Note 935 — Chapter II · : STATE SOCIALISM

Fichte issued a very curious work in 1800 entitled Der geschlossene Handelsstaat, published in vol. iii of his complete works (Berlin, 1845), and containing ideas with many points of resemblance to those of State Socialism. Fichte thought that the State should not merely guarantee to every citizen his property, but should first of all rear its citizens, let them build their property, and then defend it. In order to do this everyone should be given the necessary means of livelihood, for the one aim of all human activity is to live, and everyone here has an equal right to live (p. 402)—a declaration of the right of existence. Until all are so provided for no luxuries should be allowed. No one should decorate his house until he feels certain that everyone has a house, and everyone should be comfortably and warmly clad before anyone is elegantly dressed (p. 400). “Nor is it enough to say that I can afford to pay for it, for it is unjust that one individual should be able to buy luxuries while his fellow citizens have not enough to procure the necessaries of life. The money with which the former purchases his luxuries would in a rational State not be his at all.” Adopting this as his guiding principle, Fichte proposes to organise a State in which the members of every profession, agriculturists, artisans, merchants, etc., would make a collective contract with one another, in which they would promise not to encroach upon one another’s labour, but would guarantee to everyone a sufficient number of the goods which each has made for his own use. The State would also undertake to see that the number of persons in every profession was neither too few nor too many. It would also fix the price of goods. Lastly, in view of the fact that foreign trade would naturally upset the equilibrium established by the contract which guaranteed security of existence to each individual, the commercial State would have to be entirely hemmed in by tariff walls. The whole work is original and interesting. A. Menger, who gives a brief résumé of it in his second chapter of The Right to the Whole Produce of Labour, thinks that Fichte was influenced by what he saw of the Convention during the Reign of Terror, by the issue of assignats, and perhaps by Babeuf. Fichte, on the other hand, takes care to point out that his commercial State is not realisable as such, but that a book like his is not less useful in view of the general hints which it affords a statesman.