Politics and the Order of Society

Abstract

Abstract For the Ordoliberals, a central task for the liberal state was ensuring social order and stability, against the instability created by mass democracy and the adverse social effects of the market economy. This was a task they thought insufficiently developed in the laissez-faire doctrine of classical liberalism, with its supposedly blind faith in the automatism of economic progress. For the Ordoliberals, the act of securing the social order was necessarily a political practice of government. It entailed a strong state that was to create and maintain a competitive market order through the construction of a market liberal economic constitution (Wirtschaftsverfassung), and maintain social order through a social policy that incorporated competitiveness into the mentality of society (Vitalpolitik). In order to fulfil these functions, the state needed to achieve and retain independence from the societal and economic forces that would otherwise undermine the competitive economic order.