trentmann - political culture and political economy - interest, ideology and free trade.pdf
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8/10/2019 Trentmann - Political Culture and Political Economy - Interest, Ideology and Free Trade.pdf
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Political Culture and Political Economy: Interest, Ideology and Free TradeAuthor(s): Frank TrentmannReviewed work(s):Source: Review of International Political Economy, Vol. 5, No. 2 (Summer, 1998), pp. 217-251Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4177265.
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ARTICLES
and
transnational
flows of
capital,
technology
and
knowledge.
On
the
other, revisionists have
exposed
the normative
binary
structures
of
gender,
progress
and
underdevelopment.
This article
is
designed
to
con-
tribute to this ongoing debate by adding a historical perspective on the
cultural foundations
of a
subject
central to
political
economy:
free
trade.
Free trade
occupies
a
privileged
position
in
liberal
schools
of
political
economy.
For economists
it is a
theory
of welfare
optimization:
societies
specialize
where
they
are
most efficient
according
to
comparative advan-
tage.
For realist scholars
it
plays
a
central
role
in international
relations,
expressed
in
concepts
of
hegemony. For
public
choice
analysts,
it
informs
both the
methodological application of economics
to
politics
and
the
political programme for eliminating the wasteful 'rent-seeking' activities
of
producer interests.
Inevitably,
discussion of
present
models
and
future
policy
has
tumed
to 'lessons of the
past'.
This
has not
been
an
unprob-
lematic
exercise, for free trade
appears
simultaneously
as
both
historical
subject
and
analytical
method.
The
aim of this
article is
to enter the
debate about
method
from a
historical
inquiry
into
the
relationship
between
political
economy
and
political culture
in
free trade Britain.
Free trade had
been
the
pillar
of
British
political
economy since
the
repeal of the
Com
Laws in
1846 and
withstood the international drift towards neo-mercantilism in the late
nineteenth
century.
Joseph
Chamberlain's tariff
reform
crusade
in
1903
put the
future of
free trade once
again at
the centre of
British
politics.
The
ensuing 'fiscal
controversy'
culminated in the
1906 election,
at which
the
protectionist
programme of
imperial
preference and
a small duty on
foreign corn
(2 shillings per
cwt)
and
manufactures (10
per cent) was
decisively defeated and
the survival
of
free
trade secured.
This article
takes the fiscal
controversy as its
starting
point, using it in
Section I to
problematize economistic arguments that explain trade regimes exoge-
nously, that
is, by the
location of trades or
sectors
in the world
economy.
This
general
critique is
illustrated
through a
discussion
of the historical
and
conceptual
limits of a recent
sectoral
analysis of
the 1906
election.
The
discussion
highlights two
equally
problematic
dichotomies
under-
lying
conventional
approaches to
free
trade: between
state and
market,
and
between
ideas and
interests. In
contrast to
the universalist
method-
ology
of
individualist
rational
agents or
emphasis on
cosmopolitan
interests,
Section II outlines
an
alternative
historical
perspective, focusing
on the collective and ideological dimension in political economy. Section
III
explores
the
political ideas,
values and
discourse that
shaped group
interests and
identities in the
British
debate about
free
trade. This
involves two
related shifts in
analysis:
one from an
exogenous to an
endogenous
plane,
the other from
questions of
cui bonoto
those of
cultural
significance.
The
power of free
trade, it is
argued,
depended on
the
ideological construction
of 'the
consumer', on
national identity, and
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POLITICAL
CULTURE
AND POLITICAL
ECONOMY
on
moral and civic
virtues,
not
on
individual
self-interestor the
logic
of
the free
market.The article concludes
in
SectionIV with a
discussion
of the
place
of
ideas
and
political
culture
in the
study
of
political
economy. Politics and economy, far from separate, emerge from this
interpretationas
overlapping spheres
held
together by
webs
of
cultural
meanings
and
practices,
a
perspective
that, admittedly,
lacks the
parsi-
mony
of
economistic
models
but
may
shed
new
light
on the
changing
historical place of
economic
ideas
in
political
life.
I HISTORICAL AND
CONCEPTUAL
DEFICITS OF
SECTORAL
ANALYSIS
Victorian Britain
was the
only society to
embrace a
pure,
unilateral
system
of free trade after the
repeal
of the Corn Laws
(1846).
That Britain
did
so
naturally
because of
the prominence
of
export
industries
and
the
City
has
long been
a
common notion.3
J.
S. Mill
maintained
n
1868
that
'it would have been
long
before the
Corn
Laws would have been
abol-
ished
... if
those laws had not been
contrary
to the
private interests of
nearly the
whole of the
manufacturing
and
mercantile classes'.4
Argu-
ments have
come
in
stronger
and
weaker
forms,invoking
the
power
of
entire sectors or of smaller interest groups, trades and firms. In
hegemony arguments,
for
instance,
the
influence of the
City has
been
invoked to
explain why Britain did not
revise
its
internationalism
n
response to relative decline
after the 1880s.5
Publicchoice theorists
have
presented the Anti-Corn
Law
League
as a
vehicle of the cotton
industry,
seeking to abolish duties on
its
raw
material
and
oppose
factoryreform.6
These different
analyses share basic
methodological
problems. First,
the
mode of
argument often
employs post
hoc
propter
hoc reasoning:
because internationallyoriented sectors benefit from free trade, a free
trade
system reflects the power
of these sectors. How
economic inter-
ests translate
nto
politicalpower and
popular
movements is left vague.
Second, they cannot
explain
the
specificity of
policies,
whether bilateral
and
moderate free
trade, as
in
the United States after
the Second
World
War,
or
unilateral and
dogmatic 'Free
Trade'
in
Victorian and Edwar-
dian
Britain.
The
relationshipbetween national
economic structure
and
tariff
levels is left
unspecified;Britain
rejecteda smaller
dose of protec-
tion
than
that in
force
in
more export-oriented
countries like
Denmark
or Switzerland.7Today, the only genuine free tradecountry n the world
is
land-lockedMongolia.8
This
indeterminacy, inally, is mirroredat
the
microeconomic
level.
The universalist
assumptions
of neo-classical
economics can
tell us as
little
about the
varied strategic behaviour
of
firms and
trades as about
that of the
varieties of capitalism, which
are
conditioned
by culture and institutions.9
References o a
trade'sgeneral
interest do
not explain the strategy chosen
to attain it. If
free tradedoes
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ARTICLES
not serve their
goals, export
trades can turn to
reciprocity,
cartelization
or other forms of
trade
regulation.10
These
problems
are rooted
in
the
methodological
basis
of
economistic
argument. A strong illustration is offered by Douglas Irwin's recent
sectoral
analysis
of the
1906
election,
'The
political
economy
of
free
trade'.11 Irwin's
model
is
predicated on
methodological
individualism.
Electoral behaviour
is determined
by self-seeking
material
interest alone.
It
expresses
an individual's
sectoral position
rather than
ideology, social
position
or
cultural
identity.
