Autarchy

ANY STATE, REGION, OR community, or even a plantation or manor, which is entirely self-sufficient is an autarchy. When the term is used in a strictly economic sense of a state that seeks to limit foreign imported goods or to operate entirely with domestic products and manufactures, the policy goal is sometimes spelled as “autarky.” In that economic policy usage of the term, a state that adopts high tariffs or other barriers to imports, or that seeks to develop domestic sources for previously imported goods or products, can be said to be moving towards autarky or autarchy. Although an economic concept of self-sufficiency, the term autarchy has also been applied more broadly in a cultural context, as an aspect of nationalism, with political and ideological overtones. A cultural autarchy is a state or region that rejects the importation or usage of alien ideas, cultural styles, mannerisms, and language.

In the 20th century, numerous states have adopted a policy of autarchy or self-sufficiency. Those that made the greatest efforts at autarchic economy and autarchic culture tended to be the most intensely nationalistic, or states in a period of nationalistic isolation. For the most part, those states have been found on the right side of the political spectrum, although from time to time, more democratic or socialist regimes have sought economic independence or economic nationalism and have been said to be moving in an autarchic direction. During the 1920s, the Soviet Union sought to structure its economy to be independent of foreign trade, and its policy in that period was regarded as tending toward autarchy. In the 1930s, when Benito Mussolini's Italy was under international sanctions for its invasion of Ethiopia, the nation sought to build economic independence. Adolf Hitler's Germany, in the same period, developed an official policy of self-sufficiency or autarchy. Mahatma Gandhi advocated Indian independence of reliance on imports in the 1940s, and his ideology had autarchic aspects. Spain was isolated from the international community in the period after World War II and had to rely on domestic products, adopting a policy of autarchy.

The term autarchy has been applied with another meaning to leaders and regimes who were so autocratic in their rule that they tended to exclude the advice and opinions of others. The term has been used in this fashion to describe rulers who isolate themselves within their government and seek to rule single-handedly or self-sufficiently. In modern states, the charge that a ruler sought autarchy in this sense has represented a severe criticism of his or her rule. Such a critique has sometimes been utilized as part of a program to remove the ruler from power. Thus, for example, when Tzar Nicholas II of Russia dismissed his minister of war in September 1915 and assumed control of the Russian army, critics charged Nicholas with autarchy. The reliance for advice by Nicholas and Tzarina Alexandra on the popularly hated monk Gregory Rasputin fed the image of an autarchic or autocratic leader refusing to share power with responsible administrators and advisors. That criticism, voiced by middle-class reformers, nobility, and the radical leaders of the revolutionary political parties in Russia, contributed to pressure leading to the tzar's abdication in February 1917.

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