The market´s origin itself, that is to say, the simple barter in the first phases of the social development, is eloquent: Man (more specifically: tribe, clan or patriarchal family)did not begin to barter with his neighbors but after his production exceeded his own necessities, that is to say, when the social surplus came into being, as the classic ones say. Before it, it would have been absurd for him to hand others what the tribe needed for their subsistence, which was the fundamental duty and almost the only one of their productive activity. Even several centuries later, when necessity or habit made the foreign products indispensable, the community planned their production under this logic: first, to guarantee everybody the necessary consumption and, only after,it would begin the production of what would be interchanged. All the process was a rationality so transparent, that it was impossible to forget it or break it intentionally, or the existence ofanyone resisting to submit him/herself willingly to the imperatives from the collective production. It was clear for everyone that both the production for the direct consumption and the one targeted for the interchange were regulated by the principle of the collective well-being; of the just and generous distribution of the wealth among every single member of society. History and Logic, then, which keep today and always, a mother-daughter relation, undeniably demonstrate that Man, that all societies were, in their origin, rationally “protectionist”.

Now, let us go forward hundreds (perhaps thousands) of years, and let us position ourselves at the birth of the modern economies, the ones calledelliptically andeuphemistically, “market economies”. One has to notice here, in first place, that the products sale from human labor is not exclusively “between communities” anymore, but that trading is, also, already among own members from the same community instead, that trade relations have become universal and have penetrated deeply into each society seen as a whole. Another decisive change, more difficult to identify by laymen but not for this reason it makes it less true, says that the reason to interchange, to trade, has also varied radically: nowadays, the satisfaction of necessities from everybody is not the target anymore, but, only and exclusively, earning a profit, the biggest profit possible instead. A third change is that this profit is not, in any way or under any circumstance, for the community as a whole, not even for all their directly-producing members, but only, as it is named today, for the capital owners instead, for those who “risk” their money on producing and selling what was produced.

Nevertheless, at this early phase, the capital was also, as History demonstrates it in its development, viciously “protectionist”. Due to two reasons equally easy to understand. The first reason says that real capitalists had to be created, that is to say, to create men, with foresight and vocation of producers and businessmen, who would provide, also, the sufficient wealth to invest, each time more, along with the continuous growth´s demand; the second reason says that a strong domestic market had to be created, with big capacity to consume and capable, due to this, of generating capital and a producing, well-guided, healthy and vigorous class (working men), ready to work long working days without reducing, sensibly, their working capacity. And both things: on one side, real capitalists; and on the other side, productive workers, could only be formed protecting, first, the own market; that is to say, not exposing it to the enemy´s hits before time, before it is ready and ripe to withstand and strike them back successfully. All of the currently powerfulcountries, the so-called “developed” countries, are such, with no exception, due to their original protectionism, timely and intelligently applied at the dawn of their respective economies. If these same countries have become into the “free trade” champions, it is only because they have already plentifully satisfied, meaning, saturated their domestic market; meanwhile, their powerful economic machinery keeps on launching huge quantities of products that require new markets. And these markets are no others but the ones from the left-behind countries like ours. For the rich countries, then, the “free trade” is the perfect economic policy; the one which best meets their present-day interests.

But the matter is: is that also the policy that is convenient for us? Is the “free trade” the panacea, that is to say, the universal solution for everything and everybody? The answer is, evidently, no. It is not, because to be “underdeveloped”, if it means something, is to be still too close to our start point, to our birth at the world of the capital and of the merciless competition for the markets. We, the countries economically left-behind, have to do what others have done in full: to form many capitalists and with capitals big enough to be able to do the giant investments that the competition demands nowadays. And there is only one way to do it, the one that History has marked: an intelligent protectionism, well measured and adapted to our necessities for foreign trade and foreign currency, and capable, at the same time, of absorbing the foreign pressures. To do this, one has to start from the beginning, that is to say, by a serious and vigorous distribution of the national income to create a big and strong domestic market and a working class well fed, educated,housed and healthy, capable of competing with the rest of the world. To go out today and fight for markets, having a paper and flour-paste helmet from Don Quixote, is to go out and make a fool of oneself; and to become into the spokespersons and champions of an unlimited free trade when we have nothing to sell in it, is to show the world over that we ignore even our own reality and our real interests.