In
line
with
recent
'industry
approaches',
this model
presumes imperfect factor
mobility, especially
of
labour.
In
contrast to the
classic
Heckscher-Ohlin-Samuelson
model,
which
assumed mobile factors of production, the decisive variable is a sector's
international
location, not the
relative abundance of
capital
or
labour.
Irwin
concludes that the
election
confirms
the
general thesis that
'all
factors employed
in
a
given sector see their fate tied to the
economic
fortunes of that sector.
Consequently,
voters would favour
any policy
that
increases the relative
price of the
output produced
by
the
sector
in
which
they
are
employed.'12
To bring
into
focus the limits of the
sectoral model for
political econ-
omy,
we will
first examine
historically its principal
assumptions: sectoral
unity, economic knowledge and the deduction of political choice from
sectoral
interest.
Sectoral analysis
hinges
on two
basic propositions:
united sectoral
behaviour and
labour
support
for
protection
in
import-
competing sectors
(and
for
free trade
in
export-oriented
ones).
Yet
'sectors'
have
proved
a
problematic
category
for
understanding protectionism
in
Imperial
Germany
and the inter-war
United States.13In
the British
case,
the units
used by
Irwin, such
as 'chemicals'
or 'iron and
steel', covered
such a
variety of processes with
different markets and
import/export
ratios that any aggregate use is
questionable.14
Few trades shared the
sectoral
coherence of
the cotton
trade, which imported
its
raw
material but
exported
its
manufacture, and
overwhelmingly opposed tariffs.
In
many
industries
the product of
one trade is the
input of
another, and here
firms
and
their
workers
occupy different,
often
conflicting positions in
inter-
national trade.
Nor is the
assumption of
imperfect
labour
mobility
unproblematic. Seasonal
labour
and multiple
occupations
continued to be
widespread
at the turn
of the century. In
Monmouthshire, for
example,
three-quarters of field
workers still
worked also
in
the wood and
mining
industries.15
These
complexities
are obscured in
aggregate
net export figures
which,
according to sectoral
reasoning, explain Liberal
support
from the iron
and
steel,
coal
mining, engineering,
shipbuilding,
chemicals and
woollen
trades.16
Yet
in
three of these
-
iron
and steel,
engineering and
wool
-
owners,
unlike
their
workers,
had joined the
growing
chorus for fiscal
reform at
the turn of
the century.17
How shall we
explain
these opposite
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POLITICAL CULTURE AND POLITICAL ECONOMY
trends
among capital
and
labour?
Did businessmen
fail to
understand
their sectors' 'real' interests?
The turn from unilateral free trade to reciprocity
in
sections
of the
busi-
ness community illuminates the danger of inferring a politico-economic
position from
an
export/import
ratio.
Rather,
the
crucial
variable
was
businessmen's
perception
of a
changing
international
position
and of
the
best strategy to preserve competitiveness. Surrounded by
new
mercan-
tilist barriers and deprived of the lever of
tariff
bargaining,
the woollen
trades
-
still exporting three times more than imports
-
called for retali-
ation to halt the closure of foreign
markets.18 Other
trades were
deeply
divided about the nature of their interest. The tinplate
industry
was
split
on
how
to
respond
to the
loss
of their
principal
US
market
after
the
McKinley tariff. Steel-tinplate makers favoured
tariffs. Smaller
makers,
however, believed free trade guaranteed their autonomy by
preserving
a
range of alternative supplies of cheap steel.19 The absence of
a united
trade
profile extended to Chamberlain's
Tariff
Commission.20
Even in
the City of London, the heart of Britain's cosmopolitan
power,
a
neo-
mercantilist mood was rising. The City had been divided
during
the
earlier
movement to free trade. Now
in
1903,
the
leading
stockbroker
Faithfull
Begg warned that
[j]ust
in
proportion as
Great Britain built
up
the
prosperity
of
foreign
nations under
a
system
which
gave equal advantages
in
her markets, so she was creating a race of commercial
rivals, who,
when the
time came, would be attacking her
with
their ships
and
destroying her commerce.21
Fiscal
reform would benefit capital interests where
unilateralism
had
failed,
a
conclusion which commanded a majority in the London
Chamber of Commerce in a poll in 1907. These divisions undermine not
only
notions of
sectoral unity but also the picture of a united
capital-
labour
alliance for free trade in capital- and
labour-abundant economies
(like Victorian Britain) painted in studies based on
the Stolper-
Samuelson
theorem.22
Labour's place in the political economy of trade conflicts with the
second
sectoral
assumption: the correlation between import competition
and
protectionism. The Labour Party and trade unions
rejected protec-
tion
outright
in
1903,
in
spite of cyclical depression and
unemployment.
Can two million workers be 'wrong'? Opposition rallied together export
trades, like cotton and shipping, with those facing import
competition,
like
fine
chemicals and the heavy sections of the iron and steel industry.
Support
for
protection was limited to a few marginal trades, like flint
glass making.23 Labour did not support tariffs in a single
major trade
until
the
late 1920s; then, interestingly, support came first from the
woollen industry, which was still exporting four times
the amount it
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ARTICLES
imported.24 Even in
agriculture,
protection
failed to
win
over
workers.
In
fact, the Liberal
triumph
in
1906
was most
pronounced
in
pre-
eminently arable,
import-competing
rural
areas like the
south-east.25
The divisions within trades highlight the sociological deficit in the
sectoral
approach.
The
hypothesis
that
capital
and
labour
equate
their
interests
with
their sector's does not
take
into
account the
asymmetry
underlying capitalist
society.
Modem
industry
is
not
an
association
of
free
producers. The exchange of
wage
for labour
places
workers
and
entrepreneurs
in
unequal positions.
This makes for different
associa-
tional practices.26
It
also
provides
social
groups
with uneven
knowledge
for collective action.
It
is a long way from the world market
to
the local
polling booth.
Vertical
and
horizontal
divisions
of labour
deprive
actors of the knowl-
edge necessary
to
make
a
uniform assessment
of trade
policy
and
its
effects
on their
work,
firm
or sector.
They
are
separated
not
merely from
the
end product of
their labour,
but
also from information about
origin
of
input,
destination
of output, profit
and
productivity.
Workers
re-
rolling steel do not necessarily know
whether
the firm's
ingots come
from South Wales
or Westphalia, or
whether their labour ends up
in a
bridge across the
Thames or the Hudson. All
this, of course, raises
general questions about exogenous perspectives, which presume indi-
viduals' knowledge of
the complex
present and future state of markets
and its
automatic
translation
into
personal interests and political strat-
egies. Capitalism
might
be said to be
no more prone to generate sectoral
unity
than
class
unity.
In
the
absence of transparency,
protectionist
entre-
preneurs tried to shape their
workers' economic
knowledge through
educational
campaigns
or
later, more crudely, by
exhibiting
foreign
articles on the
shopfloor.27
The conceptual and empirical problems involved in a sectoral expla-
nation
of free trade are connected
to a deductive
treatment of politics.
