trentmann - political culture and political economy - interest, ideology and free trade.pdf

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

218


4/36

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

219


5/36

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

220


6/36

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

221


7/36

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,

222


8/36

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

223


9/36

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

224


10/36

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

225


11/36

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.

226


12/36

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:

227


13/36

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.

228


14/36

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

229


15/36

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

230


16/36

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

231


17/36

ARTICLES

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

232


18/36

POLITICAL CULTURE AND POLITICAL

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

233


19/36

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

234


20/36

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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21/36

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

236


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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,

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