Property and economic planning inFichte's contractualism

Abstract

My paper reconstructs Fichte's property theory and political economy in Foundations of Natural Right and The Closed Commercial State. Fichte's theory of property requires the rejection of the classical liberal theory of property rights. Fichte's alternative theory of property, in conjunction with his republican account of the state's role in guaranteeing individual rights, further requires the rejection of a market economy in favor of a planned economy. For Fichte's view entails the normative necessity of a political economy in which the production and transfer of goods and services, across large sectors of the economy, are mandated by the state in advance in accordance with an economic plan. As a result, Fichte reconceives his contractualism as necessarily including the negotiation of a state‐enforced plan for economic activity. Thus, Fichte's new theory of property in Foundations of Natural Right has extremely wide‐ranging implications for the rest of his political and economic thought. The negotiation of fair terms of political association characteristic of classical contractualist thought becomes in Fichte's hands the negotiation of an economic plan that defines each individual's socioeconomic rights. I conclude with some brief remarks on the sense in which Fichte's theory serves as a cautionary tale for later socialists.

Fichte on Property Rights and Coercion

“…This means that the concept of a sphere of freedom lends itself to several different kinds of property rights without being reducible to any one of them. 6 Fichte also does not think that coercion rules out freedom. The assumption that Fichte believes in this dichotomy leads commentators to differ over the question of whether, in his view, compliance with the principles of right is voluntary or imposed by a coercive state.…”

Fichte and Hegel on free time

“…2 2 Indeed, Fichte notoriously favors a planned economic order, which he counterintuitively takes to be necessary for the protection of individual property rights. For an analysis of this unusual combination of a planned economy with a strong endorsement of individual property rights, see Nomer (2005), Nahimovsky (2011), Nance (2019). For a broader background on Fichte's economic theory, see James (2011, esp.…”