Wilhelm Roepke and Western Civilization
Wilhelm Roepke and Western Civilization
Wilhelm Roepke (1899-1966) was awarded the Willibald Pirckheimer Medal in 1962. The place
was Nuremberg, Germany. The citation included the statement: "The measure of the economy is
man. The measure of man is his relationship to God."
Nuremberg was a microcosm of the German Problem which so preoccupied Roepke throughout
his entire career. Nuremberg at its best was the city of Christian humanism as exemplified in
Albrecht Durer, Hans Sachs, Pachelbel, and Willibald Pirckheimer. But Nuremberg was not
always at its best. For the past century it played a more sinister role.
The spiritual inflation of German romanticism in the nineteenth century culminating in Richard
Wagner’s Die Meistersinger set the stage for Nuremberg in the twentieth century. Hitler’s
Nuremberg rallies in the twentieth century carried further the Triumph of the Will. Nuremberg then
went through the hell of Hitler, intense Allied bombing, and the retribution of the Nuremberg trials.
The world was turned upside down in more ways than one.
Roepke sturdily opposed all these totalitarian and Nazi perversions from the beginning. It was fitting
for him as a philosopher of reason, moderation, and proportion to receive the Pirckheimer medal in
the city of Nuremberg. The world was turned rightside up.
Two years earlier Roepke had received a Hugo Grotius medal in Munich. This was further
evidence of his abiding Christian humanism. Although a Protestant, Roepke was a Protestant in the
tradition of Hugo Grotius which flowed from the Erasmian tradition. As a Christian humanist in the
best sense of the word, he was very sympathetic to Catholic traditions. In particular, he labored at
the reasoned application of the traditional Catholic principle of subsidiarity more than any other
economist in this century.
Economists are prone to pride themselves on being concerned with the long run. The man on the
street thinks short run; journalists are hit-and-run. The uniqueness of Roepke among economists is
precisely the fact that eternity and the good of the human soul are the foundations of his social
science. Both he and Keynes believed that in the long run we are all dead, but the implications for
the two thinkers were entirely different.
Yet Roepke like all the rest of us lived in the world of historical flux. In the world of events,
Roepke lived and learned. He just seemed to learn more than others. In fact, he was on the right
side of almost every controversial series of historical events in which he participated.
He fought Hitler and the brown totalitarians at great loss to his own personal advancement and
comfort. He fought the red totalitarians in the Soviet Union and communist bloc countries in the
1930s, long before it was acceptable; it is still not "fashionable." He told the West of the Gulags
and the Ukrainian peasants in the 1930s; he also had no illusions of the great economic progress of
the Soviet Union. But of course nobody paid any attention to him.
He also warned us after World War II of the dangers of the EEC and the unresolved tensions in
that organization which have brought us to the bright cheery hopes for 1992. The same doubts that
he aired in the 1950s and the 1960s are with us still. The unresolved tensions and problems leave
the future of the EC still in doubt.
To fully understand the full complexity of this man, let me weave together his European odyssey
and see it as a unified rejection of ideological thinking. We shall also see that his thought provides
the pattern for a complete American conservatism.
The importance of Roepke for Americans is that he combines the best of the strands of American
conservative thought into one harmonious whole. "Fusionism" is alive and well in the thought of
Wilhelm Roepke.
Furthermore, precisely because of his European inheritance he links the American conservative
tradition to its European roots. To put it paradoxically, the American conservative philosophy may
be parochial, but we are not parochial.World War I to the Great Depression
Roepke pointed out that the birth of his ideas stemmed from the international crisis which created
the conditions for World War I. But he learned that the international crisis is only a manifestation of
the deeper social crisis of our times. Those who start with the international level usually end up with
the superficial nostrums of disarmament and world economic conferences, debt revisions, amending
the Statute of the League of Nations, central bank cooperation, projects for economic unions etc.
etc. This litany of nostrums sounds all too familiar. Roepke was always suspicious of the call to a
"new age" and would probably be sceptical of a "new world order."
Not only does "charity begin at home," so also the sources of chaos begin at home. Peace in the
world ultimately depends on peace in the human heart; love of neighbour begins with respect for
one’s self.
As a result of the trauma of World War I and his experience in the trenches, the idealism of
socialism made an initial appeal to him. He rejected socialism only as the result of learning and bitter
personal experiences following World War I. Out of this ferment Roepke and the Ordo Liberals
crafted their "third way" or "economic humanism."
