The social market economy favored capital owners yet bought mass approval

Evidence

The currency reform, and the policy of a social market economy'drafted as early as the 1930s by the neoliberals of the Freiburg School’ centring on Walter Eucken, Wilhelm Röpke, Alexander Rüstow and Alfred Müller-Armack, and unwaveringly practised by Konrad Adenauer’s Economics Minister Ludwig Erhard since 1948had given an unfair advantage to the owners of capital. But the stabilization of prices, the decline of unemployment and the constant increase in mass purchasing power made the renewed capitalist order attractive to others as well. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 1995

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to ch37’s claim that the New Deal did not alter the structure of the American economy — here the German counterpart, a market economy that stabilized while advantageously favoring capital. — connects to: The social market economy label legitimized market reforms politically — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin: The Making…, 550

Broader Connections

• The social market economy label legitimized market reforms politically #expands (0.85) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 550