The founding documents of ordoliberalism are dated to 1929–1933 works

Evidence

14. Walter Eucken’s Staatliche Strukturwandlungen und die Krisis des Kapitalismus (1932) and Alexander Rüstow’s Interessenpolitik oder Staatspolitik (1932) are typically referred to as the real founding documents. In addition, Röpke’s contribution on “Maxi-men rationeller Intervention” in his writing on state interventionism (1929) has been given pride of place from prominent neoliberals (see Hayek et al. 1979). To understand the critique of parliamentarian democracy, however, Rüstow’s 1929 paper “Diktatur innerhalb der Grenzen der Demokratie” (dictatorship within democratic confines, published in 1959) is of considerable importance. — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 574

Categorization

• DEFINE: Maps the canonical founding-text canon of ordoliberalism — useful bibliographic scaffolding for further study.
• QUESTION: Rüstow’s ‘dictatorship within democratic confines’ paper is flagged as crucial to the critique of parliamentary democracy — worth chasing down what that proposal actually was.
• SEED: The striking phrase ‘dictatorship within democratic confines’ from a founding ordoliberal could seed a blog post questioning the clean ‘neoliberalism vs fascism’ distinction.