Audier. A German Approach To Liberalism. Ordoliberalism, Sociological Liberalism and Social Market Economy

A GERMAN APPROACH TO LIBERALISM?
ORDOLIBERALISM,
SOCIOLOGICAL LIBERALISM, AND SOCIAL MARKET ECONOMY
Serge Audier
Altern. économiques | « L'Économie politique »
Volume 60, Issue 4, 2013 | from 48 to 76

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L’Economie politique
Quarterly: October 2013
Germany: A Model Not
to Follow
p. I
A German Approach to
Liberalism? Ordoliberalism,
Sociological Liberalism,
and Social Market

Economy
Serge Audier, Professor at the University of Paris-Sorbonne
I
N THE EARLY DECADES OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY, liberalism
appeared to be an endangered species in Germany. In 1927,
when Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises published his
essay Liberalismus, he claimed that liberalism was dead
among Germans more than anywhere else. After gaining a degree
of visibility thanks to a number of writers including Wilhelm von
Humboldt in his famous essay entitled On the Limits of State
Action (1791), the liberal tradition died out, von Mises argued, and
was supplanted by statism and nationalism. Ten years later, with
Nazism in full swing, the great anarchist theoretician Rudolf Rocker
published Nationalism and Culture (1937/2008), in which he noted
the tragic death of liberal ideas, stating that “the very active pro-
moters of the Third Reich are today ranting against liberalism” and
arguing that “it is not a German product” (167).[1] In fact, Nazi lead- [1] Verbatim citations in
this document were back-
ers, following in the footsteps of Benito Mussolini in Italy, strongly translated from the French.
proclaimed the death of political and economic liberalism. The
same held true for the influential Herbert Backe in his 1938 essay
prefaced by his Minister of Agriculture, Walther Darré. ›››
to Follow
p. II However, liberal thinking never entirely left German soil or its

intelligentsia. In fact, in the 1930s, it experienced a surprising
intellectual rebirth, albeit one of a low-profile and confidential
nature. Following the Allied victory, it enjoyed a golden age from
the standpoint of economic and financial policies. While many
industrialized countries, under the influence of the New Deal
and the Keynesian revolution in particular, became committed
to resolutely interventionist policies, Germany seemed to evolve
separately, following a more liberal model than that adopted by
France or Great Britain under the leadership of Ludwig Erhard
(1897–1977), Germany’s prominent Minister of the Economy
from 1949 to 1963 and then Chancellor from 1963 to 1966. Erhard
was known as the architect of the “German economic miracle,”
quickly gaining undeniable electoral support that lasted up to
the mid-1960s.
In fact, this period often appeared to be one of revenge by

liberal economists, even if in reality Germany was clearly much

more economically and socially interventionist than was often
stated, as noted early on by some observers (Piettre 1962;
Schonfield 1967, 248–306). With Nazism discredited and in
a context marked by the Cold War, their time seemed to have
arrived, in particular following the monetary reform launched
by Erhard in 1948. But what type of liberalism was this? After
all, even in Great Britain, the establishment of the Welfare State
had been theorized and supported during the 1940s by William
Beveridge who, like Keynes, was a senior member of the Liberal
Party and author of the “Beverage Report.” Although Beveridge
did not consider himself a socialist or supporter of the Labor
Party but rather a liberal, a very different school of thought during
the same period in Germany found an opportunity to implement
his ideas. Yet simply mentioning the specific nature of German
liberalism is not enough. To best understand its features, several
expressions often used interchangeably must first be defined:
ordoliberalism, neoliberalism, and social market economy.
Although these (and other) expressions overlap in meaning,

they are not strictly equivalent. In the post-WWII period, ordo
liberalism designated a movement established around the theo-
ries of Walter Eucken (1891–1950), a highly influential economist
at the University of Freiburg, and in connection with the academic
journal Ordo. Although Eucken did not discuss neoliberalism,
several other German liberals did, especially in the 1950s and
to Follow
1960s, including ordoliberals such as Friedrich Lutz. In the late p. III
1930s, the expression had a much more ambiguous meaning
than in the 1970s. Following the Walter Lippmann Colloquium
in 1938, it designated a renewed liberalism that distanced itself
from the old laissez-faire liberalism. Although the German liberal
who used the expression most readily was Alexander Rüstow
(1885–1963), he also spoke of liberal interventionism, like his
economist friend Wilhelm Röpke (1899–1966), who thoroughly
disliked the label “neoliberalism,” all the while declaring him-
self obligated to adopt it and preferring instead the expressions
“sociological liberalism,” “the Third Way,” or “humanistic libe
ralism.” Finally, the expression “social market economy” was
not advocated in the 1930s but only appeared after the Second
World War in the political and ideological arena in support of the
Christian Democrats. Although the word was used by Finance
Minister Erhard and even Chancellor Konrad Adenauer himself,
its principal theoretician was Alfred Müller-Armack (1901–1978).
As a sociologist of religions and a prominent political actor in

German and European economic life, he was not part of the ini-
tial ordoliberal circle, and reference is sometimes made to the
Cologne School to highlight his unique prominence.
Ordoliberalism, or the Doctrine

of the Freiburg School
The reason for making the above distinctions is that all of the
cited expressions do not designate entirely equivalent doctrinal,
sociological, and historic realities, even though there are most
certainly points on which they overlap in meaning and share
common major actors. For example, we will see that ordolibera
lism is not synonymous with sociological liberalism nor entirely
synonymous with social market economy. These categories were
not all born at the same place and time. Ordoliberalism was
developed in Germany under Nazi rule. Compared to sociological
liberalism, which will be discussed later and which was deve
loped by Germans in exile, this economic liberalism is primarily
characterized by its fundamentally legal nature. Ordoliberalism
wishes to promote the decentralized coordination of economic
activities within a framework of rules and regulations in opposi-
tion to any form of centralizing State intervention but while grant-
ing public authorities a major role in designing and transforming
these rules and regulations. This is what also differentiates it
rather significantly from the contemporary Austrian liberalism
of von Mises or in a more complex way from that of Friedrich ›››
to Follow
p. IV Hayek, not to mention the previous generation represented by

Carl Menger and Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk. It should also be
emphasized that ordoliberalism can in no way be reduced to the
“extension status” of the Austrian School even if certain cross-
influences may have occurred.
The Initial Idea of an Economic Constitution

