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Institute for Political Studies 1 ISSN 1450-5460 U DK N o. 1-2/2010 II Vol. 2 Serbian Political Thought ISSN 1450-5460 UDK 32 No. 2/2014 Year VI Vol. 10 Serbian Political Thought is published two times a year Serbian Political Thought was founded in 1996 and publishing was renewed in 2010. Publisher Institute for Political Studies Svetozara Markovića 36, Belgrade, Telephone +381 11 33 49 204, +381 11 30 39 380 www.sptips.rs www.ipsbgd.edu.rs e-mail: [email protected] Editor in Chief Živojin Đurić Deputiy editor in chief and Editor of English edition Đorđe Stojanović Executive Editors Dejana Vukčević, Miša Stojadinović Foreign Editorial Board Mamoru Sadakata, Dean/Professor, Graduate School of Law, Nagoya University, Nagoya Iver B. Neumann, Research Director, Norwegian Institute of International Affairs, Oslo Dumitru Batar, Dean/Professor, Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities, University “Lucian Blaga” of Sibiu Anastasia Mitrofanova, Professor, Russian State University for the Humanities, Moscow; Research Director, Center for Euro-Atlantic Studies, Diplomatic Academy of the Russian Foreign Affairs Ministry, Moscow Goran Kovacic, Associated Professor, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Ljubljana Domestic Editorial Board Milan Jovanović, Faculty of Political Sciences, University of Belgrade Dušan Pavlović, Faculty of Political Sciences, University of Belgrade Zoran Stojiljković, Faculty of Political Sciences, University of Belgrade Ljubiša Despotović, Institute for Political Studies, Belgrade Živojin Đurić, Institute for Political Studies, Belgrade Đorđe Stojanović, Institute for Political Studies, Belgrade Dejana Vukčević, Institute for Political Studies, Belgrade Secretary of the Journal Mladen Lišanin, Dragan Trailović, Slađana Mladenović Translators Ana Matić Milica Bjelobaba Graphic Designer Miroslava Karajanković Printed by ESELOGE d.o.o. Belgrade 2 300 copies Contents Diego Fusaro The concept of ‘commercial anarchy’ in Fichte’s The Closed Commercial State 5 Dragana Mitrović China in the Western East – and Beyond: Politics and Economics of the China Plus Sixteen Cooperation Framework 19 Radoslav Gaćinović European Concept of the Young Bosnia Movement 51 Marijana Pajvančić Ljubica Đorđević Serbia in Constitutional Limbo: Democracy without Constitutionalism 69 Aleksandar Novaković Neo-Institutionalism and the Success Story of Capitalism: Two Different Approaches to Social Change 89 Dejan Milenković Serbian Public Administration Reform in the Light of the European Administrative Space Principles 105 Dušan Pavlović Miloš Bešić The Budget Dilemma and Public Spending: Evidence from Ten Postcommunist Countries 133 Luka Glušac Securitizing Migration in the European Union: from Openness to Ban-Opticon 159 3 Aleksandra Mirović Petar Matić Regional Separatisms and Independence Referendums in Europe 179 Natalija Perišić Health Care System between the State and the Market – the Case of Serbia 193 Book review Despot Kovačević Capital, Coercion, and Postcommunist States Gerald M. Easter Cornel University Press, New York, 2012. 211 Citing and Referencing 217 4 Institute for Political Studies UDC 327.56+323.174:316.32(4-12)(5-11) Serbian Political Thought Manuscript received: 10.09.2014. No. 2/2014, Accepted for publishing: 28.10.2014. Year Vl, Vol. 10 Original scientific paper pp. 5-18 Diego Fusaro1 Università Vita-Salute San Raffaele, Milano The Concept of ‘Commercial Anarchy’ in Fichte’s The Closed Commercial State Abstract Fiche’s Der geschlossene Handelstaat presents a concept that, on the one hand, plays a role of primary importance for a critique of the ‘liberal liberty’ and, on the other hand, allows for a critical understanding of the aporias of today’s ‘neoliberal condition’. This concept is Handelsanarchie, the ‘commercial anarchy’ of a historical world that aspires to remove every political constraint in order to let the depoliticized economic become the undisputed master. In the following pages, we will conduct an examination of the Fichtean concept of Handelsanarchie in Der geschlossene Handelstaat, then we will outline some considerations (albeit impressionistic) about its critical scope in the current economic convergence of laissez-faire and neoliberal deregulation. Keywords: commercial anarchy, state, liberal liberty, neoliberal deregulation. 1. Foreword Among Fichte’s works, Der geschlossene Handelstaat (1800) is the most affected by repression and defamation by some of the critics, per- haps even more than Reden an die deutsche Nation. The core of this work written in 1800 is the program of commercial closure of the State: this concept keeps to be presented as a perverse denial of the principles of liberty. For that very reason Fichte is often depicted as a reactionary and anti-libertarian thinker, and many critics consider this work as the turning point (Kehre) of Fichte’s political Denkweg. 