German Neo-Liberals and the Social Market Economy

German Neo-Liberals and the Social Market Economy
Author: Alan T. Peacock
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 256
Release: 1989-08-21
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1349201480

This volume is a collection of ten essays in which the authors assess the contribution of the German Ordo-liberals fifty years after the founders of the liberal movement in Germany stated their aims and objectives. The Ordo-liberals were a group of liberal economic and legal thinkers in the Federal Republic of Germany who came into prominence as a result of their influence on, and participation in, post-war economic policy in the Federal Republic when Ludwig Erhard was Minister for Economic Affairs and, later, Chancellor. They became known as Ordo-liberals because of their commitment to designing the appropriate economic and legal system. The essays in this volume consider not only the philosophy of the Ordo-liberals and their concept of the social market economy, but are also concerned with the contribution of the Ordo-liberals to more practical problems. The role of the public sector, the control of mergers and monopolies and the problem of sound money are among the topics considered, as well as the views of the Ordo-liberals on the international order. Many of the authors of these essays are well known internationally and they represent a wide range of contemporary liberal thought. The book will be warmly welcomed by students and scholars interested in economic philosophy and the place of liberalism in contemporary thought. The essays in this volume have been translated from the German in order to bring to the notice of a wider public the views of a group of German liberal economic and legal thinkers. This group of economists and lawyers came into prominence as a result of their influence on, and participation in, post-war economic policy in the Federal Republic of Germany when Ludwig Erhard was Minister for Economic Affairs and, later, Chancellor. Seventeen essays have been selected to express the thoughts of the group who, because of their commitment ot designing the appropriate economic and legal order system, became known as Ordo-liberals. The essays deal with a wide range of contemporary problems, such as the control of monopolies, the problem of the welfare state and the need for self-help, the role of the trade unions in industrial societies, as well as with the more philosophical question of whether capitalist and communist systems are moving closer together in their approach to economic problems to such an extent that they will eventually converge. This book will be of interest to all those who are concerned with contemporary problems both at practical and philosophical levels.

Freedom with Responsibility

Freedom with Responsibility
Author: Anthony James Nicholls
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 442
Release: 2000
Genre: Germany
ISBN: 9780198208525

This book goes behind the success story of the Federal Republic of Germany since the Second World War to examine the principles underpinning the so-called "economic miracle." A.J. Nicholls examines the intellectual origins and history of the concept of the Social Market Economy, and its implementation in the difficult years of post-war devastation and recovery in West Germany. He traces the struggle of liberal economists to assert their ideas in the unfavorable circumstances from 1933 to 1948, when they triumphed with Erhard's implementation of a policy of liberalization following currency reform. The book analyzes the extent to which West Germany's economic success was due to Erhard's policies, and assesses his attempts to attain the goals of the social market up to 1963, when he became Federal Chancellor. Nicholls's study makes an important contribution to our understanding of the historical dynamics of the German economy and the political culture of the Federal Republic.

Markets in the Name of Socialism

Markets in the Name of Socialism
Author: Johanna Bockman
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Total Pages: 556
Release: 2011-07-26
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0804778965

The worldwide spread of neoliberalism has transformed economies, polities, and societies everywhere. In conventional accounts, American and Western European economists, such as Milton Friedman and Friedrich von Hayek, sold neoliberalism by popularizing their free-market ideas and radical criticisms of the state. Rather than focusing on the agency of a few prominent, conservative economists, Markets in the Name of Socialism reveals a dialogue among many economists on both sides of the Iron Curtain about democracy, socialism, and markets. These discussions led to the transformations of 1989 and, unintentionally, the rise of neoliberalism. This book takes a truly transnational look at economists' professional outlook over 100 years across the capitalist West and the socialist East. Clearly translating complicated economic ideas and neoliberal theories, it presents a significant reinterpretation of Cold War history, the fall of communism, and the rise of today's dominant economic ideology.

The Road from Mont Pèlerin

The Road from Mont Pèlerin
Author: Philip Mirowski
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 494
Release: 2015-11-16
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0674088344

What exactly is neoliberalism, and where did it come from? This volume attempts to answer these questions by exploring neoliberalism’s origins and growth as a political and economic movement. Now with a new preface.

Liberty and Security

Liberty and Security
Author: Conor Gearty
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 108
Release: 2013-04-03
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0745669980

All aspire to liberty and security in their lives but few people truly enjoy them. This book explains why this is so. In what Conor Gearty calls our 'neo-democratic' world, the proclamation of universal liberty and security is mocked by facts on the ground: the vast inequalities in supposedly free societies, the authoritarian regimes with regular elections, and the terrible socio-economic deprivation camouflaged by cynically proclaimed commitments to human rights. Gearty's book offers an explanation of how this has come about, providing also a criticism of the present age which tolerates it. He then goes on to set out a manifesto for a better future, a place where liberty and security can be rich platforms for everyone's life. The book identifies neo-democracies as those places which play at democracy so as to disguise the injustice at their core. But it is not just the new 'democracies' that have turned 'neo', the so-called established democracies are also hurtling in the same direction, as is the United Nations. A new vision of universal freedom is urgently required. Drawing on scholarship in law, human rights and political science this book argues for just such a vision, one in which the great achievements of our democratic past are not jettisoned as easily as were the socialist ideals of the original democracy-makers.