It should be recalled that the so-called Freiburg School grew
around Walter Eucken, the son of Rudolf Eucken, a world-
renowned philosopher who was both an economist and a theore-
tician and who was strongly influenced by the critical philosophy
of Kant and the phenomenology of his colleague Edmund Husserl
as well as by his Christian beliefs. As a professor in the Faculty
of Law and Political Science at the University of Freiburg from
1927 until his death in 1950, he established a veritable school of
law and economics thanks to several important colleagues. First
and foremost, there was Franz Böhm, a professor of civil and
commercial law in Prague, who subsequently taught at Freiburg

between 1933 and 1936 and finally at Jena and who was forced to
remain in retirement after openly protesting the racial policies of
the Nazi regime. Like Böhm, the other major figure in ordoliberal-
ism, Hans Grossmann-Doerth, was a legal scholar and specialist
in legal issues arising from the rapid expansion of cartels. This
key issue of the cartelization of the German economy had been
at the heart of debates since the end of the nineteenth century
when, in 1897, the Supreme Court issued a ruling declaring the
legality of cartel agreements, thereby contributing to the strong
ties between the State and the cartels. It should also be noted
that ordoliberalism, as well as a significant portion of sociologi-
cal liberalism and social market economy theory, were in large
part developed in response to this phenomenon as well as to the
expansion of State interventionism and to inflation.
The desire of these colleagues to have an impact on the eco-

nomic life of Germany became most manifest in 1937. Together
with his colleagues and beginning in 1937, Eucken published
the collection entitled Ordnung der Wirtschaft, the first volume
of which was preceded by a kind of statement of principle that
appeared retrospectively as the manifesto of ordoliberalism.
Later, starting in 1948 and within the framework of the new
Federal Republic of Germany, the academic journal Ordo was
published on a comparable basis. It was then that the word
“ordoliberalism” became widespread. Starting with a pioneering
to Follow
article published in the early 1930s, Böhm established a research p. V
and action program that was in large part that of ordoliberalism.
He emphasized that this involved translating the doctrinal edifice
of classical philosophy concerning the economy while moving
from the language of economics to the language of the science of
law (Böhm 1933, ix). A few years later, the research group began
to truly take shape. In 1936, Eucken, Böhm, and Grossmann-
Doerth published in the introduction to Ordnung der Wirtschaft a
manifesto stating their thinking and an interdisciplinary program
under the title “Our Task” (Böhm, Eucken, and Grossman-Doerth
1937). They began with a position intended to be clear, namely
that it has been a long time since economics and law had exer-
cised any real influence on major political, legal, and economic
decisions. That said, there was a time, they argued, when law
and economics were significant combined structuring forces,
in particular at the end of the eighteenth century. However,
during the nineteenth century, law and economics tended to
become disassociated, with harmful consequences. In fact, by

their very profession, men of science had an independent status
with regard to economic interests since they were capable of
providing objective and impartial analyses of the interactions
between economic activities, formulating general principles of
analysis and judgment, and providing recommendations free
from any specific and immediate economic interests. However,
their marginalization also increased the importance of advisors
linked to particular interests, i.e., those of their economic sector.
While such individuals were capable of grasping the interrela-
tionships between the various sectors in the complex system of
the economy, they also tended to confuse the interest of their
professional sector with that of the nation as a whole.
For Eucken and his close colleagues, the destruction of law,

which had catastrophic consequences, in particular because
it promoted a cartel-based economy, was the result of several
harmful intellectual influences. This was especially true of the
German Historical School—we are basically referring here to
the “armchair sociology” of Gustav von Schmoller but also to
Marxism, not forgetting the romantic German Historical School
of Law founded by Friedrich Carl von Savigny. We should also
note in passing that in contrast, the Austrian economist Menger
expressed great admiration for the law school founded by
Savigny, as Hayek did later (Hayek 2007, 96–8 and 192), to the
point of claiming to be an avid follower of the school in terms of ›››
to Follow
p. VI its evolutionary conception of institutions (Menger 2011, 316–7).

Yet this was not at all the point of view of Eucken and his friends,
who saw the task of this new German liberalism as returning to
the interconnection of the various sectors of the economy from
a multidisciplinary perspective with the primary objective of
relating all practical politico-legal and politico-economic issues
to the idea of an economic constitution by following the guiding
conviction that the link between economics and law was essen-
tial. This idea of an “economic constitution” was understood to
stem from an overall political decision about the way in which the
economic life of the nation should be structured, which would
serve as a guide for decisions over public and private law. Legal
experts and economists must therefore focus their concerns on
identifying the various forms of competition and the obstacles to
it. As briefly indicated, what the future holds is in fact a situation
of full competition.
Conditions for Ensuring a Competitive Order


The small but at times enlarged group of ordoliberal econo-
mists and legal experts mentioned above would also continue
to produce a number of common documents. One of the most
interesting, published again by Eucken but this time together
with Constantin von Dietze and Adolf Lampe, was drafted in 1943
at the invitation of Lutheran pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer but not
published until 1979 (von Dietze, Eucken, and Lampe). It provides
an overview of the authors’ defense of a competitive order that
without originating from Christian social doctrine nonetheless
claims to meet a portion of its requirements. The authors then
stress the fact that the subsuming order implementing the prin-
ciples of competition prevents the formation of concentrated
economic powers and thus eliminates the very ground on which
the exploitation of the weak prospers. In addition, the project,
which is more directly social but otherwise somewhat vague,
indicates that the State must monitor the wage-setting process.
The document also mentions labor protection as well as safe-
guarding the rights of patients, disabled people, and the elderly.
Although the solutions outlined are not very detailed, they refer
to the Bismarckian Welfare State. The text hints at the possibility
of replacing the previous social insurance model with volun-
tary savings, requirements imposed on companies, and State
intervention on behalf of the elderly. This also involves support
for access to housing by public authorities, the role of confede
rations and cooperatives and neighborhood associations, and
to Follow
representation for professional organizations in establishing p. VII
the social order.
However, it was also—and especially—Eucken himself

who was to provide a theoretical framework for this liberal
constitutionalism. In his 1940 masterpiece Die Grundlagen der
Nationalökonomie (Foundations of the National Economy) he
points out that if dirigisme is a dangerous dead-end, then reac-
tivating laissez-faire is impossible from the viewpoint of com-
petition at work as well as from the social viewpoint. Therefore,
a competitive economy far removed from the old laissez-faire
system must be deliberately constructed:
The problem will not solve itself simply by letting the eco-
nomic system develop spontaneously. The history of the
last century demonstrates this fully. The economic system
must be constructed deliberately. The exact problems of eco-
nomic policy, whether they concern agriculture, trade, credit,

monopolies, taxation, corporate law, or bankruptcy law, are
all parts of one large problem, which consists in finding out
how the economy as a whole must be constructed, along
with its rules, both nationally and internationally. (Eucken
1940, 314)
Ten years later, shortly before his death, Eucken provided the
following description of his ordoliberal vision:
Yes to the planning of forms, no to the planning and control