1 Researcher [email protected] 5 For the sake of truth, Fichte was not included in the list of authors mentioned by Popper in The Open Society and Its Enemies: however, there is no doubt that the thinker of Rammenau, since 1800, is con- sidered as an enemy of the ‘open society’ by every single supporter of liberal thought. Isaiah Berlin, for instance, places Fichte among the enemies of human liberty. Of course the liberty in question is the lib- eral one, i.e. the freedom of the abstract and anti-communitarian indi- vidual, who has to be protected from every intrusion by the State and should be free to inhabit a social space that has been reduced to a mere plane for mercantile transactions. Certainly, Fichte aimed to fight against this concept of liberty, but he didn’t want to deny the liberty tout court. Rather he wanted to promote liberty in a different sense, adopting a meaning that is both form and content, i.e., a non-liberal liberty, trying to awake his contemporaries from the dogmatic slumber of the automatic iden- tification between liberty and its neo-liberal interpretation. Fichte’s struggle is still topical for us, as we are the victims of the nightmare of the ‘end of history’. In this regard, Der geschlossene Handelstaat presents a concept that, on the one hand, plays a role of primary importance for a critique of the ‘liberal liberty’ and, on the other hand, allows for a critical understand- ing of the aporias of today’s ‘neoliberal condition’. This concept is Han- delsanarchie, the ‘commercial anarchy’ of a historical world that aspires to remove every political constraint in order to let the depoliticized eco- nomic become the undisputed master. In the following pages, we will conduct an examination of the Fichtean concept of Handelsanarchie in Der geschlossene Handelstaat, then we will outline some considerations (albeit impressionistic) about its critical scope in the current economic convergence of laissez-faire and neoliberal deregulation.). 2. Structure of Der Geschlossene Handelstaat The first of the three books of the Der geschlossene Handelstaat, titled Philosophy, begins with a discussion around what seems to be, according to Fichte, the greatest theoretical misunderstanding about the essence of the State. The book discusses, in fact, the ideality of the State, i.e. how the State should be if its ontological potentialities would be ac- tualized. This is what Fichte calls Vernunftstaat, the ‘State regulated by 6 Diego Fusaro The Concept of ‘Commercial Anarchy’ in Fichte’s The Closed Commercial State Reason’. So the great misunderstanding in the conception of the State - that has imposed itself in the course of history - is the belief that “the state has nothing further to do beyond protecting the personal rights and property of every citizen (jeden bei seinen persönlichen Rechten und seinem Eigenthume zu erhalten)”. In opposition to this dominant belief, the first book of Der geschloss- ene Handelstaat, that outlines the philosophical profile of the Vernun- ftstaat, is based on a different vision: es sey die Bestimmung des Staats, jedem erst das Seinige zu geben, ihn in sein Eigenthum erst einzusetzen, und sodann erst, ihn dabei zu schützen, “the vocation of the state to first give each what is his, to first put each in possession of his property, and only then to protect him in this”. This is a statement of capital importance. First of all, the Bestimmung - the ‘determination’ assigned to the State by the thinker of Rammenau - has a radically different meaning from the one assumed in present times: moreover, thanks to that very mystification, the State can present its negation of the ideal as if it was right and natural, due to the fact that the true vocation of the State is repressed and replaced by the perversion where the State has actually fallen down (in a real reabsorption of the ‘ought’ into the ‘is’)2. Opposing this ideological purview, Fichte upholds a non-liberal conception of liberty, i.e. a different perspective in contrast with the liberal outlook that conceives the State as a mere guarantor of individual rights and accumulated properties. The goal is to realize the ideal, instead of the modus operandi of ideologies that are prone to ad- aptation, i.e. idealize the real. The State described in Fichte’s work is not a simple and indifferent policeman that ensures the acquisition, preser- vation and growth of the property of individuals. Such a State is entirely subordinate to agonal individuals, and therefore to the disruptive force of self-referential economy that has unlimited growth as its sole purpose and causes the dissolution of the human community - a topic that was already