To test
the sectoral
model, Irwin
reconstructs the election into 'a
case
of
direct
democratic
voting on trade
policy'.28 Political realities,
however,
were more complex.
Divisions
among Conservatives between
protec-
tionists,
reciprocitarians and free
traders, the number of
contests
between
Liberals, Labour and
socialists, and the
combination of free
trade with
other significant
issues, make it
impossible to read the
election
as
a
simple
contest
between Conservative protectionism
and
Lib-Lab Free Trade.29 Arguably, it was the very combination of free
trade with
other issues, such as
education reform,
Taff Vale and 'Chinese
slavery',
that
proved significant
among key voting
groups like Noncon-
formists and
organized labour.30To reduce voting
to an
individualist
act of
assessing the
sectoral costs
and benefits of trade policy
brackets
the
collective
dimension of politics: party allegiance,
mobilization,
social
solidarity
and
discursive practices.31
On a
fundamental statistical level,
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POLITICAL CULTURE AND POLITICAL ECONOMY
there is
an
"ecological fallacy"
here: constituencies are not sectors.
Conclusions
about the
political
outlook of an
occupational group
cannot
be drawn from the electoral
returns
and
occupational
structures of
constituencies.32
Finally, the analysis
is
complicated by
the introduction
of a non-
sectoral variable: consumption.
Two-thirds of all
employees worked in
non-traded goods sectors and spent nearly
half
the
family budget
on
food. Surely, their interest
in
cheap
food
made them natural free traders.
The problem with this reasoning
is that it
explains
not too little
but too
much.
The
only
votes
for
protection
should
have come
from
the
small
group of import-competing
interests. Yet
Liberals
received
less than
50
per cent of the vote.33 In any modern society consumers far outweigh
workers in import-competing trades.34
In
a democratic vote, free
trade
would be a natural
winner
emerging spontaneously
from the
ubiquity
of consumer preferences.
Yet 'the consumer
interest' is
no more
a natural
given than 'the producer interest'. It represents no unambiguous,
separate, group,
but
an
interest
in
conflict
with and
part
of other
social
roles. 'Everyone
and at
the same
time no one is
a
"consumer"',
as Offe
has succinctly put
it.35
Two dimensions therefore need
to be
sharply distinguished
in
political
economy. An economistic analysis models
individual
preferences as if
atomistic, fixed
and
universal.36 The
collective
meaning of 'the consumer'
and
the changing social
and
political significance
of untaxed food are
not,
however,
a
simple aggregation of
individual
preferences. Its formation
is a problem of
a
quite different dimension concerning collective values
and the
discursive construction of
'the
public interest'.
What
needs
explaining
is how
free
trade was
of
such
significance
to
Britons that
any
departure
from
it
became a
central subject
of
politics.
What
made it
possible for the diffuse public interest to defy the logic of collective action,
overcome
the free-rider
problem,
and
avoid
the
vicious cycle of rent seek-
ing predicted by public choice theory?37How to account for free trade's
special historical significance
in a
society which enjoyed the highest
standard of
living
and had
overcome
systemic food shortages long before
its neighbours? The inquiry, then, must look beyond material interests to
the collective meanings
and
discursive practices that helped translate
individual
interests into
a
broader conception of political economy and
assigned
free
trade
an
iconic position.
In
short, it is necessary to shift the
inquiry from economic function to cultural significance.
II
IDEOLOGY
AND
INTEREST
This
shift
opens up three dimensions for political economy: economic
knowledge;
the
ideological
nature
of interest; and the constitutive role of
political languages.
The
interpretative framework
of
past actors is easily
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ARTICLES
lost in
reconstructions
of interests
through
the
lens
of
present
neo-
classical
theory.
Recent social
history
has
produced
well-documented
doubts
about
the triumph
of
a
differentiated market
society
and
its
social
reach in nineteenth-century Europe.38The economy, like society or poli-
tics, is not a
separate, self-explanatory
universe that
comes
with an
unam-
biguous
interpretation
attached.
Rather than
beginning
with
notions of
market
rationale
and
social
totality,
economistic
approaches
would have
to show how historical actors came
to know of the
economic world and
of the material
consequences
of fiscal
policy
- and
how
groups
could fail
to
recognize their
'real'
interest.
Some
in
the
City perceived
economic
trends as
supporting
fiscal reform.
Organized
labour
understood
the
fiscal
controversy
in a
national
sociopolitical
context as a
battle
between
democracy
and
reaction,
between classes not
trades,
a
battle over
the dis-
tributive
politics
of taxation not sectoral interests.
Tariff
reform was
not
dismissed
only
as
a
bad
bargain
for
export
trades. It
was viewed as
a
con-
spiracy
by capitalists
and
old elites to
suppress
social
democracy
and rob
the
working people
of their
fair
share of the national
income.39
In
theory, it is
possible
to
weigh
a
tariff's direct
impact
on
prices
against
its
more indirect influence on
wages.
Even
if
employers kept
all
additional
profits,
a tariff
might
increase real
wages
through
an
increase
in demand for labour in the protected sector. Such reasoning, however,
never
played
a
major
historical role. Labour
focused instead on
the loss
to national welfare from tariff
wars,
declining competitiveness
abroad,
and
lower
purchasing power
at home.
History,
not
trade
theory,
provided the framework of
analysis.
The Trades Union
Congress rejected
protection
in
one
voice
as
nothing better than a
delusive
and
plausible
fallacy; neither
history,
observation,
nor
experience justifies
it.
The
history
of
every
country
proves beyond a doubt that just in proportion as protective tariffs are
heavy, wages are low, and
where they
are light, wages are high.40
The
universal-historical association
between
protection and low wages
illustrates
how
far
popular
knowledge transcended
strict
economic
reasoning.
Contemporaries would have been
astonished to hear that
trade
policy played
only
a
marginal role
in
their
economic lives and in
national
development
or
to see
it
reduced to
a
'secondary power
struc-
ture'.41 Even
at
the
height
of
the
Great Depression
and even in
import-
competing trades, a belief in the collective benefits of free trade retarded
the
advance of
protectionism.
Popular
pamphlets offered
historical read-
ings of the
economy. Joseph Arch, the
leader of the
National Agricultural
Labourers'
Union,
emphasized
in
1884 that
'[t]he
natural
effect of
Protection
is
to
restrict
trade,
and
restriction
means less
of everything for
the
working
classes.
This is
proved by actual
experience. The darkest
days
in
our
history were
those of
Protection'42. Historical
memory
proved
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POLITICAL
CULTURE
AND
POLITICAL
ECONOMY
stronger
than
an individualist
weighing
of short-term costs and
benefits.
By the
late
nineteenth
century,
the
long story
of
popular
opposition
to
liberal trade
-
from
eighteenth-century
food riots to
early
Victorian
Chartism - had fallen victim to a lapse in collective memory. Historical
and
theoretical
counter-examples
alike vanished from the
new
'progres-
sive'
story
of free trade. The
complex
relationship
between tariffs
and
wages,
as in the
high-wage
high-tariff
USA,
was
easily ignored.