of the economic process. It is essential to have a clear under-
standing of the difference between form and process and to
act accordingly. (Eucken 1951, 97)
His posthumous work, entitled Gründsätze der Wirtschafts

politik (Principles of Political Economy), which was published
in 1952 following his early death, details this conception of a
competitive order.
However, it would be up to his disciples and colleagues, in

particular Böhm, the most famous among them, to clarify or
reorient the doctrine, which would come in various orthodox
or clearly softened versions (Denton, Forsyth, and Maclennan
1968). It should be added that this conception of liberalism,
while it is hegemonic, was contested in Germany by a minority ›››
to Follow
p. VIII of liberal economists and journalists who were highly hostile

to it. As recalled by Lutz, a supporter of ordoliberalism, the
establishment of the anti-cartel legislation desired by Erhard but
not formalized until 1957 was met with fierce resistance as well
as entrepreneurial interest among some German liberals who
accused the ordoliberals of being statists and interventionists
and who insinuated that it was not by chance that Eucken’s col-
laborators had been tolerated under Nazism. In order to better
protect his liberalism from the rules, Lutz (1959) spoke of neo-
liberalism in opposition to the old laissez-faire liberalism that
justified the cartels.
Sociological Liberalism
Contrary to ordoliberal principles, the supporters of sociological
liberalism, namely the economist Röpke and the theoretician
Rüstow, did not remain in Germany but were forced into exile in
Switzerland and Turkey, respectively. Although their economic
thinking was closely tied to that of the Freiburg School and

although it shared a large number of its concerns, it also had
some specific characteristics. In short, it was of a less legal and
much more sociological or even religious nature.
Starting in the 1930s, these two liberals also published their

own manifesto though in a yet more confidential form. This novel
document is instructive because it enables us to understand their
atypical conception and to highlight not only the differences with
ordoliberalism but also with other liberal trends of the period,
in particular the Austrian school. The document referred to here
is the one the two men drafted together on the occasion of the
Walter Lippmann Colloquium in order to defend their view of
liberalism.
The typewritten text was entitled: “A Note on the Urgent

Necessity of the Re-Orientation of Social Science” (Rüstow and
Röpke). It is vastly different from the prevailing conception
of economics today. The message first emphasizes that all of
the current issues faced by society in the broadest sense of
the term, whether economic social, political, legal or spiritual,
must be related to a transformation of the entire system and
ultimately to a “historical crisis of a secular nature.” However,
the authors add that we must also recognize the painful truth
that the social sciences themselves are increasingly under-
going a crisis, incapable as they are to find a firm foundation
to Follow
even though the responsibility weighing on them is heavier than p. IX
ever. Rüstow and Röpke readily point out the diagnostic error of
an economics boxed in by its quantitative certainties. In fact, to
the extent that the contemporary crisis is most clearly manifest
in the economic sphere and that the nineteenth century accus-
tomed us to assigning primary importance to economic issues,
the customary approach has remained the status quo. The over-
whelming majority of economists thus undertook an enormous
amount of research and statistical work and administered ques-
tionnaires. Better still, economic analysis has been brought to “a
degree of refinement never before achieved” and sometimes to
“a degree of surreality never before achieved,” and “complicated
machineries of institutionalized science” have been put in place.
However, all of this excitement yielded disappointing results as
many researchers became aware that this feverish explosion of
work in economics did not come close to providing the funda-
mental diagnosis that might serve as a basis for a therapy.

In substance, Rüstow and Röpke are tied to the free market,
yet extremely critical of what Röpke would soon call “historic
capitalism.” Neither socialists nor social democrats nor classical
liberals, they denounce the audacity, even the cynicism, involved
in prescribing only economic policy remedies to make the market
work, which might in fact “aggravate the forces of spiritual dis-
solution” and further undermine the economy. Although Rüstow
and Röpke do not deny the virtues of some of these treatments,
what is essential in their eyes plays out elsewhere:
If we agree that the lack of private and spontaneous invest-

ment is at the source of the economic depression, we must
take the position that it is right to invest and that this eco-
nomic activity, which to the extent that it anticipates an
uncertain future, is highly dependent on a minimum level of
security and continuity and on the undisputed rule of certain
norms and principles in human behavior, politics, and the
jurisdiction of governments.
Thus the authors lament that in general, no trace of these

fundamental problems can be found in the countless works in
economics that deal with crises and cycles, savings, and invest-
ment. Yet an entire favorable and reassuring social environment
would be required to enable the still risky implementation of eco-
nomic initiatives, and societies would also have to be capable ›››
to Follow
p. X of absorbing the shocks caused by crises and depressions. It is

within this framework that Rüstow and Röpke make their custom-
ary argument for the peasant and artisanal lifestyle, which is in
close contact with nature, and fiercely criticize the industrial
environment. During the Lippmann Colloquium, this program,
which was defended by Rüstow, managed to irritate von Mises
to the utmost, who vehemently denounced the “romanticism”
of this German, who in turn retorted that in substance, the libe
ralism of von Mises was a serious historical dead-end. In his
correspondence with Röpke, Rüstow launched a strong attack
against the “paleo-liberalism” of von Mises and Hayek, blaming
their dogmatic position for producing the crisis of the 1930s such
that the place for these Austrian liberals would henceforth be “in
a museum behind a glass window.”
Yet the concrete programs proposed by the two leading

figures of sociological liberalism contain some differences, which
clearly bear witness to specific sensitivities, Rüstow having been

more impacted by his socialist involvement in his youth. One of
the reforms to which he was most devoted was that of a drastic
transformation of inheritance laws, which according to him,
needed to become quasi-confiscatory in order to ensure true
equal opportunity. For him,
Most unjust of all are the inequalities in the conditions exist-

ing at the start of economic life, derived in part from unequal
inheritances, which depend only upon how carefully one
chooses one’s parents. (Rüstow 1942, 281)
However, neither Röpke nor the other German liberals fol-

lowed this ambitious reform project. Instead, taking inspiration
from the conservative sociologist Frédéric Le Play, Röpke was
more favorable to a continuation of inheritance in order to safe-
guard peasant property.
Otherwise, the two programs converge considerably. In his

