Ordoliberalism’s founding critique of capitalism was culturally conservative and antimodernist

Evidence

Both the thrust and the passion of this critique of what the ordoliberals perceived to be the disintegration of the modern capitalist society had a greater affinity with conservative than with classic liberal positions. Röpke (1948b, 226) himself acknowledged the relationship of his thought to “religious-conservative streams.” But even if it seems absurd that the prophets of market economic forces of innovation would castigate the results of the economic dynamism, the antimodernism evident in their social and cultural critique provided the basis for one of the pillars of the ordoliberal program: stability and security for the working class was prerequisite to securing the market economy. This program fundamentally differed from left-wing calls for egalitarian redistribution. — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 509

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The founders of market-economy doctrine were antimodernists who hated capitalist dynamism — a genuinely counterintuitive core tension that resists easy summary.
• XREF: This paradox echoes the contradictions in the reader’s noise/silence material (industrial wealth created the leisure class that condemned industrial noise) — the same structure of self-undermining critique. — connects to: Capitalism absorbed its critics’ language to legitimize neoliberal privatization — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 439; The critique of capitalism as amoral predates Marx and echoes conservative critics.; Ordoliberals condemned consumerism as a marker of mass society — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market: Human Rights…, 213 (+6 more)

Broader Connections

• Ordoliberalism’s political project depended on sustaining a socially conservative middle class #corroborates (0.78) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 514