THE PRINCIPLE OF HOPE

Page 550
This in a constructive, but partly also in a technical working sense: ‘Unless either the forces of our own nature increase enormously, or unless the nature outside us
transforms itself without our assistance by a sudden miracle and destroys its own previously familiar laws, we cannot expect that prosperity from it, we can only expect
it from ourselves; we must earn it ourselves through work’ (l.c., p. 453). This is a kind of introduction of the theory of labour value into utopia, into a utopia which no
longer lives off raw materials or even manna. But the pathos of active reason nevertheless remains so idealistic in Fichte that it does not develop its social utopia
economically but — syllogistically, in the form of logical conclusions. In this too the exercise of Natural Right is stronger than a genetic development from the point of
view of the work process. Fichte's work thus begins with a major statement as the first main part: ‘What is right as regards commerce in the rational state.’ This is
followed by a specific minor statement as the second, critical main part: ‘On the condition of commerce in current actual states.’ This is followed by the concluding
statement as the third, ideally resulting main part: ‘How the commerce of an existing state is to be put in the constitution required by reason.’ The whole thing aims at
freedom, but at freedom which only finds room through economic restraint. It is an open question whether the ethical individualist Fichte became an economic socialist
because he saw his ethical individualism threatened by economic individualism. But even in the case of Fichte himself it is evident that socialism is what has been sought
in vain for so long under the name of morality.
The individual person is still taken throughout as the basis in all this, everything follows from him. From him alone as a thinking being the shape which justice has to take
is developed. Original rights are those of the rational individual, and it is his ‘I think’ which not only has but develops these rights. Fichte distinguishes three original
rights: the individual's power to dispose of his body, his property, and his sphere as a person. These are supposed to be boundless freedoms, and they are only limited
by the freedom of all other individuals, and hence by nothing alien to the original rights. In order that people are able to live together, the freedom of the individual must
be rendered finite, but in such a way that it may be restricted firstly only by freedom and secondly only for the sake of freedom. Striking conclusions are drawn here
from the original right to property, not at all private capitalist conclusions. In Fichte there is no right of ownership of things but only of actions, so that nobody else is to
be authorized to cultivate this piece of land, or only one group is to be allowed to manufacture shoes.