1945 book initially published in Turkey and entitled Das Versagen
des Wirtschaftsliberalismus als religionsgeschichtliches Problem
(The Failure of Economic Liberalism Understood as an Issue of
Religious History), Rüstow unleashed his radical critique of the
ideology behind the laissez-faire system and dogmatic liberalism
in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, which he accused
of “sociological blindness” (1945), fatalism, passivity, and the
to Follow
sanctification of serious inequalities and injustices produced by p. XI
a corrupt market economy. For him, it was a matter of reinventing
a “liberal interventionism” granting a central place to sociologi-
cal framing. In his subsequent trilogy entitled Ortsbestimmung
der Gegenwart, repeating his favorite phrase already uttered in
1938 during the Lippmann Colloquium, namely that “man does
not live by bread alone,” he emphasized that “quality is above Importante
quantity,” which implies that we should take serious account of
issues relating to “quality of life” since the goal of individuals
is to “create a life worth living,” which leads to happiness and
of which one of the modalities would be “a deliberate city and
urban planning policy” (Rüstow 1980, 670).
For his part, in a series of philosophical economic works

published during the 1940s and including The Social Crisis of
Our Time and Civitas Humana, Röpke endeavors to map out a
“third way” between old laissez-faire liberalism and dirigiste
socialism. He was also in search of what he called a “liberal

interventionism” that would reinvent a competitive liberalism
firmly anchored in a community-based social and spiritual life
protected from individualist logic and supported by a middle
class that had retained a sense of sobriety and civic spirit. At a
time when he attracted sympathy from some socialists, though
not without misunderstandings, he believed that among those
activities compliant or compatible with the workings of the free
market, we could acknowledge, at least a priori, a vast network of
public services, including State services. Furthermore, although
this conservative liberal German exiled to a Switzerland he
venerated for its rejection of gigantism was certainly not a mili-
tant for equality, he nonetheless stressed the need for certain
market-compatible activities in order to mitigate social suffer-
ing without necessarily lapsing into dirigisme or a Welfare State
while at the same time warning of dangers of extreme differences
between the very rich and the very poor. To him, the concentra-
tion of power and wealth seemed to be one of the most danger-
ous pathological traits of historic capitalism, of which he saw a
caricature in American speculative capitalism of the 1920s, with
its industrial and architectural gigantism.
We should also note another distinctive feature of his libera

lism compared to the Austrian or American trends, namely the
often emphasized need for an intense relationship with a natural Importante
environment “on a human scale,” according to his own slogan, ›››
to Follow
p. XII protected from the ravages of industrialism. From the 1940s

onward, his writings sound the alarm against the irresponsible
depletion of resources and the destruction of the natural envi-
ronment, even the killing of whales. This is a theme he repeats
up until the 1960s and in his testamentary work Jenseits von
Angebot und Nachfrage (Beyond Supply and Demand), in which
he radicalizes both his liberalism, which had become more
critical of statism than in the 1940s, and his conservatism by
outlining a doctrine that escapes the usual categories, making on
the one hand a case for monetary stability, a balanced budget,
and competitive market rules and on the other, an abhorrence of
the destruction of biodiversity by industrial societies and a vehe-
ment denunciation of commercial advertising, which distorts
competition, destroys landscapes, and entices Christians away
from true values. Like Rüstow (1957a, 234), the more mature
Röpke never failed to vehemently criticize all of the gadgets of the
technological and consumer society, including the radio, record
player, and car. It is not therefore without reason that these two

authors sometimes appear in subsequent German ecological
literature.
The Social Market Economy: Adenauer and Erhard

During the post-WWII period, Rüstow for a long time managed
the Association for the Promotion of the Social Market Economy
(Aktionsgemeinschaft Soziale Marktwirtschaft), in which could be
found a number of ordoliberals, and it was in this context also
that Röpke would hold one of his conferences during which he
would once again emphasize that “the market economy does
not suffice” (Rüstow 1957a,). However, we should also be atten-
tive to the fact that the concept of a social market economy
cannot be reduced to ordoliberalism, sociological liberalism, or
neoliberalism because strictly speaking, it is neither a matter
of a school of economics having a well-defined legal paradigm,
like the Freiburg School, nor of the philosophical definition of a
liberalism with a strong social and spiritual framework, as in the
case of Rüstow and Röpke. In fact, the social market economy
integrates many elements from both trends, even if this vague
term, which over a several decades experienced many fluctua-
tions and appropriations, even sometimes to the left of social
democracy, is less that of a doctrine than of a political economic
program. On the conservative liberal right, this expression was
used and reformulated until the 1980s during the Helmut Kohl
era as well as more recently, in particular to distinguish itself
to Follow
from Anglo-Saxon liberalism in the speeches of Horst Köhler and p. XIII
Chancellor Angela Merkel (Uterwedde 2009).
Who first used the expression remains debatable. Some

believe that it was Erhard, while others consider it to have been
Müller-Armack in a 1947 report to the Chamber of Commerce
and Industry of North Rhine-Westphalia (Tribe 1995, 203). In any
case, its success was immediate, in particular in the political
and ideological arena. In his memoirs, Adenauer mentions the
programmatic development of an important pamphlet for the
CDU–CSU Düsseldorf Conference in July 1949, which based on
the work program of Franz Etzel, Franz Böhm, Bernhard Pfister,
and Hugo Scharnberg, provides the following definition of the
social market economy:
It is a conception linked to the social, an economy in which

the outcomes of the work of free and capable men are har-
monized into an order bringing maximum economic profit

and social justice to all. This system is radically opposed to
that of the planned economy we reject, whether its direc-
tives derive from centralized or decentralized, official or
private bodies. It is likewise opposed to the so-called “free
economy,” and it is in order to prevent a return to it that inde-
pendent control of monopolies is necessary so as to ensure
healthy competition. (Adenauer 1965, 211)
Several historians emphasize that the concept of a social

market economy had the virtue of conciliating diverse views
within the CDU and of not alienating the still very powerful and
clearly dominant constituency marked by a Social Christian
sensibility (Spicka 2007, 57), not to mention the German popu-
lation as a whole, which was highly distrustful of the market
economy but also hostile to communism and largely immu-
nized against Nazi dirigisme. Thus this social market economy
henceforth adopted by the CDU was indeed the doctrine and
ideological symbol, thanks to the support of the mainstream
press and in particular the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, of
the liberal economic renewal of West Germany during the post-
war period. This was supported by Erhard in consultation with
Röpke himself, who from Switzerland, continued to advise
and take part in the debates, with the economist also submit-
ting an important report to Adenauer about German economic
policy. ›››
to Follow
p. XIV For Chancellor Adenauer, the expression “social market

economy” took on a much less technical meaning, given the
fact that he was a pure politician and not an economist or a
philosopher. For him, in addition to corresponding to his view
of things, economic well-being and a degree of social security
constituted an effective immunization of West German society
against the communist contagion. This Rhenish German was
firmly attached to free entrepreneurial initiative and profit seek-
ing and steered clear of socialism, even the Christian variety.
However, as pointed out by the historian Hermann Graml (2005),
he was favorable throughout his life to what he called “moderate
property” and considered the accumulation of too much wealth
to be pathological. It was from this perspective in particular that
the 1946 Neheim-Hüsten Christian Democrat program stated that
moderate property was the essential guarantor of the democratic
Importante
state and that it must be facilitated for workers. Looking at the
writings from his youth, it is clear that Adenauer clearly fell within
the camp of the discourse concerning the social doctrine of the