So
too
were the
more immediate reasons for the
sharp
drop
in
food
prices,
which
had less to do with
fiscal
policy
than with
the
growth
of Midwestern
and
Russian farms and the
revolution
in
intemational
transport.
Such
ideological readings of the
economy
raise
fundamental method-
ological issues. Conventional
political economy, though interested
in
the interaction
between
politics
and
economy,
is
founded
on
their
conceptual separation
into
distinct,
indeed
opposed, systems
of
state
and
market.43
This
presupposes
an
economic
sphere
governed
by
instru-
mental
rationality,
naturalistic and
free of
ideology,
a
view that can be
traced back to
Enlightenment notions of the
market
taming
the
passions
and
that,
subsequently, neo-classical economics
developed
into
a
scien-
tific
paradigm.
It
has
supported
a liberal
metanarrative
separating
free
trade,
the
pure
agent
of
economic truth,
rationality
and
progress,
from
the many guises of protection: fallacy, ideology and reaction. Ideology
is
reduced to
a
protectionist tool for
capturing votes or
deceiving
governments.44
Sound
theory
and
cool-headed
analysis, however, are
able
to
bring 'reality' into focus.
'Broad
economic principles
always
in
the end
defeat the
sharp devices of
expediency',
the young Winston
Churchill reassured
the
Free
Trade
League.45 Free
trade,
in
this
confi-
dent
liberal
view, is already
rational: it
is non-ideological.
The
view
of
separate
systems has been a
pleasant
illusion. It has
allowed the reconstruction of interest from economic reality and their
clean
separation
from
political
culture,
bracketed as
epiphenomena. This
has made
it
difficult
to interpret the
changing location and
meaning of
economic ideas
like free
trade, because
it
has tended to close
an analyt-
ical
space for the
relatively autonomous
role of
ideas and discourse. The
economist
framework
leaves
little room for
exploring the
formative role
of
ideas
in
shaping interest, because it
envisions an
atomistic, fixed indi-
vidual,
not
a
living member
of a community,
political
culture or
preinformed world.
With sufficient
information,
rational interest is the
direct expression of an objective economic position. Like functionalist
explanations
in
general,
this
approach looks to
needs as
the causal
motive
for want satisfaction.
As
Luhmann has observed, the
equation
between need and
motive produces an
equation between
imagined effect
and
its cause.
It
tends
towards
tautology. Moreover, the
economy is not
immune
to
how it
is
observed and understood
-
in
the past or
present.46
We
cannot
reconstruct an
economic reality
separate
from its past
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ARTICLES
interpreters. Rational choice
becomes a troublesome
tool, at a time
when assumptions
of
social
totality
and
correspondence
theories
of
reality have become questionable. Ideology
and
language, then,
far
from
being instrumental or epiphenomenal, are essential cognitive tools: they
turn an overwhelming, contingent
world
into
controllable, meaningful
reality.47 In short, they help to constitute political economy.
The formation of
interest s not
an unmediated
process by
which
the
economy imprints
itself
on the mental
landscape
of the
individual.
Rationality stands for
what
social actors
find
plausible
and
meaningful
at
a
historical moment
rather than for
what
might
be
theoretically
'true'.
Interest comes from
inter-esse to be between.
Interest has
had
evolving
meanings and functions, from compensation
in
Roman
law,
a
euphemism
for
usury
in
the Middle
Ages,
to
foreign policy
interest
of states in
the
early
modern
period,
when the
concept
came to
embrace
competing
economic
and
ideological groups
as well as individual rational
behaviour.
There
was yet
no inherent discursive conflict
between ideas
and
interests.
For much of the
modern period
the
concept remained ambiguous,
still
referring
to the interest
of
humanity
in
general
as
well as to
particular
material
interests
or Sonderinteressen.
n
nineteenth-century politics,
the
language
of
'interest' functioned to
maintain a
conservative relation
between property and rights. A new language of 'organized interest
politics' only emerged
in
the
early twentieth century, accompanied by
the
growing importance
of
corporate organizations
in
defining
as
well as
mediating
the
'interests' of their members.48
In
Britain,
this
development
was retarded; the Federation of British Industries was not founded until
1916. Present narrow categories of interest may obscure the historicity of
'interests'
and
past systems of political economy.
The market
speaks
in
many tongues. Economy and politics can be
viewed as interdependent, interpenetrative spheres, linked through
culture.
The cultural foundations of economic theories have received
generous attention.49
In
popular knowledge, too, different perceptions
have structured and
read
the
economy
in
different ways. Free trade
was no
exception, though its ideological power in legitimating itself as
common
sense
and a
scientific fact as indisputable as gravity has helped
to
dehistoricize it. The
argument here is not that there may not be good
reasons
in
economics for liberal trade. But this view of political economy
is itself so
clouded
by
the
normative lens of economic liberalism that it is
bound to produce a distorted historical picture, blind to the changing
functions
and
meanings
of
free trade, from statism among Physiocrats
and
the ideal
of
an
agrarian republic in revolutionary France, to the divine
design
of
a
'stationary, self-acting,
and
unprogressive model' held up by
early
Victorian
Evangelicals,50
all
the way to a modernizing engine of
growth, globalization and progress, more familiar from economic text-
books since.
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POLITICAL
CULTURE
AND POLITICAL
ECONOMY
Liberal political
economy
in
Victorian
and Edwardian Britain
ulti-
mately rested not on economic interest or
theory
but
on
a
moral-political
conception
of free trade.
It is not
possible
to derive the historical
signif-
icance of 'free food' from the size of the food bill. As a collective identity
and
social movement,
free
trade
culture,
after
all,
was
unique
to
Britain,
and not shared
by societies
then,
before
or
since
in
which
people spent
more than
half
their income on food.
That
it
was
unwise
to
rely
on
the
consumer as
a natural
champion
of free trade was not lost on
Cobden-
ites at the turn of the
century.
They
feared that
when bad
times
come,
the more
ignorant
classes
will
listen to
any
quack who
professes
to have
a
remedy
for the
troubles
they
are
feeling.
Moreover,
as each
year
passes
the
number
of those who
can
personally
remember the
pinch
of Protection
grows
rapidly
less.
Therefore it is
necessary that
some agency should be
constantly on
the watch
to combat
every
[protectionist] attempt.51
Liberal
'enlightenment' did
more
than
just overcome costs of
infor-
mation for the
'ignorant classes'
by
communicating
economic
data.
After
a
summer of ministerial debate and
resignations
in
1903,
the
question
of free trade was thrown open to the public. Its survival now became
dependent on
popular support.
The
fiscal
controversy
developed
an
ideological
momentum of its
own that
transcended the concrete
economic issues at stake.
Informed
foreign
observers
deplored
the
public
debate's lack of
'rational', 'scientific'
analysis.52
Why was this?
