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Herr List and Herr v. Gülich 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. Gülich.
If they speak consciously and openly to the working class, then
they summarize 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 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