Church and specifically of German Catholicism. He also believed
that capitalism should be the subject of ongoing corrective poli-
cies and control on the part of a vigilant State. In fact, we might
say that he was an unwavering supporter of the market economy
“but by virtue of the Christian roots of his thinking, this was a
socially oriented market economy” (Graml 2005, 196).
Erhard’s personality and training were markedly different,

even if he too like many other German liberals was deeply
influenced by Christian ethics. As he himself claimed, he had
been very much influenced in his youth by the thinking of his
professor, the great economist Franz Oppenheimer, under whose
guidance he earned his doctorate in 1925, and by his initial
attempt to theorize a liberal socialism. In 1964, Erhard even
attributed the authorship of the concept of the Third Way to
Oppenheimer, of whom he himself would claim to be a fol-
lower, as had, at least partially, Röpke and especially Rüstow,
by defending his social market economy presented as a liberal
doctrine aiming to advance justice. However, Erhard’s thinking
and actions are much more liberal than socialist or even Social
Democrat. Furthermore, starting in the mid-1940s, Erhard pon-
dered over Eucken considerably. As part of his political responsi-
bilities, he regularly spent time with Eucken, Böhm, Miksch, and
others. Perhaps more than Eucken, he conceived of the economic
policy of competition as a means of achieving social objectives.
to Follow
To define his views, Erhard multiplied the expressions he p. XV
used, which were sometimes ambiguous. For example, in a 1946
article, he outlined his socially focused liberalism, writing that,
Our people will experience blessings and well-being if we

achieve a true economic organization that will replace the
bureaucratic oversimplification despised by all with liberal-
ism in trade, which is founded on social solidarity. (Erhard
1946, 39)
More than ten years later, when in Rome to speak about the
future of the European Community, he defined the social market
economy as a form of liberalism, but with a special meaning:
Today, in opposition to the liberalism of the previous period,

we recognize that the State has the duty to actively intervene
in economic life but not so as to respond to the dogmas of
socialism and dirigisme according to which the State would

be obliged to lead every citizen by the leash, restrict their
will, and determine their actions. With the right dose and
proportion of means, economic policy can and must ensure
within the economic and social arena the accomplishment
of a desired and predetermined goal. (Erhard 1959, 19–20)
For Erhard, the anti-cartel law he defended and got passed

in 1957 is an example of a “new active direction” of the economy
that aims to control the economic behavior of entrepreneurs
while emphasizing that “freedom must have a limit when it
oppresses and reduces the freedom of others” (Erhard 1959,
19). For this Minister of Finance at the time, these were the first
fruits of a stable financial and economic order and balanced
budget, or broadly speaking, “the platform on which a society
of free men rests,” the principles of which he wished to spread
throughout Europe.
The Liberal and Social Synthesis of Müller-Armack

The great theoretician of the social market economy is neither
Adenauer nor Erhard but Müller-Armack. In 1946, he theorized
the notion of a social market economy before returning to it over
nearly his entire life. The doctrine might have otherwise become
that of the Liberal Party (FDP) more than that of the CDU. In fact,
Müller-Armack, who had previously worked for a research insti-
tute associated with the textile industry, had forged ties with ›››
to Follow
p. XVI some employers. In June 1947, he made contact with an organiza-

tion of entrepreneurs in Hamburg called the Volkswirtschaftliche
Gesellschaft, which assisted him in publishing and distributing
documents in favor of the social market economy. The Liberal
Party soon took hold of this and provided a kind of social market
economy version in its Wangerooge program of 1948 (Spicka
2007, 34–5). Ultimately, the flag bearer of the concept of a social
market economy was Christian democracy (Mierzejewski 2004,
22–8). In January 1948, together with several ordoliberals,
Müller-Armack participated in the scientific council of the eco-
nomic administration of the “Bizone,” the unified British and
American occupied zones in Germany as of 1947, where he set
himself apart from other liberals through his recommendation of
Ver Alsogaray
a more gradual shift to the market economy. In 1952, he became
an influential political player when at Erhard’s suggestion he
managed a major department in the Ministry of the Economy, the
Grundsatzabteilung, which was in charge of economic and trade
policy, with the objective of promoting the market economy. At

the European level, he also played an important role in negotia-
tions that resulted in the Common Market and in its subsequent
development.
Of all the theoreticians of the social market economy and

ordoliberalism, Müller-Armack is unquestionably among those
whose early writings are most distant from classical liberalism.
He further set himself apart from ordoliberals through the greater
role he assigns to social policies and by showing less confidence
in the virtues of a competitive economy alone, which he defends
nonetheless. In May 1948, when he established the characteris-
tics of a social market economy, this specialist—like Rüstow—in
the history and sociology of religions was professionally neither
an economist nor a legal expert, advocating reform involving a
reduction in the money supply and an anti-monopolistic competi-
tive economy. However, he also added several explicitly social
measures, including a new corporate organization that would
enable participation by wage earners, mobilize resources to
finance social security systems, and reach agreements to secure
wages. He then pursued these lines of thinking, in particular
in a programmatic document (Müller-Armack 1956) that took
stock of several years of a social market economy and in which
he reminds us that the concept of a social market economy
was mocked by those who saw it has an oxymoron. However,
he also points out that this new Christian Democrat doctrine
to Follow
was created in order to establish consensus amongst Germans, p. XVII
not to place them in an “offside” position but rather to reach a
broad compromise among whole segments of the population.
Müller-Armack theorized that “a complete and articulated system
of social security” can be established on the basis of a general
order of the market economy. In substance, the meaning of a
social market economy consists in “uniting the principle of mar-
ket freedom with that of social comprise.” Based on the notion
of a competitive economy, this involves “linking free initiative
to social progress, which is ensured by market economy perfor-
mance” (Müller-Armack 1956, 245).
Müller-Armack then stressed a second phase in the social

market economy, assigning a critical role to quality of life and
urban planning while at the same time advocating corporate
social responsibility. As concerns economics, he maintained a
more interventionist approach than that of the ordoliberals or
Erhard, focusing on nearly full employment and not hesitating