Liberals
then,
and
historians
since, were quick to
expose the
distortions
and
contradictions
in
Chamberlain's
picture
of
fiscal reform as
a
panacea
for
national
decline. Yet the lack of
'rationality'
was not all in one
corner.
The
battle
was not one
between 'Fact
versus Fiction', as the
Cobden
Club
labelled it.
Both sides worked with
ambiguous
statistics
and
prob-
lematic
economic
categories.53
Liberal language
provided
ideological
bonds
for
public
mobilization, set the
parameters
of
the public
debate
over
political economy,
and
relegitimated free
trade as
the only
rational,
indeed
natural, system.
Two
discursive achievements
need to be
emphasized. For one,
liberal
ideology quickly
eliminated the
space for rival
policies, most
impor-
tantly reciprocity, which
Liberals
attacked as
protectionism in
disguise.
Trade diplomacy was denounced in general declarations that any depar-
ture
from
unilateralism would
end
in tariff
wars, a
food tax
and an
omnipotent
executive.
This
was part of a
larger ideological
momentum
that
polarized
discourse between
pure free
trade and alternative
regimes.
Complex
relations
of
political
economy were
reduced
to
a
stark choice
between
two
exclusive
world-historical systems.
Campbell
Bannerman,
the
leader
of the
Liberal
Party,
proclaimed in 1904:
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ARTICLES
[w]e
stand to-day
at the
parting of the ways. One road ...
leads
to
Protection,
to
conscription,
to the
reducing
of
free
institutions
to
a
mere
name....
And the other road leads to the
consolidation
of liberty and the development of equity at home, and to treaties
of arbitration
and
amity
... and
the lightening of
taxation, which
presses
upon
our trade and
grinds
the faces of
the
poor.54
The discursive construction
of free
trade into the sheet anchor
of
liberal
civilization
deflected
both
from
the
(historically)
limited influence
of
free
trade on life and from alternative
orders of
democracy,
such as
pluralist
corporatism.
Liberal
bodies and radical movements
like the
Free
Trade
Union,
the
Cobden Club, the Free Food League and the two million-strong Coop-
erative
movement
provided
the
public
with the
interpretative
frame
for
political economy through
leaflets and rallies.
It
is more
useful to
view
these
groups
in
terms
of
a
social movement
than
interest-pressure
groups.
They were popular
and self-financing,
with a
diverse
member-
ship
that included
women.
Their
roots
in
civil
society
and their
defence
of
universal free trade contrast
with the
more
limited,
recent
'anti-protec-
tion' campaigns led by narrow
interest groups against
trade-specific
restrictions; the Free Trade Union focused on 'the public interest' and,
significantly, only
had one
researcher preparing
material
on
specific
trade
interests.55 They helped to construct the public
significance
of
free
trade
by providing associations between the
national
economic interest
and
political legitimacy.
A
liberal
song
rallied audiences
against Cham-
berlain's
campaign to 'Tax, Britannia ':
Tax, Britannia,
if
British
commerce dies,
At
least
the
prices
that we pay shall rise
But, if you think protection made
For dupes who
cannot think or see,
Be this the charter
of your trade,
The world
our market and our
people free
Then, rule
Britannia, Britannia rule the waves,
Britons
never,
never,
never shall
be
slaves 56
Free
trade was central to the 'structure of political
discourse', to borrow
Peter Hall' s
apt concept.57 However, in contrast to
later economic theory,
like Keynesianism, free trade with its popular, ideological body played
a
more
constitutive,
self-generating role in creating the very structure
and
dynamic of political
discourse. Rather than
being differentiated as
'rational'
economic discourse, public argument
and political action
concerning trade were
embedded
in a
cultural web
of associations and
narratives that tied free trade
to national liberty,
social justice and inter-
national
peace.
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POLITICAL
CULTURE
AND POLITICAL
ECONOMY
III COLLECTIVE REPRESENTATIONS
OF FREE
TRADE
'The
consumer' was at
the centre of
this web. The defence of free
trade
depended on the defence of the consumer
as the
imagined guardian
of the
public interest. The
political
nation was defined as
a
nation
of
consumers, represented
in
Parliament. The state's function
-
represented
in
the Treasury
doctrine
of
taxation for revenue
only
-
was
to
defend
the
freedom of
all consumers
alike.
A
healthy body
politic,
in
this
vision,
depended on free
consumers rather than the
preservation, say,
of
'national
productive interests', classes or communities like
farming.
In
a
period of limited
democratic
and
socioeconomic
rights,
free trade served
as an
alternative form
of
public
inclusion,
accountability
and
social
jus-
tice, as radical and women's groups reminded voters and politicians.58 As
a
language of
indirect, passive
inclusion it
bridged
the
gulf
between
the
restricted
equation
of citizenship
with
property
in
the
nineteenth
century
and the
more
universal
democratization of
active political and
social
rights
in
the
twentieth, the
Scylla and
Charybdis of liberalism.
Fiscal
equity
and
political
legitimacy
were
interlocking:
parliamentary
sover-
eignty
was
believed to
depend
on
free trade. Was a tariff
not
'the
mother
of
trusts',
giving
birth
to
a new
absolutism of
vested
interest,
favouritism
and an overweight executive? Free trade was linked to a public ideal of
the
'purity
of
politics',59
which it
insulated from the
economy
and
private
interests. Politics
and
commerce, in Lloyd
George's
characteristic warn-
ing
to
businessmen,
were
'like two
chemicals
...
all
very well
if
kept
apart,
but if
mixed,
there
was
an
explosion'.60
By
invoking
the
autonomy
of the
market and
by equating public and
consumer, then, free trade
spoke
directly
to the
liberal
political
elite,
seeking
to
preserve
the
autono-
my
of
the political from
the
claims of
socioeconomic
groups and out-
siders.
Liberals
opposed even
anti-monopolistic
measures, such as
the
countervailing
of
bounties under
the
Brussels
sugar
convention
of
1902,
for fear
of
subjecting Parliament and
consumer to a
foreign tribunal.61
The
unifying influence of
consumption made free
trade an
agent of inter-
national
peace.
'It
is through
consumption', Hobson
argued,
'that the
co-operative nature and
value
of
commerce is realized.
Production
divides, consumption
unites.'62
'The consumer'
here
was a cultural con-
struct,
signifying
an
inclusive
'public interest'
rather than an
atomistic
individual
with
given
economic
preferences
-
not to be
confused
with the
materialist, conformist 'consumerism' discussed today.
By
transcending
the language of
economic
utility, these
associations
were
flexible
enough to
connect with
several strands
in liberal
political
culture.
On
one
extreme
was the
individualist
libertarian
linkage
between
economic and
political
freedom. An
old liberal
steelmaster, for
instance, condemned
protection, because 'I
shall be
called upon to give
up my right to
buy where
I
please
and compelled to
buy
where the
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ARTICLES
Governmentwills'.63On the other,liberal reformerswere able to
present
free
trade
as
the natural
complement
of social
legislation,
a view
well
captured
in
posters showing Asquith
as a free trade
John Bull,
with
one
hand giving cheap sugar to a little girl, and with the other giving old
age pensions
to an
aged couple.64
The
popular connection
between
political
freedom
and
consumer
freedom
was
no instant,
automatic
product.
