Coincidentally I was doing a Google search and came across this contribution to LBO-talk in October 2001 by Greg Schofield, which seems to put the issue well.
[Unfortunately his email address no longer seems to be working. If anyone can forward me his current address, I would be grateful.]
The so-called free trade of the present period is no more than international capital giving itself the freedom to price fix unhindered, the freedom to exercise its plans without let, the freedom to use one group of workers to compete against another on a world scale. There is a historically progressive side to this and abstract opposition or support is niether here nor there. Now turn to the practical side of things. Yes we should surely call for democratic institutions which somehow bring order to this world. But to make any such demand within the "Empire" requires having a base amongst real people who live in realo states. There is no reason why this should not be an international movement, but it would have to be an international movement which focuses on the nation state and brings up practical demands on how that state should be run and how production should be conducted. "Counter-Empire" begins at home. Unless we have practical things to say what should be done with the resources at hand, with the state we have and prodution as it is, then we have very little to say to ordinary people. Some of these things, once conjured up out of the contradictions of national life, will not be compatible to "Free World Trade" as big capital would have it - some will but many will not.
It is not Marx's quote about being in favour of free trade because it fosters the capitalist mode of production and hence the conditions for liberation, but his demand in the Communist Manifesto that we should fight to realise workers immediate interests, interests which by history begin with nation states even if they reach across borders.
The point is to raise the ability of the working class to direct its own labour, to consciously apply portions of the surplus it provides to meet its needs and society and to do so with an understanding and the context of the class as an international whole.
http://nuance.dhs.org/lbo-talk/0110/2970.html
see URL for futher quotes from Marx and Engels and further comments on how to combine locally strategies with an international perspective.
Chris Burford London
At 2003-06-22 16:47 +0800, Grant Lee wrote:
Karl Marx, 1848, "On the Question of Free Trade"(Speech to the Democratic Association of Brussels at its public meeting of January 9, 1848).
"Do not imagine, gentlemen, that in criticizing freedom of trade we have the least intention of defending the system of protection.
One may declare oneself an enemy of the constitutional regime without declaring oneself a friend of the ancient regime.
Moreover, the protectionist system is nothing but a means of establishing large-scale industry in any given country, that is to say, of making it dependent upon the world market, and from the moment that dependence upon the world market is established, there is already more or less dependence upon free trade. Besides this, the protective system helps to develop free trade competition within a country. Hence we see that in countries where the bourgeoisie is beginning to make itself felt as a class, in Germany for example, it makes great efforts to obtain protective duties. They serve the bourgeoisie as weapons against feudalism and absolute government, as a means for the concentration of its own powers and for the realization of free trade within the same country.
But, in general, the protective system of our day is conservative, while the free trade system is destructive. It breaks up old nationalities and pushes the antagonism of the proletariat and the bourgeoisie to the extreme point. In a word, the free trade system hastens the social revolution. It is in this revolutionary sense alone, gentlemen, that I vote in favor of free trade."
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/01/09ft.htm#marx