to adopt countercyclical measures. In 1966, shortly after his
retirement from government duties, he showed a revealing sign
of a shift in his position. In the context of unprecedented infla-
tion and unemployment that Erhard was unable to suppress and
with public expenditures rising, Müller-Armack proposed a set of
recommendations that were surprising but certainly not contra-
dictory for the conception of a social market economy. In a long
report addressed to Erhard, he recommended increased State
intervention, planning, and control with regard to the economy,
stressing the need to provide support to mining and steel compa-
nies as well as a number of exporting companies requiring heavy
investments. For him, the time had come to further accentuate
the social aspect of the social market economy:
We must give up the illusion that the market economy will

be enough to work things out without an appropriate, active
economic policy aimed at the market economy. The social
market economy, understood correctly, does not consider the
competitive economy as something entirely automatic that
requires no maneuvering but rather as semi-automatic, as I
have often said, which assumes that it be given direction by
an economic policy. (Bark and Gress 1992, 550)
Returning to these developments in a 1969 article, he empha-

sized that the social market economy had as much responsibility ›››
to Follow
p. XVIII as ever to constantly monitor the entire process of the market

economy and to continually mitigate the repercussions of crises
by means of a systematically and adequately drafted business
cycle policy, as had been done in Germany since 1948 in par-
ticular through the Marshall Plan. According to him, the 1967
recession had shown that deficit spending through an adequate
financial policy offered a sure means of preventively fighting with
sufficient control its repercussions and even, as was the case in
1968, a means of jump-starting the economy. This intervention-
ist policy had become all the more indispensable since among
the quite legitimate wishes expressed by vast portions of the
population with regard to economic policy, job security was now
included (Müller-Armack 1970). According to him, cyclical policy
must be better formulated at both the German and European
levels. However, all of this does not make Müller-Armack a Social
Democrat since he often criticized their politics starting with the
“great coalition,” nor is he a Keynesian. On the contrary, his view
of the social market economy is clearly more complex than his

followers and opponents often believed. As a constant adversary
of socialists at the European level and a critic of French planners,
he envisioned what was clearly a more social model than the
ordoliberal orthodoxy to which the social market economy was
increasingly being reduced.
Divergent Assessments of Liberals in Europe

Having been obscured for a long time, especially in France, the
influence of German liberals, including Müller-Armack, on the
Importante construction of Europe is mentioned increasingly often in aca-
demic as well as in activist circles. This historiographic develop-
ment is strongly linked to changes in the construction of Europe
itself, where since the 1990s, the term “ordoliberal software”
Importante is often used by those who defend a policy of competition, for
example, within the European Commission, as well as by its
opponents. Furthermore, the fact that in the draft European
Constitutional Treaty of 2005, this became an issue of a social
market economy even if referring to this formulation was prohi
bited by the left and the labor unions showed evidence, accord-
ing to its opponents, of being German in essence and expressing
the entirety of European logic since its origins.
The highly complex and controversial issue of related nego-

tiations can only be touched upon here. Admittedly, it is indis
putable that a certain conception of ordoliberalism left its imprint
to Follow
on the construction of Europe, though perhaps less clearly than p. XIX
is often claimed today. In any case, there is a current debate over
this issue among historians. Whereas since the works of David
Gerber (1998), many have rushed into the theory of a Europe cast
from a purely German mold, others question or at least relativize
these theories, thereby increasing the complexity of the issue
even in the sector in which German influence has been the
greatest, namely that of competition policy (Patel and Schweitzer
2013). Yet the reality is perhaps not as simple as we might think.
Although early Common Market rules over competition were

strongly influenced by the German side through the 1957 law
concerning restrictions on competition, France did not walk away
without gains thanks to Ordinance No. 45–1483 of June 30, 1945
and the Decree of August 9, 1953 inserted into the Ordinance
of June 1945. Most importantly, we should first go back to the
European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC), which already had
a competition component in its Article 65. Not only was the

very concept of a European Community not cast primarily from
a German mold, but in particular from a French mold through
the crucial influence of circles close to the economist François
Perroux under the Vichy Regime, who later played a decisive role
in the Keynesian and planning-oriented French turn combined
with the influence of Jean Monnet’s entourage (Cohen 2012).
Nor could the rules of competition themselves be reduced to
German influence. Historians point out that Monnet, an admirer
of the New Deal and the American model, wanted to imitate the
American anti-trust laws by referring to Robert Bowie. As pointed
out by Montalban, Ramírez-Pérez, and Smith (2011), even at the
heart of French socialism theories were put forth about anti-trust
legislation, in particular at the instigation of Albert Gazier, who
had laid down the outlines of such legislation in a resolution of
the Committee on Economic Affairs of the National Assembly.
Most importantly, André Philip, first President of the Socialist
Movement for the United States of Europe and Minister of the
Economy and Finances in 1947 also proposed during prepara-
tion for the Economic Conference of the European Movement
the creation of an anti-cartel law for basic industries such as
steel along with an agency responsible for implementing it. We
should also add that some articles in the ECSC treaty relating to
competition were linked to the American and French concern with
de-concentrating and de-cartelizing the German steel industry.
However, undoubtedly because of pressure from industrialists, ›››
to Follow
p. XX Erhard did not then lead a battle for a European competitive

order, which in any case failed.
Clearly, Germany left a significant mark on the Treaty of Rome

(1957) and in particular on the articles relating to competition and
their subsequent modalities of application, even though Erhard
fought hard at home against a portion of employers as well as
liberals in his attempt to impose his anti-cartel law (Leucht and
Seidel 2008). However, an examination of preliminary negotia-
tions, which are mentioned here briefly, shows evidence of power
relationships that cannot be reduced to an opposition between
a supposedly anti-competition France and a pro-competition
Germany. As noted by historian Laurent Warlouzet, the Germans
were particularly focused on fighting cartels while the French
seemed more concerned with the threats posed by large corpora-
tions and probably worried about a new concentration of German
industry, though perhaps even more by a hegemony of the large
American multinationals that had been established in Europe via

