Strategies of Economic Order

Abstract

This book provides an overview of two hundred years of German economic thought, from the Staatswissenschaften of the eighteenth century to National Socialism and the Social Market. Whereas classical economics, from Smith through Ricardo to Marx and Mill, emphasised value, distribution and production, German economic thought had a long-running tradition of human need and the varying conditions for order. These ideas are brought together by a conception of rational action and, therefore, a rationalistic appraisal of welfare and order. By taking this perspective, the usual contrast of market and planning approaches to economic organisation is subsumed by an approach which focuses on the construction of order in economic processes. This book highlights the continuity of this practical approach of German economists through the two centuries under consideration - from the Cameralists to the Ordoliberals.

Economics, History of

“…Some of the main early critics of classical and neoclassical economics were economic historians centered in Germany (Wilhelm Roscher and Gustav Schmoller) and Great Britain (T.E. Cliffe Leslie and William Ashley) who questioned the use of abstraction to understand human behavior, and moral critics like Charles Dickens, John Ruskin, and Anthony Trollope who disputed the social consequences of competitive market activity (Tribe, 1995;Koot, 1987). They described in graphic detail what might be called today negative externalities of market phenomena.…”

Das Wissen der Schulden. Recht, Kulturtechnik und Alltagserfahrung im liberalen Kapitalismus

“…Indem die Gesetzgeber eine inhaltliche Definition des Kaufmanns vermieden, beabsichtigten sie die Registrierung offen zu halten für die wechselnden Bedürfnisse der Geschäftswelt. 45 Doch jene Strategien, die ein bestimmtes Verhalten konditionieren sollten, scheiterten immer wieder. 42 Eine formale Setzung, ohne "der freien Entwicklung" eine Schranke aufzuerlegen -darin lag ein fundierender Modus liberaler Herrschaft.…”

Friedrich List's Adam Smith Historiography and the Contested Origins of Development Theory

“…66 It failed entirely in the 1780s and 1790s to supplant Sir James Steuart"s Inquiry into the Principles of Political Economy as the most popular English-language text on economics. 67 Steuart had written his book while in exile in Germany, and it bore many of the hallmarks of the prevailing German Cameralist tradition, 68 in which the microfoundations of price determination were wholly subservient, theoreticallyspeaking, to the efficient administration of Staatswirtschaft.…”