The word "capitalism" was never one of Roepke’s favorites. He always preferred the phrase, "the
market economy," when he wished to refer to a positive ideal. He had learned to reject "capitalism"
in the trenches. By capitalism Roepke did not simply mean an ahistorical free market order.
Capitalism was for him a particular historical and cultural complex. It is true that Roepke tends to
equate capitalism with anarchistic laissez-faire or the debased forms of the interventionist
regulatory state where the special interests call the shots.
To replace the laissez-faire liberalism of the nineteenth century (the "night-watchman state"),
Roepke argued for a neo-liberalism or Ordo liberalism, in which the state would play a positive
though limited role in maintaining the social framework of the free market–those social, political,
and economic arrangements which work in tandem with competition to preserve a "free, happy,
prosperous, just, and well-ordered society."
It is in the spirit of ceteris paribus that Roepke supports free markets. Other things being equal the
business principle of voluntary exchange should be honored. But this did not freeze Roepke into a
theoretical position of libertarianism.
The distinction that Roepke makes between conformable and nonconformable interventions is an
important part of all his thinking. Nonconformable interventions are the kind which paralyze the
price system from working. Rent controls and price ceilings will lead to continual governmental
intervention which will attempt to clean up the mess caused by the government intervention in the
first place. Conformable interventions are not always wise but they do not paralyze the nerve
centers of the price mechanism.
Roepke, along with Ruestow and Luigi Einaudi, emphasized more than other members in the Ordo
group the importance of the "Third Way"–which emphasized the importance of restoring small
property ownership. In a European context, this meant sympathy for peasant agriculture,
independent craftsmen, and small merchants.
There has been a great deal of confusion on the concept of the Third Way. It is not what
economists would call a "mixed economy" or a soft socialism in contrast to the hardness of
collectivism and laissez-faire. In essence it is an attempt to socially nurture the ethic and spirit of
the bourgeois.
The "third way" clearly had much in common with the Southern Agrarians in the U.S. and the
English Distributist movement of Chesterton and Belloc. The latter were explicitly acknowledged by
Roepke. Roepke fondly used agrarian analogies like the concept of the "aerated society" stressed
by French philosopher and farmer Gustav Thibon.
In The Solution to the German Problem (1946), Roepke argues that the centralization and
concentration of power which took place under Bismarck destroyed the roots of German culture.
The result was a moral and intellectual vacuum which he called the "German dust bowl." Roepke’s
"Third Way" program was intended to promote social decongestion and deproletarization. "We
must decentralize, put down roots again, extract men out of the mass and allow them to live in
forms of life and work appropriate to them."
The Southern agrarian tradition stressed that functions and responsibilities be lodged in the person
and the family first, the broad range of community and voluntary organizations second, and the state
last. Roepke did not attack state functions with libertarian zeal, but instead tried to construct
institutions appropriate to the human person.
But here is the essence of the approach of Roepke. He is the philosopher of the normal. He does
not take the extreme case or what may be demanded by temporary expediency as the basis for
setting up legal and economic systems. Nor does he take one simple principle which is usually
correct and strain all of social reality through it. Voluntary exchange is generally a good thing but it
is not the only thing in the social universe.
To the doctrinaire advocates of laissez-faire Roepke would write in A Humane Economy that
"the market economy is not everything. It must find its place in a higher order of things which is not
ruled by supply and demand, free prices, and competition. It must be firmly contained in an
all-embracing order of society in which the imperfections and harshness of economic freedom are
corrected by law and in which man is not denied conditions of life appropriate to his nature."
The Great Depression and Keynesianism
Roepke never proceeded from an ideological commitment to a laissez-faire, do-nothing position.
During the Great Depression Roepke wanted a "bold" and "confidence-inspiring" conservatism.
In fact, to counteract what he described as the "secondary deflation," he promoted expansionist,
Keynesian-type policies of increased government spending. Roepke, like the early Chicago School,
did not deny that the Great Depression was a circulatory phenomenon demanding radical medicine
in the form of stimulation of total demand:
"Had Keynes stopped there, he would done no more than the rest of us, who at that time advised a
policy beginning with the `spending’ end." Instead Keynes took the exception, the emergency which
demanded expediency, and made a "General Theory" which turned the micro-world upside down.
The message "took" because the macro-formulation was redolent of "economic engineering with a
proliferation of mathematical equations" and at the same time could turn the bourgeois world upside
down; pour epater the freshman undergraduate.
Roepke in fact in his work during the thirties espoused what later came to be called "functional
finance", built on the ideas of Keynes which advocated deficits in depressions and surpluses in
inflationary periods, and a "balanced budget" over the entire cycle if not in any given year.