The Gladstonian
marriage
between popular liberalism
and radicalism65 ushed
aside earlier asso-
ciations between freer
trade and attacks
by
the
rich on the
rights
of
'the
people'.
The demand for
the
'Free BreakfastTable' was an article
of
faith to the National
Agricultural
Labourers' Union and
helped to
preserve Liberalsupportin rural areasafter the suffragereformof 1884.
Edwardian free trade was able
to draw on the radical
milieu
to recon-
struct the
moral-political
discourse
against
tariffs.
The past, however, provided more
than
just
a
direct ine of
political
tra-
dition. The free
trade defence also involved
the
dynamic
reconstruction
of historical
memory.
While
protectionists
were
prophesying decline,
free
traderswere
legitimating
their cause
by refashioning
he
past.
The
repeal
of
the Corn Laws here
represented
the
crucial
turning point
in
the
story
of
liberty
and
progress.
It
provided
an
essential
movement narrative
by
fusing individual memorieswith the larger public interest.Repealhad
given
the
labourer
'a
more generally-recognizedposition
in
the State',66
in
the
recollection of
Holyoake,
the old Cooperative eader.
The
rewrit-
ing of history reached its most
ambitious
stage
with
the invention of the
'hungry
forties'.
In
1904, upon
the initiative of Cobden
Unwin,
a
collec-
tion
of
select
labourers'memories
of the
'hungry
forties'
was published.
A
'people's
edition' was issued
in
1905.
By
1912a
penny edition
had
sold
110,000 copies,
a
bound
copy another 100,000.
Personal
memories of
material misery under protection were interwoven with associations
between free
trade, political liberty and social stability. The ambivalent
experience
of
the 1840s was crystallized into a simpler image of the
protectionist past to appeal to the present needs of liberal memory.
Edwardianfree traders concluded for their readers that 1846 had deliv-
ered
the
English nation from
'an
Egyptianbondage'; tariffs threateneda
return to
social disintegrationand civil war.67
The
free tradebig loaf and the protectionist ittle loaf
-
symbols already
employed by Cobden
and
prominent
n
the HungryForties ollection and
Edwardianposters and propaganda- need to be read in the context of
these cultural
associations.The 'cheap oaf' was an icon of national iberty
and
progress. Fiscalpolicy here appearedcentral o the course of national
history,
in
contrast to
economic historians' reassessmentsmore recently
that it
played
at
best
a
marginal role. Immediate material concerns fail
to
explain this discrepancy,because on their own they do not turn indi-
vidual
grievances into collective ideals or action. Whether,and to what
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POLITICAL
CULTURE AND
POLITICAL
ECONOMY
degree,
a
small
2
shilling duty
on corn
would
increase the cost of
living
was hotly debated
at
the
time
-
the
price
of bread
in
most towns
had
remained
unaffectedby the
short-lived corn
duty (3d.)
of
1902-3.68
The free trade vision was sustained by a contrast between British
progress
and civilization and
foreign
reactionand
backwardness.
mper-
ial
Germany
served
as the
principal
other',
a
stereotypical
counter-image
that
is more
revealing
about British iberal
culture than about
contempo-
rary
politico-economic
realities;
Germany
was
a
low-tariff,
autocratic
constitutional
monarchy,
Franceand the
US
high-tariff
epublics.
The
free
trade
campaign
amplified horror
stories of
starving
and
disempowered
Germansdependenton
blackbread and
dog
meat
-
even as
Germany
was
becoming
a
relatively
more egalitarian
society.69
Germany
exhibited the
symptoms
of
the lethal
'poison'of
protection
hat
would
inevitably
spread
throughout he
body politic.
'If
this
country
wanted German
ariffs',
Lloyd
George
warned
audiences
in
1905,
'it
must
have German
wages...
German
militarism,
and
German
ausages....
They
could
not have British
freedomand
British
wages
along with
German
Protection.'70
his
view
of
Germany, ike the
absolute
rejection
of
reciprocity,
reflected
the
dogma-
tism
of
the liberal
Weltanschauung,nable
to
appreciate
eitherthe
relative
autonomyof the
state or the
possibility of
integratingcorporate
associa-
tionsintomoderndemocracy:twas fearedthateven a small tariffortrade
regulationwould
unleash a
vicious
circle of
uncontrollablevested
inter-
ests,
ungovernability
and
autocracy.
The
'cheap
loaf',
then,
symbolized
a
pillar
of liberal
society.
It
stood
for
the
'development
of
civilization'
and
the spread
of
'enlightenmentof
the
masses',
manifestationsof
free
trade's
contribution
o human
progress under
Britain's
providential
leadership.
Juxtaposed
accounts of the
Germanpoor
throwing
themselves
on horse
carcasses sent a
sure
warning
to
Britons
of the
uncivilizing
process
unleashed by food taxes.71In the close connection between national
identity and
free
trade,
political
economy
moulded
collective
conscious-
ness through
a
diametric
opposition
between
idealized
British
virtues
and
traditions
and
'false' and
degenerateforeign
cultures.This
can be
seen as
a
continuation
of
an
important
dynamic n
English
nationalism,
which
had
been
rooted in the
constructionof
the
Dutchand
French
as alien
'other'
n
seventeenth-and
eighteenth-century
opular
political
economy.72
The
discourse
of
free
trade
provided the
frames
of
meaning
necessary
for
a
public
movement.
Some
like
Schuster
n
the City or
Pigou,the
econ-
omist, might have relied on economic concepts concerningthe market,
comparative
advantage and
intemational
differentiation
familiar
from
today's
discussion.As
noted
earlier,
however, farfrom
being a
separate
economic
matter,
this
was
embedded
in
liberal
concerns
about
political
ethics.
Neo-classical
economists,as
Supple has
stressed,
recognized
theor-
etical
justifications or
state
intervention
but
refrained
rom
concretepro-
posals
out of
political
considerations.73
ormany
entrepreneurs,
upport
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for free trade
did
not reflect
support
for
the free market as
a
social
model.
The steelmaster
Hugh Bell,
typically,
rejected protectionism
partly
as
an
agent of
a
more
materialistic,
selfish
and
degenerate society,
associated
with US millionaires and trusts.74 For the mid-Victorian period Boyd
Hilton has shown how
middle-class
support
for free trade
was
inspired
by
a
concern less
for 'enrichissez-vousand
social
progress'
than for
'leav-
ing
providence to
its
own
devices'.75
It
would be
wrong
to
assume
that
the retreat
of this evangelical vision of
a
moral
economy
in
the
second
half of the
nineteenth
century
marked the
triumph
of a
secular
vision
of
a
market
society.
