proletariat until the day when it has triumphed over world capitalism, built first world socialism and then world communism.

Long live the 129th anniversary of the death of Friedrich Engels, the 2nd classic of Marxism-Leninism!

Long live the invincible teachings of the 5 classics of Marxism-Leninism:

Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin and Enver Hoxha!

Long live the armed, proletarian, world socialist revolution and the armed dictatorship of the world proletariat!

Long live world socialism and world communism!

Long live the Comintern (SH)!

Wolfgang Eggers

Comintern (SH)

05. 08. 2024