Leading C.P. historian Avrom Landy places the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Bill in context.

‘A Few Remarks on the Tariff’ by Avrom Landy from The Daily Worker. Vol. 7. No. 138. June 20, 1930.

PRESIDENT HOOVER has signed the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Bill. The capitalist sponsors of the tariff have attempted to “popularize” it as a tariff of “blessings” for the working class and the farming masses. The millions of workers, poor farmers and small shopkeepers who are carrying the terrific burden of the economic crisis are now being told to place their faith in the Smoot-Hawley Tariff as the magic weapon which cannot fail to dispel the crisis. All the capitalist parties are preparing to carry the tariff into the coming election as a vital “issue.”

In what way is the tariff an issue for the working class and its revolutionary party? The entire question of the tariff moves within the bounds of the capitalist system. For us Communists who are organizing the workers for a revolutionary struggle to abolish this system, the tariff is only of indirect and subordinate interest. This does not mean that it is not of importance to us or that we can afford to ignore it. It merely means that the tariff must be related to the general class struggle of the workers; that it must be approached as an immediate means of drawing the working class into the wider, more fundamental and more comprehensive struggle against the entire capitalist system as such.

The basic tasks of Communists in this respect is to peal out the class issue involved and to present it to the working class in the sharpest form. We must not only peal it out for ourselves, but primarily for those workers who are enmeshed in a thousand and one illusions which the capitalist class, through its various political parties, is systematically attempting to create, particularly at this time. Our task is to supply a living class analysis that will leave the workers more class conscious and more enlightened as to the role of the various strata and their political parties in this respect.

We cannot explain to the workers the full significance of the Smoot-Hawley tariff; we cannot develop the class lines sharply and adequately enough if we content ourselves with adequate generalizations and careless statements and fail to characterize its fundamental features. We had an example of this in a recent discussion in New York at which the tariff was defined as the policy of the bourgeoisie which used to adhere to a policy of free trade but which in the present period has changed to a policy of protection.

This, of course, is entirely wrong. We cannot merely refer to the Smoot-Hawley tariff as the policy of the bourgeoisie without pointing out that it is the policy of the bourgeoisie in the period of imperialism. But this does not mean that the bourgeoisie, having developed from a progressive industrial bourgeoisie into a reactionary finance-capitalist bourgeoisie, has substituted a policy of protection for a policy of free trade. This formulation is not only incorrect, but tends to ignore the real change that has occurred, that is, distracts attention from the basic fact that capitalism has become capitalist imperialism, and has changed its tariff policy accordingly.

Generally speaking, one might have expected the course of development in the United States to have been from a policy of the protection of “infant” industries to one of free trade on the part of a country that has become industrially mature. But just the opposite happened, and the reason for this is precisely the fact that industrial capitalism in America developed into finance capital with giant trusts carrying on production. In other words, the protectionism of the bourgeoisie during the period of industrial capital developed into an entirely different protectionism with the transition of capitalism into its final stage of imperialism.

Thus, it is entirely inadequate and incorrect to speak of the tariff today as the protective policy of the bourgeoisie as contrasted with its previous free trade policy. Protective tariff was also the policy of the American bourgeoisie when it was essentially an industrial bourgeoisie, that is, during the period of progressive capitalism. Protection at that time actually helped to develop “infant” industries; in other words, it helped to develop the productive forces.

Friedrich Engels drew attention to this many years ago. Writing of protection in America immediately after the Civil War of 1861-65, Engels says: “Protection, being a means of artificially manufacturing manufacturers, may, therefore, appear useful not only to an incompletely developed capitalist class still struggling with feudalism; it may also give a lift to the rising capitalist class of a country which, like America, has never known feudalism, but which has arrived at that stage of development where the passage from agriculture to manufactures becomes a necessity.”

Thus, by speaking of protection as the policy of the bourgeoisie, you actually help the monopolists in their claim that protection is an historical necessity, is a progressive policy. We may not necessarily have in mind the bourgeoisie when capitalism was still progressive. But, precisely because the monopolist bourgeoisie today tries to hide under the cloak of the progressive bourgeoisie of the middle of the 19th century, is it our duty as Marxists to clarify and expose this for the workers.

And what about the protective tariff today? Today, the protective tariff is the policy not of a progressive bourgeoisie but of a reactionary, finance-capitalist bourgeoisie. Today capitalism is not progressive capitalism, but reactionary capitalism in its final stage, that is, imperialism. This is the fundamental difference.

The tariff policy of the monopolists today does not develop the productive forces, but it is a means of still further enriching the capitalists, while retarding the development of the productive forces. If, in the period of progressive capitalism, it served as a defensive weapon to artificially manufacture manufactures, to allow the home industries to get on their feet, today it serves as an offensive weapon, to enable the finance capitalists of America, at the expense of the American masses, to carry on a more effective struggle for world markets, for imperialist hegemony. Today the tariff “protects” essentially export articles, a fact which already Engels noted in a note to the third volume of Marx’s Capital.

We are dealing here with a fundamental qualitative change. Protective tariff has turned into its opposite. From the policy of a progressive bourgeoisie it has become the policy of the reactionary, imperialist bourgeoisie.

The United States is the classical country of trusts and of the tariff policy of the trusts, or more precisely, of finance capital. The new tariff policy of the United States may be dated from 1883. This broadly coincides with the transition of capitalism into its final stage of imperialism. It must be repeated: It is absolutely necessary to understand clearly that the tariff today is the policy of reactionary finance capital, and not of the bourgeoisie in the abstract.

The Daily Worker began in 1924 and was published in New York City by the Communist Party US and its predecessor organizations. Among the most long-lasting and important left publications in US history, it had a circulation of 35,000 at its peak. The Daily Worker came from The Ohio Socialist, published by the Left Wing-dominated Socialist Party of Ohio in Cleveland from 1917 to November 1919, when it became became The Toiler, paper of the Communist Labor Party. In December 1921 the above-ground Workers Party of America merged the Toiler with the paper Workers Council to found The Worker, which became The Daily Worker beginning January 13, 1924. National and City (New York and environs) editions exist.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1930/v07-n148-NY-jun-20-1930-DW-LOC.pdf