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.

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About Karl Marx

Karl Marx was a 19th-century German philosopher and socialist theorist. Karl Marx was a German philosopher, social and political theorist, economist, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. He is best-known for the 1848 pamphlet The Communist Manifesto, and his three-volume Das Kapital (1867–1894), a critique of classical political economy which employs his theory of historical materialism in an analysis of capitalism, in the culmination of his life's work. Read more on Wikipedia →

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