Introduction: German neo-liberalism and its relevance for Austrian economics

Abstract

Why should (mostly American) readers of the Review of Austrian Economics take the pain and look at the following three papers dealing with German Neo-Liberalism? The short answer is: because they are likely to be “Austrians”. I take it that Austrian economists (like myself) show an interest in the history of economic ideas, in matters of methodology, and in big questions of politics and the institutional foundations of the social order that is hardly to be found in the realm of “pure” and “mainstream” economics. The following papers address these issues and present authors and views that are likely to be rather unfamiliar to most non-German“Austrian” readers. But there are several good reasons why it might be useful for Austrian economists to look into German neo-liberalism. One is that the authors presented here (Walter Eucken, Wilhelm Ropke, Alexander Rustow, Alfred Muller-Armack and others) were exposed to the same intellectual climate at roughly the same time as was the second generation of “Austrians”: Ludwig von Mises or Friedrich von Hayek. All of them—in the case of the Germans: sooner or later, and more or less—took a brave stand against the tide of totalitarianism and advocated “liberalism”; and all of them searched for a sound methodological basis (mainly in opposition to the German “mainstream” of the Historical School) of their economic research. But all of them did so in very different ways. One main reason for presenting the founders of German “neo-liberalism” here is to challenge the reader familiar to the works of Austrian Economics to find similarities and differences between these Germans and his/her Austrians. After all, they all shared the same (or: very similar) first language, education, historical experience and culture; they read each others’ works and most of them met at important occasions (such as the Colloque Lippman in Paris 1938 and the Mont Pelerin Society meetings since 1947). For the Misesian reader it will become clear after reading the following papers why Mises, at those occasions, reportedly Rev Austrian Econ DOI 10.1007/s11138-013-0219-7