Ordoliberal market design failed because it assumed an abstract ideal society

Evidence

The ordoliberal ideal of a competitive order deprived of political power and working in a steady state of perfect competition could never have served as a blueprint for postwar reconstruction. Ordoliberals perceived neoclassical economics to be in need of further amendment in order to be translated into practical experience. How could the imposition of a free market compel or encourage already existing monopolies and oligopolies to give up their dominant economic position? … The ordoliberal model of a market embedded in various social and political institutions largely failed because of highly unrealistic expectations. Instead of tackling the current societal, social, and political conditions, it remained oriented toward an abstract ideal of society that displayed features of enlightened absolutism and preindustrial social structures. — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 552

Categorization

• XREF: Reverses the usual celebratory framing of the German social market economy; ties to critiques of blueprint utopianism in the MPS network. — connects to: German financial psychology rejected the assumption that citizens are malleable material for state designs — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 334; Subordinating politics to markets failed to produce either freedom or equality — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market: Human Rights…, 457; Ordoliberalism makes state policy the guardian of fragile market mechanisms — Michel Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at…, 1258 (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• Subordinating politics to markets failed to produce either freedom or equality #expands (0.85) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 457
• Ordoliberalism makes state policy the guardian of fragile market mechanisms #expands (0.75) — Michel Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics, 1258
• Ordoliberalism departed from classical liberalism by grounding markets in a constitutional framework #expands (0.75) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 1087
• Ordoliberals distrusted capitalism’s own features like urbanization and mass parties #expands (0.72) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 153