There is
no historical reason
to
presume
that
popular
support
for free
trade then has to be at one with
the
understanding
of liberal
trade
theory
now. Radicals saw
no problem
in
linking
it to
land
reform
and
the return
of an
independent
peasantry
to the
land,
a
combination
that
indicated
how
limited
their vision of international
comparative
advantage
was.
Free trade was often
associated
with
community
and
cooperation
rather
than
market or
competition.
This
took
a
number of
forms,
from
Christian
ethics and visions
of
a
cooperative society,
all
the
way
to
'new liberal'
ideas of
welfare. One
manual worker, for
instance, concluded his
memories of 'the
hungry
forties' with
a
denunciation of
tariffs as
'an
immoral policy because it substitutes "Do unto others as they do unto
you," for the
Golden Rule, "Do
unto others
as
ye
would
they SHOULD
do unto
you." The former
policy
embodies the
spirit
of
irritation and
revenge.
The latter breathes
of
conciliation and good-will
to all
men'.76
At a
national
level,
as
McKibbin has
stressed,
free trade
'permitted
the
relative
autonomy
and
propriety of working-class
politics'.77
To the
powerful
cooperative movement the 'Free
Breakfast Table'
represented
an
inalienable right of
democratic society as
much as
cheap bread.
Free
trade
meant free
exchange, not the economics of the free market, liable
to generate
greed,
poverty and
hatred. As
such, it stood for
a
wider
vision of
'self-dependence',
cooperative
internationalism and
the auton-
omy
of
civil
society from
colonization by the
state. It
embodied a
strong
contemporary belief
in
societal
self-development and
in
civil
society
as
an
important terrain
of
active citizenship.78
Most
interesting,
perhaps, was the
evolving social and civic
meaning
linked
to free
trade
in
the
course of the
debate. A
leading voice of
the
'new
liberalism' was J. A.
Hobson,
an economic
heretic who
held as few
illusions about the pacific nature of cosmopolitan interests as about the
soundness of liberal
economics. Free trade
retained
its
anti-imperialist
appeal.
But
his
discovery of
'underconsumption'
shifted
emphasis from
the
economic
function of
free trade
to an organic
notion of
its social
function.
Rather than
promoting an
ever advancing
industrial
division
of
labour,
free trade
plus
social reform
would
overcome the growing
distance
between
production
and
consumption,
seen to erode the
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ECONOMY
cohesion
and freedom of civil
society.
In this vision a
special place
was
accorded
to
the
'citizen-consumer',
whose
economic actions would
no
longer
pursue selfish
market-oriented interests
but
bring
into
harmony
the collective ends of society by promoting civic culture, democratic
spirit,
taste
and
creativity.
Consumption
would become
a
cultural
agency
for uplifting
the
social, political
and economic
ethics of
the
indi-
vidual. Individual and social
interests
would
be reconciled while
promoting
a
virtuous,
participatory
civil
society.
This
organic
vision did
not look towards
a
market
society
or
modernization,
individual ration-
ality or bureaucratic
organization,
but
to
a
community
of creative
and
individuated yet mutually
dependent
citizens
who would
develop
their
productive talents
alongside
their tastes as consumers.
All
this
was
in
contrast to the individualistic vision
of the invisible
hand
of the market
coordinating
atomistic self-interests for
maximum wealth. Not
surpris-
ingly, Hobson demonized classical free
trade
economists
as
intellectual
spokesmen
of
Manchesterism,
confederates
of
mercantile
and
producer
interests whose obsession
with
commercial
gain
blinded them to
the
social
utility
of
consumption.79
Whatever
the different
type
of
reforms
advocated,
for a
growing
num-
ber of
liberals
support
of
free
trade
went
hand in hand
with
the
rejection
of a natural equilibrium model and assumptions of a convergence
between individual and
collective interests.80 Rather than
beginning
and
ending
with
'the
market' or economic
self-interest, popular free trade
was embedded
in
ideas
of
political
legitimacy,
national
history
and
civil
society.
IV
IDEOLOGY
AND POLITICAL
ECONOMY
This article has discussed free trade's sources of strength in late Victorian
and Edwardian
Britain. The
economistic account of
the survival of free
trade as a
natural
alliance of
internationally
oriented trades or sectors
has
been
found
empirically and
methodologically
unconvincing. Instead
of
viewing
interests as
determined
exogenously by
location
in
the world
economy,
the
historical explanation here has
argued that the power of
free trade was an
endogenous construction shaped
by political culture.
I
would
like to conclude by
discussing some implications for the study
of
the role of
ideology
in
political
economy.
The renewed attention to 'ideas' by some political scientists has been
a
welcome
move away from
functionalism, but has
been constrained by
its
principal focus on official
policy. This has
distracted from the broader
discursive
role of
political economy. In Goldstein
and Keohane's impor-
tant
approach, ideas function
as 'roadmaps'
selected by policy makers
to
chart their
way through
problems.81
While this approach goes
beyond
rational
choice,
it
continues to
separate ideas from
interests. Ideas might
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ARTICLES
influence administrations
by
institutionalizing
routines,
but
they
remain
a
secondary
phenomenon, creating
the occasional
'lag'
behind the
'real'
primary forces of history rather
than
inherently shaping
these
forces.82
Yet interests are not pre-social but are embedded in society and culture.
Human
beings
enter
a
bounded,
pre-interpreted
world that
their actions
and
frames
of
meaning
continuously
reconstitute. Historical
actors,
to
paraphrase
Giddens,
are
their own
politico-economic
theorists.83
As
reflexive
agents, they interpret
and
help
to create their
political
economy.
To emphasize
culture as
a
constitutive aspect
of
political
economy,
however,
should not mean
giving
primacy
to
'economic culture'
as
a
subject and method
of
explanation
in
the
way
recently suggested by
Rohrlich.84
Rohrlich
is
right
in
stressing
the limits
of behaviouralist
and
realist analyses and the need for more
cognitive
approaches.
But he is
less persuasive
in
presuming
that
a
shared
market 'economic culture'
was the
key
factor
in
the mid-Victorian
adoption
of free trade
policy.
To
conceptualize
it as a Kuhnian
paradigm
raises well-known
problems.
How useful is a
model
of a
closed, internally
unified
system
for under-
standing historical
change?
Human
agents
interact
differently
with
the
economy,
a
social
system,
than
with
the natural
world.85
Furthermore,
it is
problematic to start out with notions
of
a
shared,
stable
under-
standing of the economy or to presume popular convergence around
theoretical models. Far
from
supporting
the idea that
the
early
nine-
teenth
century
saw
the rise
of an
optimistic
belief
system
about the
free
equilibrating
market and
growth through
comparative
advantage,
historical
research
has found a wide
spectrum
of ideas about
the
economy among
states and
publics.
Advocates
of
liberal trade
often
understood
the
economy
as
stationary
or
were concerned
with
balanced
growth rather than
differentiation.
