Ordoliberals blamed mass society and proletarianization for the Weimar Republic’s collapse
Evidence
One way to examine the ordoliberal effort to understand social reality in that era is to recognize that it constituted a mix of social scientific observation and metaphysical speculation, which operated on three levels: First, the spiritual-moral crisis was held to have caused the degeneration and structural disintegration of society (Röpke 1979, 22ff.). Second was the crisis of development of the mass society, which Röpke and Rüstow, but also Eucken, as early as the beginning of the 1930s, had identified as the central reason for the demise of the Weimar Republic. This phenomenon gained new prominence in the structural analysis of society under the label of so-called proletarianization (Röpke 1979, 30). Third, the ordoliberals posited a crisis of gigantism and bureaucracy (Röpke 1979, 103ff.; Rüstow 1950, 71) in addition to the critique of the central state, making reference to it in order to harshly attack the impact of technical progress (Rüstow 1951), the development of large-scale enterprises (Röpke 1948a), the rapid urbanization of life (Röpke 1946, 287), and the alleged overpopulation (Rüstow 1951, 389; Röpke 1979, 28). — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 508
Categorization
- XREF: The attribution of Weimar’s fall to mass society/proletarianization parallels the reader’s material on moral panics over dress as class/identity signaling, and connects to Polanyi’s countermovement thesis. — connects to: Weimar democracy fell because its constitution aided reactionaries — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 929; Weimar’s compromise order collapsed once economic crisis intervened — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 928; Austerity in Weimar Germany crippled labor and enabled Nazi takeover — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism, 234 (+2 more)
Broader Connections
- Ordoliberals distrusted capitalism’s own features like urbanization and mass parties
#expands(0.80) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 153