One of the members of the Mont Pelerin Society even went so far as to sigh relief at the fact that
economists today do not read the Roepke of the Crises and Cycles. They would find too much
Keynesian-type policy. Roepke himself later recanted in The Humane Economy his earlier views.
He said that he had to take his share of the blame for "functional finance." He no longer believed in
it on prudential grounds. His argument is the same which today is offered by the public choice
movement: the politicians cannot be relied on to use their surpluses in inflationary periods to
decrease demand when there are votes to be had. Even if Keynesian theory could be turned into a
neutral technique which can be applied to the problems of inflation as well as deflation, it has its
dangers. These lie in "the damnably unmathematical circumstance that one cannot talk Parliament
and public opinion into saving and economical management, by exceptionally praising them as
virtues, if all the rest of the time they are reviled as folly and sin, not to speak of modern mass
democracy’s built-in obstacles."
In addition to a technical critique of Keynesianism, Roepke also understood the anti-bourgeois
nature of Keynes’s thought. He saw that it was fundamentally an attack upon the moral foundations
of the bourgeois order which depend upon prudence, savings, and responsibility. His great
skepticism toward the welfare state also reflected these same moral concerns.
Roepke in Turkey and Switzerland
Roepke’s outspoken attacks on the Hitler regime resulted in his being the first professor to leave
Germany. The Nazi brain-drain gave us the leavening agents of Mises, Hayek, and Eric Voegelin as
well as numerous lumps of democratic socialists and more pernicious intellectual fads. In many
ways it is a shame that Roepke did not settle in the United States instead of Turkey, where he
taught until 1937. In that year he joined the graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva,
Switzerland.
In 1940 Roepke decided to stay in tense, uncertain Switzerland when he could have come to the
United States. It is doubtful, however, that he would have had any more impact on the mainstream
of the economics profession than Mises and Hayek. It is only in recent years that they have
received their due. Roepke is still to receive his due.
Undoubtedly his stay in Switzerland was an important formative influence on his social thought. If
Roepke could be accused of having a Utopia, Switzerland would have been the only country to
qualify. Switzerland was non-feudal, democratic, small-scale, and bourgeois.
Wilhelm Roepke is the philosopher of the bourgeoisie. But he is not the philosopher of a craven
bourgeoisie who wishes peace at any price. He is not the philosopher of those who wish conflict
avoidance as the highest good. He is not the philosopher of bourgeois consumerism and
materialism. His is the tough bourgeoisie of the Swiss. Roepke never wished to "epater le
bourgeois" (astonish the old fogeys) as most progressive intellectuals do. Instead he wished to call
the bourgeois to its highest capacities. Never far from his mind was the possibility and necessity of
a natural aristocracy in the sense which John Adams and Thomas Jefferson might have agreed
upon.
Roepke attacked Croce for his aloofness to the free market, even though he recognized Croce for
his great contributions to letters. In one brief passage Roepke sums it all up: "When we characterize
a system like this as a middle-class order in the widest sense of the term, this is the fundament on
which the ethos of economy must rest. This system sets out to promote not only independence and
a sense of responsibility in the individual but also the civic sense which links him to the whole and
limits his appetite. In this field, moral authority of that thin layer of nobilitas naturalis, readily
accepted by their fellow-citizens, proves to be indispensable–a layer to which a handful of them
aspire by virtue of an exemplary life of self-denial and hard work, rigorous integrity and fine
example as they ascend to a position above the classes, interests, passions, hatreds, and follies,
thus embodying the moral sense of the nation and culminating in such supreme figures as Fridtjof
Nansen or Albert Schweitzer."
The role of the bourgeoisie in history was an important one. One of my favorite passages from
Roepke is the following: "There are enough millenaries of recorded history behind us to teach us in
the most unequivocal manner that whenever in their dark course the light of freedom, progress and
humanity shines it was a period when a sufficient number of people had private property to enable
them to throw off their economic dependence on the feudal lord, or–even worse perhaps–the
state. Those periods of emancipation and enlightenment would have been impossible without the
existence of a large bourgeoisie in that noble but now almost forgotten sense which brings it into a
more than philological relationship with the term `civilization.’ It lies with us whether or not one of
the longest and most brilliant of these periods shall now come to an end like all its predecessors."
There is a Jeffersonian radicalism in Roepke which denies that an aristocracy comes into the world
booted and spurred, ready to ride mankind.
