The protectionists have never protected small industry, handicraft 
proper. Have Dr. List and his school in Germany by any chance 
demanded protective tariffs for the small linen industry, for hand 
loom-weaving, for handicraft production? No, 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. 

Besides the school of Dr. List there exists in Germany, the land of 
schools, yet another school, which demands not merely a system of 
protective tariffs, but a system of import prohibition proper. The 
leader of this school, Herr v. Gulich, has written a very scholarly 
history of industry and trade,’ which has also been translated into 
French. Herr v. Gulich is a sincere philanthropist; he is in earnest 
with regard to protecting handicraft production and national labour. 
Well now! What did he do? He began by refuting Dr. List, proved 
that in List’s system the welfare of the working class is only a sham 
and a pretence, a ringing piece of hollow rhetoric, and then, for his 
part, he made the following proposals: 

1. To prohibit the importation of foreign manufactured products; 

* G. Gilich, Geschichtliche Darstellung des Handels, der Gewerbe und des Ackerbaus der 
bedeutendsten handeltreibenden Staaten unserer Zett.— Ed. 

2. to place very heavy import duties on raw materials originating 
abroad, like cotton, silk etc., etc., in order to protect wool and 
nationally produced linen; 

3. likewise on colonial products, in order to replace sugar, coffee, 
indigo, cochineal, valuable timbers etc., etc., with national 
products; 

4. to place high taxes on nationally produced machines, in order 
to protect handicraft production against the machine. 

It is evident that Herr v. Gulich is a man who accepts the system 
with all its consequences. And what does this lead to? Not merely 
preventing the entry of foreign industrial products, but also 
hindering the progress of national industry. 

Herr List and Herr v. Gulich form the limits between which the 
system moves. If it wishes to protect industrial progress, then it at 
once sacrifices handicraft production, labour; if it wishes to protect 
labour, then industrial progress is sacrificed. 

Let us return to the protectionists proper, who do not share the 
illusions of Herr v. Giilich. 

If they speak consciously and openly to the working class, then 
they summarise their philanthropy in the following words: It is 
better to be exploited by one’s fellow-countrymen than by foreigners. 

I do not think the working class will be for ever satisfied with this 
solution, which, it must be confessed, is indeed very patriotic, but 
nonetheless a little too ascetic and spiritual 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 labourer 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 favourable 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 have one last refuge. They say that their system 
makes no claim to be a means of social reform, but that it is 
nonetheless necessary to begin with social reforms in one’s own 
country, before one embarks on economic reforms internationally. 
After the protective system has been at first reactionary, then 
conservative, it finally becomes conservative-progressive. It will 
suffice to point out the contradiction lurking in this theory, which at 
first sight appears to have something seductive, practical and rational 
to it. A strange contradiction! The system of protective tariffs 

The Protectionists, the Free Traders and the Working Class 281 

places in the hands of the capital of one country the weapons which 
enable it to defy the capital of other countries; it increases the 
strength of this capital in opposition to foreign capital, and at the 
same time it deludes itself that the very same means will make that 
same capital small and weak in opposition to the working class. In the 
last analysis that would mean appealing to the philanthropy of capi- 
tal, as though capital as such could be a philanthropist. In general, 
social reforms can never be brought about by the weakness of the 
strong; they must and will be called to life by the strength of the 
weak. 

Incidentally, we have no need to detain ourselves with this matter. 
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. I shall accordingly leave the 
protectionists aside and speak of Free Trade in its relationship to the 
condition of the working class. 

of September 1847 edition 

Frethandels- und Schutzzollfrage von Karl time 

Marx, Hamm, 1848