The Economic State and the Ordoliberal Critique of Keynesianism

Anti-economic state or just a different type of economic state?

Bibliographic Data

ID23615670
AuthorsDieter Plehwe (0000-0002-8563-0946, WZB Berlin Social Science Center, corresponding author)
Year2022
Pages278-290
Publication date2022-10-20
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeCHAPTER
VenueOxford Handbook of Ordoliberalism (SOURCE_BOOK)
PublisherOxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198861201.013.18
OpenAlexW4307744107
ISBN9780198861201
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited11

Keynesianism and Ordoliberalism differ with regard to labour markets and collective bargaining in particular. Contrary to Foucault’s claims, however, Walter Eucken conditionally supported Wilhelm Lautenbach’s proto-Keynesian proposal to use public investment to overcome economic stagnation in the early 1930s. And the late 1960s witnessed a pragmatic realignment of modern (Keynesian) macroeconomics and Ordoliberal objectives advanced by economists Karl Schiller and Herbert Giersch. The episode was short-lived due to intransigent trade unions and Social Democratic politicians. Resulting worries about monetary stability transformed and radicalised German neoliberalism in the course of the 1970s. Although Ordoliberals attacked the weak ‘economic’ state on principle, due to the excessive influence of business and labour and resulting state interventions, they relied on a ‘strong state’ to maintain distinct, yet interdependent, economic, political and social orders. Semantic opposition to the economic state thus is best understood as the Ordoliberal way to oppose decommodification of labour and social assistance.

Collective bargaining · Economics · Interdependence · Keynesian economics · Market economy · Neoliberalism (international relations) · Opposition (politics) · Political economy · Political science · Politics · State (computer science) · Economic and Social Issues · Law · Political Economy and Marxism

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