Post-World War II and the German Economic Miracle
Roepke also attacked another fossil of the Keynesian episode coming out of the Great Depression,
Hansen’s idea of the "mature economy" where investment opportunities have dried up, population is
declining, and the only alternative is massive government spending to offset this declining economic
situation. Both Roepke and Luigi Einaudi had to battle with these kinds of forecasts and economic
policies after World War II.
Wilhelm Roepke maintained a steady vigilance against what he called the "glum philosophy" which
was the secret of all collectivist regimes. He was steadfastly opposed to forced savings as he saw it
attempted in post-World War II Europe; "austerity" reminded him of the moral equivalent for war
problem.
It would work under war or siege conditions but not for a well-functioning economy. The hostility
to luxury goods which surfaced after World War II was a return to the heroic spirit of mercantilism
which stressed manufacturers. He criticized the politicians who give "their speeches the dignified
accents of unworldly asceticism and patriotic concern."
Roepke accepted the usual economic considerations which condemned this discouragement of
luxurious imports and encouragement of manufactured exports on the basis that they would lead to
a misallocation of precious resources. But in addition his final criteria was more supply-sided than
anything else. If you did not allow consumers to buy the luxury goods, they would buy leisure and
work less.
Roepke’s most important historical impact came in the post-war reconstruction after World War II.
His arguments concerning the foundations of a good society and the policies necessary for
reconstruction and economic reform gained great influence with many European leaders including
Chancellors Adenauer and Ludwig Erhard. In fact, Roepke, along with his friend Alexander
Ruestow and the other Europeans in the German Ordo school of liberalism, were the thinkers
behind the post-war German economic miracle."
Similar movements in Italy and France were led by his friends Luigi Einaudi and Jacques Rueff. The
dedication of the Germans to free markets, competition, monetary and fiscal stability, and the social
market economy are in large part the result of Roepke and his colleagues. He never thought of it as
an "economic miracle" but simply the result of freeing incentives in a stable economic order.
Wilhelm Roepke and Ideological Thinking
Roepke is as important in the battle of ideas as he was in the battle of policies. He often quoted
Georg C. Lichtenberg, "When it is a mistake to be moderate in condemning, indifference becomes
a crime." Roepke could never be accused of being indifferent. He clearly understood that the
enemy was "leftism" and not just simply totalitarian variants. In a talk to the Mont Pelerin Society
Roepke referred to the recent Italian apertura alla sinistra ("the opening to the left") and the
related sinistrismo ("leftism"). Roepke clearly understood that the germs of totalitarianism are
nurtured and spread in the climate of leftism.
Progressive economic and social policies are best considered not in isolation, but in the context of
the underlying ideas and hopes for human nature. Wilhelm Roepke often referred to the "optimism"
of progressivism, which he described as the fundamental malady of the twentieth century. Fascism
and Communism were simply extremist variants of the same ideal. Fundamentally the optimism is a
theological concept akin to Pelagianism.
Even more important than the ideologies themselves were the conditions of the theoretical social
sciences which spawned them in the first place. Roepke was a steady opponent of the scientism
which he saw issuing from both the right and the left. Roepke would have wholeheartedly agreed
with the great German physicist Hermann von Helmholtz, who in 1852 criticized the
pseudo-physics of Goethe on the grounds that Goethe’s devotion to ideal beauty and culture led
him to disregard the quantitative aspects of physical reality. One experiences the drama out front
without paying any attention to the backstage reality of ropes, wires, and pulleys. He concluded his
talk with the warning, "We cannot triumph over the machinery of matter by ignoring it; we can
triumph over it only by subordinating it to the aims of our moral intelligence. We must familiarize
ourselves with its levers and pulleys, fatal though it be to poetic contemplation, in order to be able
to govern them after our own will, and therein lies the complete justification of physical
investigation, and its vast importance for the advance of human civilization."
One can easily imagine a modern mathematical economist or econometrician making the same
defense of his highly quantitative tools. All they want to do is to lay bare the network of real
connections, the correct model of the machine which will allow us to govern social reality after our
own will.
Roepke’s genius is to follow neither Goethe nor Helmholtz. He would agree with Goethe that the
experiences of men are closer to the drama and the quest for beauty than the brute reality of
inanimate nature. But he did not succumb to the idealistic temptation of taking for real only that
which was beautiful. He would agree with Helmholtz that idealism in whatever form,–moralism,
aestheticism, and eroticism–must be "subordinated to the aims of our moral intelligence."
Let us take as an example the treatment of a particular area of economics given over to scientistic
formulations, the area of production. I well remember at one time sitting in on a graduate course in
microeconomic theory to brush up on the more technical aspects. We started with several weeks of
beautiful, consistent mathematical models of consumer behavior and utility maximization.