Great Britain and Germany (Warlouzet 2011, 274–5). In particular,
as pointed out by Montalban, Ramírez-Pérez, and Smith (2011),
the automobile sector played its part in these negotiations, with
the weight of Renault in France facing challenges apparently
caused by the presence of General Motors and Ford in Germany.
Another important point of divergence relates to the implemen-
tation of the competition rules. Unlike the German delegation,
the French delegation would have preferred for the Council of
Ministers, not the Commission, to be in control of decisions over
competition.
In short, it would appear that in the preliminary negotia-

tions, the Germans managed to convince the French to dis-
tinguish between two articles on competition, one relating to
cartels (Article 85), the other to dominant positions (Article 86).
However, these articles, which contain negotiated exceptions,
could be interpreted and applied differently. In the following
years, the Germans scored points in 1961 with Rule 17/62,
which was seen as a “victory for the Commission” by establish-
ing a highly restrictive system concerning cartels of a suprana-
tional nature. For the Commission, competition policy would be
taken over by the Germans through the Directorate-General for
Competition (DG IV), which would interpret the articles accord-
ing to German perspectives. Some of the major players close to
ordoliberalism might thus draw satisfaction from this situation,
to Follow
which we only touched upon here, even though this institution, p. XXI
which is overwhelmed with requests, cannot not truly accomplish
its mission.
As concerns the complex and evolving topic of competi-

tion, we would be mistaken if we believed that all German
liberals shared a single vision for the construction of Europe.
Since the 1950s, the actors in charge of this issue have been
strongly divided, even if they share a generally convergent
economic vision. Some, such as Walter Hallstein, the future
first President of the European Commission, stood between
functionalism and European federalism, supported in this by
Hans von der Groeben, who was closer still to ordoliberal ideas
and a key player in the European recovery prior to becoming
the Competition Commissioner. In addition, this position was
partially (though not exclusively) represented by the German
Ministry of Foreign Affairs, while another group centered around
Erhard and the Ministry of the Economy, was much more distrust-

ful of the construction of a European Community deemed to be
a threat to the free market and to German exports and overly
influenced by French planning ambitions. Situated somewhat
toward the middle and showing a conciliatory spirit, Müller-
Armack explains this position in his memoirs (Müller-Armack
1971). In 1955, he had succeeded in reaching a temporary com-
promise by uniting the two opposing groups over a Europe of six
nations. However, Erhard could not let go so easily, and in his
speeches continued to criticize a construction of Europe deemed
to be protectionist and dangerously opposed to the inclusion of
Great Britain and to the European Free Trade Association (EFTA)
(Erhard 1960). However, his constant battle for an extensive free
trade area and therefore strongly and clearly against the narrow
Common Market failed in the face of the political choices made
by Adenauer, who anxious to reinsert Germany into the Concert of
Nations via the Treaties of Rome, transferred the major decision-
making responsibility with regard to European negotiations to
the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, a move openly opposed to Erhard
and the Ministry of the Economy, which at that time were often
bypassed. Clearly, Erhard lost his power struggle with Adenauer,
a conflict between the two men that became notoriously more
intense over time.
We should add that not all German liberals were enthusi-

astic about the Common Market, far from it. Although von der ›››
to Follow
p. XXII Groeben (1984) was convinced that ordoliberalism had been

tangibly achieved in the competition policy of the Common
[2] See also his speech Market,[2] others were much more skeptical. Thus in November
delivered to the European
Parliament in June 1965 1957, Röpke, who at the time had considerable influence over
(von der Groeben 1965). Erhard, publicly attacked the Treaty of Rome during a meeting
of the Association for the Defense of the Social Market Economy
(Aktionsgemeinschaft Soziale Marktwirtschaft), stressing that
German politicians needed to be prepared to leave the European
Union if it undermined free trade. In a widely publicized article,
Röpke, who was then often depicted as the greatest living repre-
sentative of the Freiburg School, joined the attack in a strongly
worded assessment of the situation:
One particular feature of the Common Market that distin-

guishes it from a free trade area is not only the common
tariff along with its protectionist effects, as mentioned
above, but also the extensive degree to which the Treaty of
Rome provided for an international planned economy. This

international dirigisme flies in the face not only of the well-
known reasons for actively opposing any form of dirigisme
but especially of one particular reason, namely that it rein-
forces the tendencies of the Common Market to focus inward.
(Röpke 1959, 152)
Already highly hostile toward the ECSC, Röpke had scarcely

any leniency left for the Common Market, which he saw as a
dangerously activated grenade that threatened to contaminate
Germany with the inflationary, deficit-producing, and disastrous
French form of dirigisme, even if the reforms introduced by the
1958 Rueff-Pinay Plan appeared to him to be headed in a posi-
tive direction.
In addition, Röpke may well have played a part in turning the

Swiss away from the Common Market, while, in Germany, the
Association for the Defense of the Social Market Economy made
clear its deep mistrust of the dirigiste tendencies of the EEC. In
March 1958, the Association published an Action Program in
which it stressed that the construction of Europe “should not
be established through supranational interventionism, only
on the basis of free markets, free trade, and freely convertible
currencies” (Nicholls 1994, 347). However, these positions were
not those of institutionalists such as Hallstein, who sometimes
engaged in heated debates with Erhard. Later, in his writings and
to Follow
correspondence, Röpke never stopped worrying about European p. XXIII
supranational dirigisme. In 1966, the year of his death, he even
congratulated himself on de Gaulle’s “empty-chair policy,”
rejoicing once again over the general’s slogan of the “Europe
of Nations,” and, like Erhard, called for a merger of the EEC into
EFTA (European Free Trade Association).[3] In fact, Hallstein’s [3] “Professor Röpke
states his preference for a
highly supranationalist position was quite different from that free trade zone extended
of von der Groeben or Müller-Armack. At the political level, the to all of Europe” (Cahiers
de Documentation
Liberal Party had been the only group in the Bundestag to vote Européenne 1966, 15)
against the Treaty of Rome, deeming it to be overly dirigiste and
protectionist. For their part, the German Social Democrats (SPD)
had expressed reservations in particular over the inclusion of
overseas territories obtained by France but had approved the
ratification desired by the Christian Democrats.
The “Programming” Controversy between

the French and Germans
German liberals were therefore divided among themselves as

well as in their relations with the French as a result of having to
compromise and reach consensus but also due to misunder-
standings and mistrust (Warlouzet 2008). When commenting
on the consensus between von der Groeben and Frenchman
Pierre Uri, an expert at the Planning Commission (Commissariat
au Plan) and already a close collaborator of Monnet at the time
when the Spaak report was drafted, paving the way for the Treaty
of Rome, Robert Salais recently pointed out that Uri had clearly
read the report as a planner and that for him, the Common
Market was above all “a facilitator for developing the industrial
world, economies of scale, and productivity gains” (Salais 2013,
178). It could be argued that the French, in particular within the
context of the new economics of the 1960s, envisioned a partial
transposition on a European scale of the flexible planning of
which they were so proud and which the Germans obviously long
mistrusted.
Moreover, the French Fourth Plan (1962–1965) stated the

need to convince their European partners, and in October 1962,
the European Commission introduced the second phase of the
Community Action Program, which was clearly influenced by
Robert Marjolin, Vice-President of the Commission. Marjolin
came from a socialist background before being partially con-
verted to liberalism and was strongly infused with Keynesian
ideas but without any clearly definable pattern. He seemed to ›››
to Follow
p. XXIV have succeeded in at least partially convincing Hallstein, but

certainly not all Germans.
This was symptomatic of the battle the French had to wage to

