ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the economic conditions that gave the celebrity to Karl Marx's systems, and determines what modifications occurred in the economy which have facilitated their decline. Manchesterism is found very often at the basis of contemporary economic theories, just as Marxism is found at the basis of many socialist theories that are attacked as being exempt from Marxist influence. Manchesterism like Marxism has been criticized for its narrowness of ideas, its materialism, its powerlessness in dealing with law. The Socialist Party knows well that all economic progress in the world of capitalist economic production becomes right away a cause of the degradation and poverty of the people affected by it. Free trade constitutes the nucleus of Manchesterism; the progress of free-trade policies allows to gauge closely the progress of Manchesterian political economy. There was a time in which almost all economic literature was devoted to questions of tariffs.