Constrained optimization was the order of the day. No actual commodities and no actual persons
were allowed to rear their ugly heads–only the jth commodity and the ith person. Very, very
scientific and rigorous, and as we got to the end of it and proceeded to production and supply, the
professor was notably relieved. He was relieved because we had finally got to something which
was not subjective. We had finally arrived at something to which the language of mathematical
functions, inputs, and outputs was truly applicable. Production functions deal with the measurable
and not such fuzzy concepts as unobservable subjective utility. But there are mistakes of all kinds
here. First of all "opportunity cost" is just as subjective and unobservable as utility. It is, in fact, the
same thing. Furthermore, producers still have to be understood as maximizing utility rather than
simply maximizing profits which are one element in their utility function.
Wilhelm Roepke would also simply add that there is an ethics to the production function and to the
understanding of the firm which modern economics neglects to its disadvantage.
In the theory of the firm Roepke started the disentangling process in one of the most important and
most neglected articles of his entire career. The Invisible Factors of production shares some of the
fundamental insights of Leibenstein’s x-efficiency but deepens it into the moral and spiritual realms.
The problem is essentially one of leadership and rhetoric properly conceived. Leadership of
whatever sorts and varieties requires paying attention to the moral and ethical dimensions. This is
true in the organization of the firm, advertising, business ethics, as well as in politics. An employer
had duties to his workers in his capacity as a patron.
Roepke was ever distrustful of Taylorism, scientific management, and scientistic approaches to the
production process. These had swept Europe and the Soviet Union during the 1920s an era when
American cultural (as opposed to our countercultural exports such as bluejeans, Coca-cola and
rock music) swept Europe.
Commodities yes, culture no! Roepke persistently fought the scientistic components in economic
thought, whether they issued from the left, the kind which Professor Hayek has so brilliantly
dissected, or from those followers of the classical liberal tradition who believe that they can rise
above moral values with a value-free technique or process appropriate to all aspects of human
order. Sometimes this technique is the free market, Pareto-optimality, negative definitions of liberty,
or public choice mechanisms based on voluntary consent. The basis for liberal scientism is precisely
the relativism which issues from the fact-value distinction which Roepke vigorously attacked.
Economists unfortunately have perenially confused the fact-value distinction with the
positive-normative distinction, which is a useful admonition to men to distinguish between the way
the world is and the way they would like it to be.
No one has a quarrel with the latter distinction. But the fact-value distinction is much stronger and
asserts that there is no basis in truth for moral judgements. The sin of indifference is to take the
category of the indifferent things and extend it to all moral goods. The replacement of reason by
sentiment is the step which Roepke refused to take. Here is the basis for the claim that he had a
conservative economics and not simply a liberal economics.
Roepke closed one of his speeches to the Mont Pelerin Society with the plea, "Never also has it
been more necessary to give a moral example: of courage; of standing firm on first principles; of
having a sure sense of the right order of values; of remembering that to be a man standing for the
value and the patrimony of our civilization is infinitely more than to be a scientist to whom we may
apply the famous saying of Rabelais,`Knowledge without insight means only the destruction of the
spirit.’"
Whether the academy and scholarship since that time have heeded this admonition is doubtful. But
the need for the strong medicine is greater than ever.
Conclusion
In essence the Social Crisis of Our Times is a book that needs to be savored. A classic is a book
which needs to be read and reread; its meaning cannot be extracted with one reading. As one
experiences life and ideas, one can go back to an old text and discover fresh meanings and
interpretations to which one was not properly attuned the first time through.
Let me give as an example, a passage which I had missed in my previous readings. In this passage
Roepke provides a very balanced view of what we would today call environmentalism. In one
paragraph he states a conservative position which does not fall into worship of nature or worship of
laissez-faire institutions: "…the decline of indigenous rural life is usually accompanied by a tendency
to polarize men’s relationship to nature, on the one hand, and on the other, national parks, camping
and nudism, whilst the happy medium–peasantry and small towns-is vanishing. It is part of the
picture of this disease that the urbanized remoteness of Western man from nature leads to the
extreme of a city-bred, fashionable and condescending cult of the peasant, which bears the stamp
of high-brow artificiality and which the genuine peasant cannot but find embarrassing."
On the same level of realistic analysis his analysis of the degeneration of the family to a consumers’
cooperative or an entertainment cooperative is at the expense of "the natural sphere of the woman,
the proper environment for raising children and indeed the parent cell of the community."