give a fresh impulse to the construction of Europe based on the
idea of “programming,” a term that was in essence a toned down
variant aimed at not offending the Germans with expressions
such as “flexible planning” or “indicative planning” at a time
when the majority of the six founding nations were headed in
that direction, particularly Italy, which took a somewhat dirigiste
turn, but also the Netherlands and Belgium. In an article for the
Italian press, Röpke (1963) expressed his distrust of the new con-
cept of a “programmed economy,” given in French in the article,
which was defended by planners such as François Bloch-Lainé.
Meanwhile, other Germans, who were clearly ready to make
compromises for the sake of European construction, remained
highly skeptical. The symposium held in Rome in 1962 made it
possible to gauge power relationships, differing views, and the

specificity of the German approach to be measured (Proceedings
of the Rome Symposium 1963). The major supporters and insti-
tutional actors in French planning, including Marjolin, Uri, and
Massé, supported in particular by their Italian colleagues,
advocated strong long-term programming, especially in terms of
priorities and choices relating to consumption, infrastructures,
and public services, in particular health and education. The
idea was that national plans should be integrated into overall
European planning. On the German side, those close to Erhard
were represented in Rome, and their explicit desire was to curb
the French (or Franco-Italian) project. Admittedly, the economist
Helmut Meinhold conceded that at the European level, national
economies needed tools for information, rationalization, and
the coordination of socioeconomic decisions, but immediately
added that the Germans greatly feared that too much coordina-
tion would bring about an economic policy that was inflexible to
changes in demand, technical progress, and outside influences.
Esto explicaría por qué los alemanes, The clash between the two economic cultures on both sides of
al criticar la planificación económica,
citan tanto a Francia y cómo
el modelo francés aparece en el lugar
the Rhine seemed obvious to him, with caricatures and mis
del "antagonista" understandings on both sides:
I do believe that misunderstandings remain in this area

because in the same way that among other things, we clearly
tend to consider the French example as presenting a risk of
an administrative economy, we in the Federal Republic of
to Follow
Germany are suspected of practicing a laissez-faire policy. p. XXV
(Meinhold)
This hodgepodge of ideas, notes Meinhold, ignores the speci-

ficity of the German model, which also includes tools for forecast-
ing, even programming, even if these differ from those of French
planning. For his part, Wolfram Langer, who was one of Erhard’s
close collaborators and contributed to his collection entitled
Wohlstand für alle (Prosperity for All), reminds the French that
following Nazism and confronted with Communism, the Germans
were mistrustful of excessive State influence over the economy
and that the Federal Republic of Germany was experiencing great
prosperity thanks to the market economy. Before adding an argu-
ment he had previously used in support of Erhard’s positions
as part of his criticism of the EEC and in particular of its overly
restrictive long-term programming, Langer wrote that:
In my capacity as a member of the German Ministry of the


Economy, I am obligated to draw attention to the fact that
in my view, it is much more difficult for a political economy
committed to exporting to establish such programs than for
an economy less centered on its foreign trade.
Beyond doctrines, it is therefore the interests of the German

economy that were at stake since they did not issue from the Revisar
same forces as those of France or Italy.
In summarizing this important symposium, the international

press generally pointed out that Germany’s liberal position was
a minority viewpoint at the time. Admittedly, a number of conces-
sions on both sides resulted in a weak compromise, paving the way
for non-restrictive and more flexible programming than the French
would have desired. At the time, the French appeared convinced
that Erhard’s German model was running out of steam. In 1965, in
his defense of French planning, Massé stressed that reflection on
which economic model to follow was all the more important since
“experience has not settled the dispute between the different
economic methods used in Common Market countries” given that
Germany, the proclaimed follower of liberalism, France,

equipped with a flexible planning system, and Italy, marked
›››
by powerful State capitalism, all experienced exceptional
growth. (Massé 1965, 162–5)
to Follow
p. XXVI To him as for the majority of the planning-oriented members

of the Rome Symposium, the Germans did not embody a major
sustainable model. They were not entirely wrong: the “great
coalition” of 1966 and the arrival at the Ministry of the Economy
of Karl Schiller, a Social Democrat of Keynesian leanings, turned
a page and clearly marked a rupture in the German liberals’ his-
tory of hegemony. n
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Audier. A German Approach To Liberalism. Ordoliberalism, Sociological Liberalism and Social Market Economy

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A GERMAN APPROACH TO LIBERALISM?

Altern. économiques | « L'Économie politique »

Volume 60, Issue 4, 2013 | from 48 to 76

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Electronic distribution by Cairn on behalf of Altern. économiques.

Powered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org)

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p. II However, liberal thinking never entirely left German soil or its

In fact, this period often appeared to be one of revenge by

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Although these (and other) expressions overlap in meaning,

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Ordoliberalism, or the Doctrine

p. IV Hayek, not to mention the previous generation represented by

The Initial Idea of an Economic Constitution

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The desire of these colleagues to have an impact on the eco-

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For Eucken and his close colleagues, the destruction of law,

p. VI its evolutionary conception of institutions (Menger 2011, 316–7).

Conditions for Ensuring a Competitive Order

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However, it was also—and especially—Eucken himself

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Yes to the planning of forms, no to the planning and control

His posthumous work, entitled Gründsätze der Wirtschafts­

However, it would be up to his disciples and colleagues, in

p. VIII of liberal economists and journalists who were highly hostile

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Starting in the 1930s, these two liberals also published their

The typewritten text was entitled: “A Note on the Urgent

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If we agree that the lack of private and spontaneous invest-

Thus the authors lament that in general, no trace of these

p. X of absorbing the shocks caused by crises and depressions. It is

Yet the concrete programs proposed by the two leading

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Most unjust of all are the inequalities in the conditions exist-

However, neither Röpke nor the other German liberals fol-

Otherwise, the two programs converge considerably. In his

For his part, in a series of philosophical economic works

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We should also note another distinctive feature of his libera­

p. XII protected from the ravages of industrialism. From the 1940s

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The Social Market Economy: Adenauer and Erhard

Who first used the expression remains debatable. Some

It is a conception linked to the social, an economy in which

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Several historians emphasize that the concept of a social

p. XIV For Chancellor Adenauer, the expression “social market

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Erhard’s personality and training were markedly different,

Our people will experience blessings and well-being if we

Today, in opposition to the liberalism of the previous period,

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For Erhard, the anti-cartel law he defended and got passed

The Liberal and Social Synthesis of Müller-Armack

p. XVI some employers. In June 1947, he made contact with an organiza-

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Of all the theoreticians of the social market economy and

Müller-Armack then stressed a second phase in the social

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His posthumous work, entitled Gründsätze der Wirtschafts

We should also note another distinctive feature of his libera