Moderation Amidst Ruins

Abstract

This article shows that moderation played an important role in the reconstruction of Europe after 1945. It focuses on a group of thinkers affiliated with the Ordoliberal school, founded by Walter Eucken, who played a key role in the creation of the social market economy in post-war Germany. As pragmatic liberals and moderates, they were critics and defenders of the free market economy. In their economic and sociological writings, Walter Eucken, Alexander Rüstow, and Wilhelm Röpke insisted that the free market needs an adequate business ethics, morality, and a complex set of values in addition to a strong but limited state, the rule of law, healthy families, and vibrant local associations. As such, Ordoliberalism was predicated on an original form of economic and political moderation and eclecticism, as illustrated by Alfred Müller-Armack’s essay “Social Irenics” (1950). Eighty years after the end of the war, we are called again to rediscover the virtue of moderation by finding new ways to reconcile freedom, equality, justice, the state, and the market.