The quality of thought that Roepke brings to bear again and again is a realistic analysis of functions
that any civil society has to provide. The moral and spiritual needs of mankind are not just treated
as a taste or a preference to be provided for by the efficiency of a free market. I think it could be
argued here that Roepke was aware of a much more significant type of "constitutional economics"
than the misuse of the current positive-normative distinction would permit.
He recognized that the "constitution" of a country includes its manners, mores, and customs, as well
as its laws written in statutes or even constitutions. If self-interest is relied on to promote the
market, then it becomes difficult to defend the market against the self-interest of groups and
rent-seekers. People can occasionally learn their lessons only too well.
The great dangers which he constantly and determinedly fought are the same as today: special
interest groups (monopolies, heavy industry, and big landowners), pressure groups, movements
toward protectionism, autarchy, political radicalism, and nihilism. If man is measured by his relation
to God, then the Mene Tekel of the Old Testament reminds us that human beings have been
weighed in the balances and found wanting. Roepke had no illusions about the inherent goodness of
human nature. There was no sunny optimism in Roepke; but neither was there despairing
pessimism. Man is obligated to create a culture, polity, and economy where decency, comfort, and
piety can go hand in hand. "The measure of the economy is man. The measure of man is his
relationship to God."
Appendix I
Brief Reader’s Guide to the Works of Roepke
In the realm of ideas many of Roepke’s books and articles have been translated into English. There
are many works of Roepke which are accessible to the general reader as well as the scholar.
The book being reprinted here is part of a trilogy. The first volume, being reprinted here from the
English/American edition of 1950, was originally published in German in 1942. Civitas Humana
was first published in 1944 in German and the English translation in 1948. Finally International
Order and Economic Integration appeared in German in 1945 and was not translated into
English until 1959.
A book which makes a wonderful companion volume to Hayek’s Road to Serfdom is Roepke’s
The Solution of the German Problem, which appeared in 1946. The title sounds as if the book
might be dated, but it is full of reflections on German and European history, language, and literature.
Among the many other English translations of both books and articles by Roepke, A Humane
Economy (1960) has been one of the more influential and easily accessible. It is this book with
which most American conservatives are familiar. The Intercollegiate Studies Institute has widely
circulated this book among college students. Another collection of essays Against The Tide
(Regnery, 1969) has also been widely circulated but never played the part that Humane Economy
did, because of its more miscellaneous character.
One final work should be mentioned in even a brief survey. Economics of the Free Society
(1963) is a translation of Roepke’s textbook which first appeared in 1937 and was continually
revised over his lifetime. An excellent introduction to the basic concepts of economics, it allows the
student of economic principles to sink his teeth into something worthwhile; the graphical analysis
which is missing could easily be supplied by the instructor. Paired with Humane Economy, one
could use these volumes to teach economic principles with an appreciation for the benefits of the
market place, but without setting it up as an idol.
It should be mentioned that a Roepke bibliography found in the German tribute to Roepke In
Memoriam (Marburg, 1968) numbers over 800 items and is still not complete. Unfortunately,
there are many items in numerous languages which have not been translated. A bibliography of the
articles and books translated into English is provided as an appendix to this introduction.
Work about Roepke is even harder to find than his own works. More recently, the Ordo liberals
presented their views in an extremely useful English translation of Standard Texts on the Social
Market Economy (Gustav Fischer: New York, 1982). This collection of works by Roepke and
other Ordo liberals was edited by contemporary German followers of Roepke, including Christian
Watrin, Hans Willgerodt, Wolfgang Stutzel, and Karl Hohmann. This volume has gone almost
entirely unnoticed and unreviewed. The most recent treatment is two volumes edited in 1989 by
Alan Peacock and Hans Willgerodt, German Neo-Liberals and the Social Market Economy
and Germany’s Social Market Economy: Origins and Evolution. The one volume provides a
comprehensive history and analysis of the Social Market Economy and the other is a collection of
readings.
Appendix II
The Works of Wilhelm Roepke in English
An almost complete bibliography can be found in the German tribute, In Memoriam (Marburg,
1968). Items not included in that bibliography are noted with a star (*) in this bibliography. It
should be noted that Roepke’s bibliography extends to well over 800 items, many of which have
not been translated into English. Not all editions of every book are listed.
BOOKS AND INDEPENDENT PAMPHLETS
What’s Wrong with the World? (Philadelphia: Dorrance & Co., 1932).
German Commercial Policy (London: Longmans, Green and Co. 1934).
Crises and Cycles (Glasgow: William Hodge & Co. Ltd.,1936).
