Money in Fichte’s The Closed Commercial State

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 The Closed Commercial State. 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.