German political and economic ideology in the twentieth century and its theological problems: The Lutheran genealogy of ordoliberalism

Abstract

Ordoliberalism is widely considered to be the dominant ideology of the German political elite today and consequently responsible at least in part for its hard 'austerity' line during the recent Eurozone crisis. This article presents a genealogy of the main concerns, concepts and problems around which early German ordoliberalism was formed and structured as a political and economic ideology. Early ordoliberalism is shown to be rooted in an interwar Germanophone Lutheran Evangelical tradition of anti-humanist 'political ethics'. Its specific conceptions of the market, the state, the individual, freedom and duty were developed on a Lutheran Evangelical basis. Analytically, the article considers ideological influences of theology on political and economic theory not so much in terms of consensus and ideational overlap, but rather in terms of shared concerns, concepts and problems across different positions.

Ordoliberal articulation of law-economy complex

“…Justice Holmes (from the perspective of the USA), who expressed dissent in famous Lochner-case (criticizing "lochnerism"), explained his decision by presenting the argument that constitution should not reflect the premise of certain economic theory that supports particular type of economic transaction as an undeniable core of constitution. 35 Furthermore, in Germany as well, The Constitutional Court has the same attitude towards Investitionshilfegesetz as towards the Basic Law. 36 It is notable that, for a long time, the EU has not made a decisive statement regarding the articulation of the essential pillars of the European economy: we should not forget that during the preparation period, the "drafters" even predicted the possibility of presenting socialist view of property and emphasized a marked neutrality on the "property regime".…”

“…Ordoliberals have doubts regarding Kelsen's definition of law as "certain order or organisation of power" and articulation of Grundnorm that can lead to different, insecure outcomes, thus supporting planned economies as well. 40 Kelsen's adherence to state prac- 35 tice and critical attitude towards "juridically understood" private property is contradictory to ordoliberal concept. 41 We know that the norms in his work do not refer to truth but to validity.…”

The collateral liquidity problem in contemporary finance and the resurrection of quantity theory

“…The closer analysis leads to the identification of clear traces of further economic theories in contemporary financial practice -notably Keynesian and modern finance theories. Yet, where existing approaches to the epistemic role of economic theories in markets have thought of theories as either coherent, instrumental, and/or socio-technologically developing entities, the present article emphasises the co-existence of different and even contradicting theories in relation to a common problem (see also Krarup, 2019aKrarup, , 2019b. For example, Seabrooke and Tsingou (2014) focus on how different expert groups promote different policy ideas based on their distinct professional knowledge in relation to financial regulation; with her concept of epistemic culture, Knorr-Cetina (1999: 9) focused on the 'machineries of knowing' as the important feature tying together a knowledge domain;…”

Money and the ‘Level Playing Field’: The Epistemic Problem of European Financial Market Integration

“…What is the alternative to the seemingly irreconcilable opposition between consistent 'ideas' and muddy social practice? Following Krarup (2019bKrarup ( , 2019a, my suggestion here is that a domain of thought may be defined instead by the central problems (as opposed to tenets) with which it is concerned -and, consequently, by the characteristic pattern of 'theoretical' tensions, contradictions, paradoxes and conceptual insecurities that it entails across 'academic' and 'political' spheres. In other words, to borrow a notion from Foucault (2002, p. 129), an epistemic problem is the characteristic 'principle of differentiation' of a mode of thought that distinguishes it from other modes of thought.…”

“…For the purposes of analysis, what is radically different here from the 'ideational factors' view is that it allows for the possibility of opposing theories responding to the same epistemic problem, and thus forming part of the same ideology precisely due to that opposition. In other words, not via shared tenets or principles, but shared concerns with a common problem or set of problems (Krarup 2019b).…”