Karl Polanyi

Karl Polanyi
Author: Gareth Dale
Publisher: Polity
Total Pages: 320
Release: 2010-06-21
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0745640710

Karl Polanyi’s The Great Transformation is generally acclaimed as being among the most influential works of economic history in the twentieth century, and remains as vital in the current historical conjuncture as it was in his own. In its critique of nineteenth-century ‘market fundamentalism’ it reads as a warning to our own neoliberal age, and is widely touted as a prophetic guidebook for those who aspire to understand the causes and dynamics of global economic turbulence at the end of the 2000s. Karl Polanyi: The Limits of the Market is the first comprehensive introduction to Polanyi’s ideas and legacy. It assesses not only the texts for which he is famous – prepared during his spells in American academia – but also his journalistic articles written in his first exile in Vienna, and lectures and pamphlets from his second exile, in Britain. It provides a detailed critical analysis of The Great Transformation, but also surveys Polanyi’s seminal writings in economic anthropology, the economic history of ancient and archaic societies, and political and economic theory. Its primary source base includes interviews with Polanyi’s daughter, Kari Polanyi-Levitt, as well as the entire compass of his own published and unpublished writings in English and German. This engaging and accessible introduction to Polanyi’s thinking will appeal to students and scholars across the social sciences, providing a refreshing perspective on the roots of our current economic crisis.

Globalists

Globalists
Author: Quinn Slobodian
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 401
Release: 2020-04-07
Genre: History
ISBN: 0674244842

George Louis Beer Prize Winner Wallace K. Ferguson Prize Finalist A Marginal Revolution Book of the Year “A groundbreaking contribution...Intellectual history at its best.” —Stephen Wertheim, Foreign Affairs Neoliberals hate the state. Or do they? In the first intellectual history of neoliberal globalism, Quinn Slobodian follows a group of thinkers from the ashes of the Habsburg Empire to the creation of the World Trade Organization to show that neoliberalism emerged less to shrink government and abolish regulations than to redeploy them at a global level. It was a project that changed the world, but was also undermined time and again by the relentless change and social injustice that accompanied it. “Slobodian’s lucidly written intellectual history traces the ideas of a group of Western thinkers who sought to create, against a backdrop of anarchy, globally applicable economic rules. Their attempt, it turns out, succeeded all too well.” —Pankaj Mishra, Bloomberg Opinion “Fascinating, innovative...Slobodian has underlined the profound conservatism of the first generation of neoliberals and their fundamental hostility to democracy.” —Adam Tooze, Dissent “The definitive history of neoliberalism as a political project.” —Boston Review

German Cinema in the Age of Neoliberalism

German Cinema in the Age of Neoliberalism
Author: Hester Baer
Publisher: Amsterdam University Press
Total Pages:
Release: 2021-02-05
Genre: History
ISBN: 9048551951

This book presents a new history of German film from 1980-2010, a period that witnessed rapid transformations, including intensified globalization, a restructured world economy, geopolitical realignment, and technological change, all of which have affected cinema in fundamental ways. Rethinking the conventional periodization of German film history, Baer posits 1980-rather than 1989-as a crucial turning point for German cinema's embrace of a new market orientation and move away from the state-sponsored film culture that characterized both DEFA and the New German Cinema. Reading films from East, West, and post-unification Germany together, Baer argues that contemporary German cinema is characterized most strongly by its origins in and responses to advanced capitalism. Informed by a feminist approach and in dialogue with prominent theories of contemporary film, the book places a special focus on how German films make visible the neoliberal recasting of gender and national identities around the new millennium.

The Strong State and the Free Economy

The Strong State and the Free Economy
Author: Werner Bonefeld
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 210
Release: 2017-05-09
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1783486295

German ordoliberalism originated at the end of the Weimar Republic (1918-1933) in a context of hyper-inflation, depression, mass unemployment and social unrest. For ordoliberalism, a free economy is premised on a sound political, legal, social and moral framework to secure its cohesion. The role of the state is to ensure a liberal economic order. Ordoliberalism is a contested account of post-neoliberal political economy: some argue that it offers a more restrained and socially just market order; others, in complete contrast, that is a form of authoritarian liberalism and that it is the theoretical foundation for the austerity politics that the EU has actively promoted in recent years. Foucault discusses ordoliberalism at length in The Birth of Biopolitics, and Bonefeld’s book provides a thought-provoking companion to those lectures by offering a more comprehensive investigation of the theoretical foundation of ordoliberal thought and its historical and theoretical contexts.

Trajectories of Neoliberal Transformation

Trajectories of Neoliberal Transformation
Author: Lucio Baccaro
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 271
Release: 2017-10-12
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1107018722

This book argues that liberalization of industrial relations has been a universal tendency among European countries over the last thirty-five years.