The Closed Commercial State

Fourth Chapter: The reciprocal relation of the nations as wholes in this commercial state

Fourth Chapter The reciprocal relation of the nations as wholes in this commercial state As long as the governments of the particular states of which the commercial state consists do not directly collect taxes from their citizens, but defray the costs of the administration of the state through demesnes and other such means, the relation of the individual to the commercial state will remain just as we have described. All the individuals are free members of the com‑ mercial state, existing for themselves, and whether they become rich or poor is of no interest to any other member of the commercial state, and is of just as little interest to its government. The government likewise represents a member of the commercial state that exists for itself, administering its wealth and using it to engage in commerce both abroad and at home. [100] Yet as soon as the government begins taxing its citizens directly, and indeed in the commercial state’s common means of exchange—in world currency—this gives rise to new considerations, and the relations in the commercial state become more complicated. The rational state, according to the above, collects as much taxes as it needs. With the majority of actual states, one will proceed very safely if one assumes that each will collect as much as it can. Nor can this be held against them, since they are as a rule unable to collect as much as they need to accomplish those purposes that, mostly for want of wealth, still remain to be accomplished. The governments collect taxes in world currency, since they pay resi‑ dents and foreigners alike only in this currency, as if they have no closer relation to the former than to each of the latter. Nor could it be otherwise, if the particular juridical state does not form a particular commercial soci‑ ety, and every individual citizen can end up engaging in commerce with the most distant foreigner as easily as with his neighboring fellow citizen, depending as much, with respect to the prices for which he buys and sells goods, {460} on the former as the latter, who in this regard is not even his fellow citizen, but an entirely free individual. Everyone must therefore be 147 148 Second Book equipped with the universally valid means of exchange for use in every situation, and can use none but this. The more of this world currency that its subjects possess, the more the government can collect from them as taxes; the less, then the less. It therefore will become in the government’s interest that all those who pay taxes have quite a lot of money, so that the government can take quite a lot from them. Thus, the government conceives of these tax‑paying citizens as unified into one entity, a single body, whose affluence is its concern, even though the individuals, as they conceive of themselves, remain separate from one another and without a common interest. For the government there is only one wealth, one source of potential power [Ein Vermögen]: the tax‑paying body.10 Now, for the first time, the concept of national wealth, and of a nation having wealth, has some sense. Previously—or indeed for as long as this perspective is disregarded and the state guards only against one person taking from another, without seeing to it that everyone has something—we could only speak of a nation united through laws and a common judiciary, and not, however, of a nation united through common wealth.—In this way, nature leads governments for their own advantage beyond the narrow boundaries that they have set to their administration, [101] giving them, on account of its utility, an interest they should already have had for the sake of what is right. If several or all of the governments found in the commercial state introduce taxes paid in money, then from their perspective there will arise several national‑wealths, and a relation of these wealths to one another. This relationship can be of three kinds. Let us disregard, for the moment, the intrinsic state of prosperity of the citizens—whether their way of life is easier or more toilsome. Since the true source of riches indeed rests solely in the supply of goods, it follows that we should call neither relatively poor nor rich a nation that periodi‑ cally imports goods that cost the same amount of money, {461} and have the same intrinsic value, as the goods that it exports...