8 - Autarkic Visions of Economic Self-Sufficiency

Summary

Although autarkic thought has not received much attention from IPE scholars, there is a long history of thinkers who prioritized their state’s economic self-sufficiency in order to enhance its autonomy (economic, political, and/or cultural) from foreign influence. This autarkic goal was rejected by classical economic liberals, neomercantilists, and most Marxists, but autarkic perspectives had at least as important a place in political debates as these other better-studied ones in some pre-1945 contexts. Like the other perspectives examined in this book, some strands of autarkic thought also circulated internationally in the pre-1945 era. This chapter identifies influential autarkic ideas developed by a number of thinkers from places as diverse as Britain (John Maynard Keynes, just briefly in 1933), China (Chen Gongbo), Germany (Johann Fichte, Friedrich Zimmermann), Haiti (Edmund Paul), India (Mohandas Gandhi), Japan (Aizawa Seishisai, Shizuki Tadao), Korea (Lee Hang-ro), Paraguay (José Gaspar Rodríguez de Francia), Russia (Peter Kropotkin), Turkey (Sevket Süreyya Aydemir), and the west African colony of the Gold Coast (Kobina Sekyi). The chapter also highlights important disagreements amongst these thinkers, ranging from the specific reasons they prioritized autonomy to their views of the relationship between autarky and peace.