Lecture V

In answer to the question: Who are the Bolshevists?—various names would have to be given today. The names most often repeated are those of Lenin and Trotsky. I will, however, give you a third name which may perhaps astonish you. But from a certain point of view I can do no less than call Johann Gottlieb Fichte a genuine Bolshevist. I have often spoken to you of him[^1] and tried to present his life history from a rather more profound standpoint, and we have also called up before our souls some of his leading thoughts. It cannot be denied that Fichte was one of the most forceful thinkers of recent times and, in the truest sense of the word, an idealist. He stated his views on socialism in a little book entitled Der geschlossene Handelsstaat ( The Enclosed Commercial State). If what he there presents as a kind of ideal picture of social conditions is studied in its reality, it can only be said that, if realised, this social ideal set forth in Fichte's book could lead to nothing but Bolshevism. Trotsky is writings sentence for sentence, almost word for word, as far as this can be the case in such widely different things, are reminiscent of Fichte's Der geschlossene Handelsstaat.