International Economic Disintegration (Glasgow: William Hodge & Co., 1942), subsequent
reprintings.
The German Question (London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd., 1946). Includes an Introduction by
Professor F.A. Hayek. An American edition The Solution of the German Problem by G.P.
Putnam’s Sons, New York, 1947, appeared with no introduction by F.A. Hayek, and other
changes.
Civitas Humana (Glasgow: William Hodge & Co., 1948). Subsequent reprintings.
The Social Crisis of Our Time (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1950)
The Problem of Economic Order (Cairo, 1951). Reprinted in Two Essays By Wilhelm Roepke:
The Problem of Economic Order, and Welfare, Freedom and Inflation ed. Johannes
Overbeek, (Lanham Md: University Press of America, 1987).
The Economics of Full Employment (New York, 1952). Reprinted in The Critics of Keynesian
Economics, ed. Henry Hazlitt (Princeton: D. Van Nostrand Co., 1960), pp. 362-385.
Welfare, Freedom and Inflation (London: Pall Mall Press Ltd., 1957), pp. 13-70. An
Introductory Essay by Graham Hutton, "Unfreedom and Inflation", pp. 1-12. Both reprinted with a
new Foreword by Roger A. Freeman, pp. 386-390, in the Conservative Book Club, Omnibus
Volume 4 (New Rochelle: Conservative Book Club, n.d.), pp. 391-438. Also published by the
University of Alabama Press, 1964 with Freeman Foreword and Hutton essay. Also reprinted in
Two Essays By Wilhelm Roepke: The Problem of Economic Order, and Welfare, Freedom
and Inflation ed. Johannes Overbeek, (Lanham Md: University Press of America, 1987).
International Order and Economic Integration (Dordrecht-Holland:D. Reidel, 1959).
A Humane Economy: The Social Framework of the Free Market (Chicago:Henry Regnery
Company, 1960).
Economics of the Free Society (Chicago: Henry Regnery Company, 1963).
Against the Tide (Chicago: Henry Regnery Company, 1969), Foreword by Gottfried Dietze.
ARTICLES
"Trends in German Business Cycle Policy", Economic Journal (September 1933), pp. 427-441.
"Fascist Economics", Economica, February 1935, pp. 85-100.
"Socialism, Planning and the Business Cycle", The Journal of Political Economy, June 1936, pp.
318-338.
"Industrial Germany", book review of H. Levy, Economica, February 1936, pp. 84-89.
"Explanatory Note on the Review of Roepke’s Crises and Cycles", American Economic Review,
March 1937,
"International Economics in a Changing World", in The World Crisis (London: 1938), pp.
275-292.
"Totalitarian Prosperity: Where Does it End?", Harper’s Magazine, July, 1939.
"The Industrialization of Agrarian Countries", Revue de la Faculte des Sciences Economiques de
l’Universite d’Istanbul, Date 1940 or 1941?
"A Value Judgement on Value Judgments", Revue de la Faculte des Sciences Economiques
d’Istanbul, 1942, pp. 1-19.
"The German Dust-Bowl", The Review of Politics, October 1946.
"Free Trade and the German Problem", The Free Trader (London) January/February 1947.
"New Germans must shape the New Germany", New York Times Magazine, October 13, 1946.
"Economic Disease in Germany", Time and Tide, Feb. 1 and 8, 1947.
"German Economy in State of Pernicious Anemia", The Commercial and Financial Chronicle,
February 27, 1947.
"Repressed Inflation", Kyklos, Vol. 1, No. 3, 1947.
"A Workable Plan for Germany", Plain Talk, June 1947.
"Liberalism and Christianity", Commonweal, July 18, 1947.
"Liberalism and Christianity", Modern Age, Fall 1957.
"Repressed Inflation–Economic Cancer of Europe", The Commercial and Financial Chronicle,
September 4, 1947.
"Decentralization in Germany", Time and Tide, May 24 and 31, 1947.
"Anglo-American Agreement on Germany", Time and Tide, June 1947.
"The Key to the Marshall Plan", Time and Tide, September 6 and 13, 1947.
"Germany after the London Conference", Time and Tide, January 3 and 10, 1948.
"Western Germany: Portent of Europe’s Economic Future", The Commercial and Financial
Chronicle, April 29, 1948.
"Socialism in Europe Today", The Commercial and Financial Chronicle, April 14, 1949.
"The Iron Curtain of Money", The Commercial and Financial Chronicle, July 7, 1949.
"Crusade Against Luxuries", Time and Tide, October 16, 1948.
