FRE-LES ORDOLIBERAUX

The recent “Greek crisis,” the unflagging prosperity across the Rhine, Brussels’ economic leanings: today’s news constantly remind us of the German ordoliberals’ continuing – whether praised or criticised – influence. This book has come at just the right moment to give readers an unprecedented and timely update on this subject.Patricia Commun does not merely provide a useful review of Germany’s intellectual and political history from 1930 to 1960 to contextualise the itinerary of these anti-Nazi economists and sociologists who founded ordoliberalism (Walter Eucken, Wilhelm Röpke, and, most notably, the future Chancellor Ludwig Erhard). She also reveals the doctrinal pillars of the “social market economy” stemming from it, which is rooted in a legal order (hence the term “ordo”) regulating the laws that ensure a free market economy based on freedom of pricing and trade, monetary stability, balanced budgets, and moderate taxation. The author also stresses its positive effects: pragmatic co-management enabling traps associated with a welfare state to be avoided and social cohesion to be secured by a web of creative SMEs.Lastly, the author shows the ways in which this practical, consensual, and original German-style liberalism, which repudiates not only dirigisme and “constructivism,” but also laissez-faire, has profoundly revived classical liberalism and reshaped its epistemological basis.