Röpke, a professor of economics, is writing in Germany (1933) from the depths of the worldwide depression. . .
“The results of 150 years of economic thought seem to be buried under the rubble of the crisis. . . . It is a golden age for persons who never underwent the intellectual discipline of studying the theoretical work of that century-and-a-half, and who now feel free to substitute a ready and melodramatic pen for economic knowledge.” (46)
Substituting ‘melodrama for knowledge’! Why does sound so. . .so. . .familiar?
“No opinion is so harebrained and no proposal so bizarre as not to find enthusiastic admirers - and indulgent judges among professional economists. For their ranks, too, are invaded by uncertainty and confusion. The shock of an unprecedented economic breakdown has largely undermined the firmness of their judgement and their convictions and so weakened their intellectual health as to allow entry to bacilli against which they used to be immune.’’ (46)
Wow! This ‘intellectual virus’ must still be infectious - over eight decades later!
“Is not this crisis [the depression] maybe the beginning of a new epoch in economic history? What remains that is still valid? Have machine techniques and rationalization made nonsense of economic progress? Are we not witnessing the merry resurrection of the mercantilist doctrine - that concern with the balance of trade and payments has to be the alpha and omega of economic policy?’’ (46)
Fascinating that these questions that faced the Nazis in 1933. Weird that present world is fighting with the answers again. Röpke asked . . .
“And, we may ask with some alarm, how many economists are still who feel they are standing on firm ground amid all this confusion, and who are prepared to defend it against an overwhelming majority?’’
Well . . .
“An answer to them can only be found by avoiding any flirtation with mass opinions and mass sentiments.’’
‘Avoiding mass sentiments’! Who does that? Why is this so rare?
“Writers do their level best to represent the use of intellect as an incomprehensible aberration of the nineteenth century.’’ (47)
Yes, well, they evidently were successful. Where did this start?
“Was it not Hegel’s faithful disciple Karl Marx who developed in masterly fashion the method of wrapping up the quinine of economic policy aims in the neutral of a philosophic interpretation of history?’’ (48)
Röpke (an intellectual German professor) understands how Marx (an intellectual German) traveled to his destination. Why was this ‘metaphysical predestination’ so powerful in Germany?
“The German seems to have a special predilection for molding his thought to a historical and philosophic pattern. . . . Maybe this is the German’s own way of saving his ubiquitously threatened personality from being swallowed up by the void, and by preserving for himself some sort of significance when most of it has been stripped from him by modern civilization.’’ (49)
This insight, from a fellow German, is profound. Even more, does Röpke’s explanation identify present?
Part 1: Weimar Republic, Brown Totalitarianism, and WW II
II The Intellectuals And “Capitalism”
III The Secular Significance of the World Crisis
IV End of an Era?
Part II: Reconstruction And Red Totalitarianism
XI Keynes and the Revolution in Economics
Economics Old, New and True
XIV Robbing Peter to pay Paul
On the Nature of the Welfare State
XV The U.S. balance-of-payments Crisis:
Diagnosis and treatment
chapter “End of an Era?’’ . . .
“The idea of liberty has been replaced by a renewed will to subjection of the personality and a longing for state slavery. Thus, the first element of illiberalism is servilism.”
‘Liberty replaced by longing for slavery to state’! How sad, how disappointing, how painful!
“Men are gripped by a desire to be told what to do and to be ordered about, to the point almost of masochism. The state has become the subject of unparalleled idolatry, and it remains idolatry however much Protestant theologians may try to deduce it from the will of God. With giant tentacles the modern state encompasses all spheres of private life and society, strangles individuality, and eventually drains society of its vital sap. More deadly than all the despotisms of the past, and more inescapable, looms the “total state” of the future, and the servile illiberal, it would seem, can hardly wait to kiss its whip.’’
Especially in Germany did the church promote this ‘idolatry of the state’. Remember the result!
“Closely connected with servilism is our era’s nationalism. The more emphasis is laid on the state, and the more every individual becomes a serving member of the state mechanism, the more pronounced becomes the frontier dividing one state and nation from all others.’’
‘Servilism progresses to Nationalism’.
“This is in blatant contrast with liberalism, whose three basic ideas inevitably generate a feeling of inner bonds with other nations as well as the conviction that if a nation seals itself off from others internally or externally, it is acting against all the traditions to which we are bound by the development of Western civilization. And when national isolation eventually combines with blind hatred of everything foreign, when servilism combines with brutalism, then hardly anything is left to divide mankind from naked cannibalism.’’
Naked cannibalism’!
“This kind of nationalism has, of course, nothing in common with the natural feeling and inclination of solidarity that we call love of our country, but such as it is, it is destructive of culture, as must be clear to anyone who stops to think that what we call national culture has been created only in constant interaction with European civilization as a whole, whose roots reach down to Athens, Rome, and Jerusalem.’’
“In the course of the centuries, cultural dependence has steadily grown rather than diminished, and this is why the leading spirits of all nations have never felt national frontiers to be as confining as today. Cultural nationalism leads as inescapably to provincial Babbittry as economic nationalism leads to material impoverishment and political nationalism to war.’’
Nationalism to - Babbittry (banal), poverty, war.
“Where reason clashes with inarticulate, emotional intent, there can be no discussion. As a result, people hysterically shout down each other and eventually bash one another on the head. Thus, contempt of reason leads to contempt of man and humanity, to intolerance, violence, bellicism, and destructive action.
Goethe knew what he was doing when he let the devil exult:
“Reason and Knowledge only thou despise,
The highest strength in man that lies!
Let but the Lying Spirit bind thee, and I shall have thee fast and sure.”
And thus we have arrived at the devil’s own present day.’’
Does Röpke’s critique seem - overdone, harsh, condemning? Remember he wrote this analysis in 1933 Germany.
This work also considers many purely economic themes (which I skipped).
Footnotes (several in most chapters) worked on iPad.
No index. No photographs. No bibliography.
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