Ludwig Erhard belonged to an economic group that called itself the Ordoliberals. (...) They were committed to free markets, and believed that the disaster of Nazism was the culmination of cartelization and state control over the economy. The Ordoliberals also believed that they had identified the answer to the deeply painful question "of how Nazi totalitarianism could have risen in the country of Kant, Goethe, and Beethoven". The explanation was to be found in the latter part of the nineteenth century, when cartels and monopolies developed unchecked by the state in the new German Reich, leading to greater and greater concentrations of economic and political power and, ultimately, to totalitarianism. Market forces and a competitive economy where standard for the Ordoliberals. Government's responsibility was to create and maintain a framework that promoted competition and prevented cartels. Competition was the best way to prevent private or public concentration of power, thus constituting the best guarantee of political liberty, as well as providing a superior economic mechanism.
Yet the Ordoliberals'vision was not simply laissez-faire. The "Ordo" captured their sense of order - "a certain hierarchy or 'natural form' of society" - deliberately meant to be linked to the medieval idea of natural order. They believed in a strong state and a strong social morality. (...) "Justice, the state, traditions and morals, firm standards and values ... are part of this framework as are the economic, social, and fiscal policies which, outside the market sphere, balance interests, protect the weak, restrain the immoderate, cut down excesses, limit power, set the rules of the game and guar their observance."
Thus, to the Ordoliberals there was nothing inconsistent between their commitment to free markets and their support of a social safety net - a system of susidies and transfer payments to take care of the weak and disadvantaged. All this added up to what they were to call the "social market economy."
Yergin, Daniel. 1998. The Commanding Heights: the Battle for the World Economy. Touchstone: Nueva York. P. 16
Dudo sobre mi respuesta únicamente cuando dice que el Estado define las normas. Hablemos bien del sistema político. Uno consistente con el precepto de mantener una distribución equilibrada del poder, también en la esfera pública. Y que asegure la representación del ciudadano.
Un tip: vale la visita a la página de la PBS, que produjo una serie de documentales a partir del mismo trabajo.
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