THE PRINCIPLE OF HOPE

Page 552
‘because the permitted production and manufacture is already calculated in the basis of the state’ (l.c., p. 443). So Fichte's state believes that it does not have to take
on domestic bartering, it contents itself with the social supervision of the implementation of contracts entered into. It contents itself with this if only because the really
supreme or state class in this utopia, as in Plato, consists of teachers and scholars; but these have Fichte's ‘Theory of Science’ in mind, not book­keeping, financial
exchange, discount credit. The state's monopoly of foreign trade is also simply conceived as a defensive measure, as the protection of the production budget against
‘the uncontrollable influence of the foreigner’. And precisely from this will towards overall control there now follows the most radical conclusion of the plan, that most
reminiscent of the happy isle again: autarky. The world currency of gold and silver is abolished, a domestic currency of worthless material takes its place, which cannot
be hoarded and which is unsuitable for the purchase of foreign products. Perhaps, says Fichte, there will then be no furs and silk clothes any more in a utopian
Germany, and certainly no Chinese tea, but nor will there be any economic wars and wars of conquest. Foreign credits are to be handed over to the government (an
amazing anticipation of foreign exchange legislation), in fact Fichte even indicates the home production of substitutes for cotton and other imported materials (an
amazing anticipation of synthetic chemistry). The Chinese wall, the patriotic wall thus becomes utopian: ‘There is a specific goal which the government must resolve to
attain before completely closing off the state: namely, that everything which is being produced anywhere at the time the state is closed off is produced from now on
within the country itself, as far as at all possible in such a climate’ (l.c., p. 532). This idea of autarky is known to have kindled reactionary fervour in the semi­fascist
Brüning period of the Weimar Republic. It recommended itself as a means of running the economy without gold backing, without international clearing, of preparing a
war economy. But it recommended itself to Fichte on account of the closed unity which every system of organized work needs as long as it is not introduced in other
states as well, and then of course on account of patriotism. Under the influence of the Napoleonic Wars, Fichte increasingly abandoned his initial principle: ubi lux, ibi
patria. But the so­called transition from cosmopolitanism to nation­state in Fichte's utopia must not be overestimated; even the Germanness only proves and justifies
itself here so as to be most universally human or the strongest Humanum. The basis of Fichte's distinction of Germanness from foreignness, even in his Speeches