"Socialism and European Union", Time and Tide, December 11, 1948.
"The Iron Curtain of Money", Time and Tide, July 16, 1949.
"The Proletarianized Society", Time and Tide, October 1 and 8, 1949.
"Barriers to Immigration", in Twentieth Century Economic Thought (New York: 1949), pp.
607-645.
"The Fight for Economic Sanity in Europe", The Commercial and Financial Chronicle, March
16, 1950.
"Germany: The Political Climate", Time and Tide, April 1, 1950.
"Germany: the Economic Problem", Time and Tide, April 8, 1950.
"The Economic Integration of Europe", Measure (Chicago), 1950.
"Inflation: Threat to Freedom", The Freeman, April 9, 1951.
*Contribution to Democracy in a World of Tensions, ed. Richard McKeon, (Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 1951), pp. 361-362.
"Toward a New `Liberal’ Conservatism", Microfilm in Library of Congress, 1557n, translation from
two essays in Mass und Mitte (Zurich, 1950).
"European Economic Integration", Time and Tide, June 2 and 19, 1951.
"The Malady of Progresivism", The Freeman (New York), July 30, 1951, pp. 687-691.
"Alternative to Serfdom", American Mercury, July 1952, pp. 31-49.
"The Treatment of Diseased Balances of the Payments", The Journal of Finance and Credits,
August 1953, No. 1/2, pp. 8-11.
"How to Integrate Europe?", The Freeman May 18, 1953.
"Economic `Miracle’ in Germany", The Freeman, August 24, 1953.
"Free Economy and Social Order", The Freeman, January 11, 1954.
"Diagnosis of our Times", Social Order, April 1954, pp. 147-152.
"Social Presuppositions of the Market Economy", The Owl (London), January 1954.
"Economic Order and International Law", Recueil des Cours del’Academie du Droit
International a la Haye Leyden, 1955, pp. 202-273.
"Economic Welfare in a Free Society", National Policy for Economic Welfare at Home and
Abroad, Columbia University Bicentennial Conference Series, Garden City, N.Y. 1955, pp.
344-349. Reprinted in Freedom First, Autumn 1955, pp. 5-7.
"The Place of Economics among the Sciences", On Freedom and Free Enterprise: Essays in
Honor of Ludwig von Mises (New York: 1956), pp.111-127.
"Inflation–Hot and Cold", National Review, January 18, 1956.
"A European Looks at American Intellectuals", National Review, November 10, 1956.
"Liberalism and Christianity", Modern Age (1957).
"Front Lines Old and New in Economic Policy", Confluence 1958.
"Political Enthusiasm and Economic Sense: Some Comments on European Economic Integration",
Modern Age, 1958.
"European Free Trade–The Great Divide", The Banker, September 1958.
"Germany: Over-Full Employment", National Review, March 2, 1957.
"The Welfare State through the World", The Commercial and Financial Chronicle, September
25, 1958.
"The Economic Necessity of Freedom", Modern Age 1959/3.
"The Free West", Freedom and Serfdom, ed. Albert Hunold (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1961), pp.
59-82.
"The Moral Necessity of Economic Freedom", Christian Economics, December 29, 1959.
Reprinted by the Intercollegiate Society of Individualists.
"Moralism–Right and Wrong", Christian Economics, Dec. 12, 1961.
"A Protestant View of `Mater et Magistra’", Social Order, April 1962, pp. 162-172.
"Will West Germany’s Free Enterprise System Survive?", The Commercial and Financial
Chronicle June 14, 1962.
*"The Intellectual Collapse of European Socialism", New Individualist Review Winter 1962, Vol.
1, No. 4, pp. 35-36, translated by Ralph Raico.
*"Where We Must Stand", National Review, March 13, 1962, Vol. 12, p. 156.
"Keynes Revisited", National Review 1963, no. 12.
"Washington’s Economics–A German Scholar sees Nation moving into Fiscal Socialism", The
Wall Street Journal, April 1, 1963.
"A World without a World Monetary Order", South African Institute of International Affairs,
Johannisburg, 1963, pp. 1-16.
"European Prosperity and its Lessons", South African Journal of Economics, 1964, No. 3.
*"Education in Economic Liberty", in What Is Conservatism?, ed. Frank Meyer (New York:
Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1964), pp. 78-87.
"European Economic Integration and its Problems", Modern Age Vol. 8, No. 3, Summer, 1964,
pp. 231-244.
"The Place of the Nation", Modern Age Vol. 10, No. 2, Spring 1966, pp. 119-130.