ABSTRACT
The fair trade movement has grown out of a radical social justice critique of
free trade. Based on a Marxist perspective, it is possible to identify a
number of dissonances with the liberal/neo-liberal school of thought (see
Neo-liberalism). First, instead of taking the comparative advantage concept that
underlies free trade theory at face value, some analysts point to the con-
struction of different cost structures, and argue that these have been deter-
mined by the histories of nations, some of which are histories of colonial
subjugation. Free trade theorists, they argue, not only turn a blind eye to
the historical construction of inequality, but in doing so also freeze a parti-
cular status quo, making it impossible for poorer countries to develop, while
economic wealth continues to become concentrated in the hands of weal-
thier nations, perpetuating relations obtaining in the imperialist past with
the colonizers, now the global North, and the colonized, the global South.
