Post by IBDaMann on Jun 5, 2019 19:03:10 GMT
From the Communist Manifesto:
"[The bourgeoisie] has resolved personal worth into exchange value, and in place of the numberless indefeasible chartered freedoms, has set up that single, unconscionable freedom – Free Trade. In one word, for exploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions, it has substituted naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation." - Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels
"[The bourgeoisie] has resolved personal worth into exchange value, and in place of the numberless indefeasible chartered freedoms, has set up that single, unconscionable freedom – Free Trade. In one word, for exploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions, it has substituted naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation." - Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels
The legitimization of free trade in turn opens the door to the dehumanization of people as commodities. If there were no such thing as free trade then there would be no bartering of personal worth. The capitalist says, for example, that women are empowered by being able to sell their bodies as prostitutes. The Marxist, on the other hand, recognizes that no woman chooses to sell herself; but due to her situation, inflicted upon her by the capitalist system, she has no choice but to suffer the exploitation and to place herself on the auction block.
Free trade reduces men into commodities and utterly destroys their dignity. Laborers, whose value is in their work, suddenly find their self worth diminished simply by the existence of other laborers. Free trade forces laborers to compete with each other, like a Roman Emperor has cast them into the gladiators arena, but the fighting is not with swords but rather with price reductions on their labor, their personal value. The winner enjoys the privilege of being thrown scraps for his craft while the loser is relieved of his livelihood.
Shouldn't the government be guarding the personal dignity of the people? Why does the government stop at prohibiting prostitution? Why does the government permit the dehumanization of all laborers?