Pax Economica: Left-Wing Visions of a Free Trade World

Free trade doctrine was once a mainstay of the political left, according to this probing history. University of Exeter historian Palen (The “Conspiracy” of Free Trade) explains that world trade in the 19th and early 20th centuries was defined by protectionist policies and imperial trade blocs that shielded domestic industries from foreign competition and secured captive markets for their products. Leftists challenged this orthodoxy, Palen contends, by arguing that free trade made economies more efficient, helped the poor by lowering prices, and impeded war by fostering international economic cooperation instead of ruinous rivalries. Exploring the development of these ideas among left-wing movements and leaders, Palen notes that Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels supported free trade as a step on the path to a united global proletariat, feminist Jane Addams advocated for free trade to reduce food prices for malnourished women and children, and pacifists blamed imperial trade barriers for WWI. Though the prose is somewhat dry and scholarly, the scrupulous research unearths a surprising lineage of free trade leftists. (“Russian Marxists must stand for free trade... since free trade means accelerating the process that yields the means of deliverance from capitalism,” proclaimed Vladimir Lenin in 1895.) The result is a revealing analysis of how potent, disruptive, and even revolutionary the concept of economic freedom has been. Photos. (Feb.)