In
nineteenth-century
Europe, the
middle classes envisaged a variety of social systems, of which a differ-
entiated
market
society
was
only one
among many.86
The
temptation to
look for market ideas
in
the
past has been part of
the
wider
'modern'
framework of interpretation
which tells the story of
modernity
as a
battle between
the rise of the
market and state
regula-
tion.
Polanyi's
Great
Transformation
s, perhaps, its
most
popular and
ideal-typical narration.87Free
trade is
presumed to have a fixed
meaning
and
becomes
one
chapter
in
the
grand
narrative
of the rise of the
market.
The
public
significance
of
free trade
in
our
period,
however, lay in its
moral-political conception, not in a shared economic culture. This was
important, this article
has
argued, because it
could bring
together
competing
social
and
political
groups.
The
liberal
appeal to
'free food'
as a
collective
good was
echoed
in
the
trades union
manifesto in 1903
thanking
'God
that Englishmen who
toil have a
vote, without which
no
capitalist can
enter the
House of Commons to
commit
the sin of
inc:reasing
the
cost of living'.88
Similarly, it was the civil and
political
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POLITICAL CULTURE
AND POLITICAL ECONOMY
ethics
of free trade rather
than
any agreement
on
laissez-faire
economics
that held together the alliance
between old and new liberals. For
Conser-
vative free traders, too, opposition to
tariff reform was
inspired
not
by
a belief in the free market, but by the double fear of social anarchy
following
a food tax
and
of the
displacement
of
public
virtue
and
parlia-
mentary liberty, guarded by
'disinterested,
moderate
independent men',
by the politics of class,
interests
and
demagoguery.89
Labour leaders
like Hardie and Snowden, on the other
hand,
were
sceptical
about
inter-
national economic integration
and Britain's
dependence
on
foreign
markets. Their economic
thought
shared socialist
expectations
that
capi-
talist trade would lead to
a
global overproductionist
crisis.
At
the same
time as attacking competitive
exchange, however, they
remained
sympa-
thetic
to radical views of the 'Free Breakfast Table'
and
free
exchange
as a pacific, civilizing force.
Traders,
caricatured as
non-productive
middlemen at home, underwent
a
metamorphosis
in
international
waters into 'great missionaries of a
brighter day
...
majestically coming
and
going
with their
freights
of
barter, teaching
the
nations the much-
needed lesson of their
mutual
dependence one upon the other'.90
It
was
the strength of such shared ideas
that
kept
free trade
at
the centre of
public politics.
Consensus but not conformity. Rather than in terms of hegemonic
economic
culture,
the
survival of free trade can
be
conceptualized
as
a
convergence
of ideas about liberal
politics
and
society
sufficient to
generate
collective
allegiance
and
action. Free trade was tied to social
movements, like the Cooperatives, interested
in
sheltering civil society
as a
democratizing
terrain from colonization
by
the state. The
relative
autonomy
of civil
society
from state and
market has
recently
been redis-
covered.91Putting this dimension back into the
analysis
makes it
possible
to step beyond the grand narrative of 'modernization'. Between the para-
digms
of realist and
economistic models
that
reduce
socio-political
relations to either state or economic
structures,
this
opens
a
space for
examining
social
groups
as reflexive
agents participating
in
the
dynamic
process
of
debate
and
the construction of political economy.
Britain's position
in
the world
economy was deteriorating from the
1880s. Yet, significantly, it was not until
'decline' became linked to a more
fundamental disillusionment with
liberal views of
political economy
that
free trade lost its impregnable position. In
early twentieth-century Britain,
a period marked by increasing socioeconomic regulation, industrial
concentration and
structural
unemployment,
the
nineteenth-century
trin-
ity
of
freedom, cheapness
and
individual initiative finally lost its cultural
authority.
What
emerged
was a
new discourse of
regulation, reorganiza-
tion and
productivity. As labour and
capital turned their attention to
production
and
internal
rationalization, the cultural authority of con-
sumption
and
international
exchange
diminished
accordingly.
The
view
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ARTICLES
that free
trade
guaranteed
'the
purity
of
politics'
and social
justice
faded
as devaluation
and industrial decline were blamed on
the
power
of
the City.
Internationalists, too,
moved
away
from the older ideal of
self-
regulating commerce towards institutional sources of international inte-
gration.92
Freedom
of trade lost its
paradigmatic
function as
a
source
of
collective
identity
and
social
mobilization once
socioeconomic
demands
became articulated
as
proactive
rights (employment,
welfare)
and
class-
based
organizations competed
for
control
over the
state and
its
regulatory
powers.
This
period
marked a break
in
the
meaning
and
function
of
the idea,
in
which
the economic one
lived
on,
detached
from the
larger
cultural one. The introduction
of
a
general
tariff
in
1931-2
completed
free
trade's
marginalization.
It
may
be
interesting
at
this
stage
to look
far
ahead and
briefly
compare
basic features
of
British
free trade culture
with
the
resurgence
of
trade
in
recent western
politics,
in
the
discussions about trade liber-
alization and
globalization.
At
the level of
cultural associations
and
sociopolitical
constituencies,
free
trade's
position
has been reversed.
Instead of
its
earlier
association
with
democratic
rights,
communitarian
ethics,
social
justice
and
national
identity
in
British radical and
progres-
sive
politics,
free trade
today
is denounced
by
a
range
of
radical
and
social movements as an international corporate attack on participatory
democracy,
hard-won
social
rights, consumer,
labour
and
environmental
standards,
and
regional
and
national
culture. Opposition to NAFTA
and
GATT has extended from
organized labour, social democrats and
consumer
advocates
to
women's
groups
and
ecological
and cultural
movements.93
Neither the
popular
disenchantment with free trade
as
such,
nor the
more
general and frequently
alarmist fixation on trade and globalization,
can be explained as a mere reaction to autonomous economic develop-
ments
without reference to the
formative influence of ideological and
political
factors. As
several
critical economists and
sociologists have
pointed
out,
it
is difficult to
correlate the present
obsession with trade
with
secular
economic trends.94 While the world
economy has become
more
integrated
in
the last half-century, it is far
from clear that it is
creating
a
unitary global system or
that
changes
in
trade
are
a
signifi-
cant
factor
in
national income and employment.
In the advanced
economies of
the
European Union, Japan and North
America trade is a
mere 12 per cent of GDP. For the USA it has been argued that the
economic lives of
citizens are
determined by technological changes
rather than changes in trade, for
Germany that trade
has been a positive,
not a
negative, source of growth
and employment.95
The share of foreign
direct
investment and of the
operations of
multinational corporations
that
reaches
beyond the privileged north is too
small to justify the
images of
doom painted by
the prophets of globalization. It would be
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POLITICAL CULTURE
AND POLITICAL
ECONOMY
too simple, however,
to
explain discrepancies
between economic
trends
and public perception
as the
result of the
fallacious
reasoning
and
poor
statistical knowledge
of certain
commentators.96
Attention should
be
given, instead, to the discursive construction of 'globalization'. Part of
its appeal,