In Chapter 3 we encountered Kant’s Perpetual Peace. Published in 1795, this work is often praised for its foresight. After all, Kant suggested the founding of a federation of states charged with the preservation of peace. In the 20th century, the League of Nations (founded after the First World War), and later the United Nations implemented his vision. But Kant was strikingly naive in other ways, especially in his attitude towards trade. “The spirit of commerce sooner or later takes hold of every people,” he wrote, “and it cannot exist side by side with war.” Kant seems to have thought a world dominated by trade would inevitably be peaceful. But history unfolded differently. Increasing commercial prospects transformed societies into different classes that were not always at peace. And at the global level, 19th-century imperialism was driven by commercial interests. In many cases trade interests of Western powers were enforced by force (“gun boat diplomacy”). In their 1848 Communist Manifesto, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels already wrote rather differently about trade: 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. (McLellan 1977, pp 247f)