Money in Fichte’s The Closed Commercial State
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Abstract
In his 1800 book The Closed Commercial State, J.G. Fichte gives an account of what he regards as the ideally rational form of political economy – “the closed commercial state” – and then describes the kind of political transition that would be required to bring this form of political economy into being. Fichte’s arguments give a leading theoretical and practical role to the politics of money. The purpose of this chapter is to develop an interpretation of Fichte’s monetary doctrine in CCS. I argue that Fichte’s general theory of money is a quantitative, institutionalist theory. I further argue Fichte’s institutionalist theory becomes, in the special case of the closed commercial state, a specifically statist theory of fiat money. Fichte’s statism brings along a raft of theoretical and practical consequences, which taken together underwrite his politics of money.