Abstract
Werner Bonefeld’s (2017) The Strong State and Free Economy is the culmination of an extensive body of critical enquiry into ordoliberalism (see Bonefeld 2012, 2013, 2015, 2016b) and stands as an important critical exposition of a prominent, yet under-examined, tradition of liberal thought. Ordoliberalism, as liberal political economy and sociology, has much to say about the reproduction of capitalist social relations in and through class antagonism and struggle. Exerting influence on contemporary politico-economic relations and policy – particularly, as the book argues, through the European Union (EU) project – ordoliberalism remains scarcely examined within critical traditions of social science. Bonefeld’s book seeks to correct this deficit at a time where awareness of ordoliberal thought is beginning to break through into mainstream academic discussion (for instance, Galpin 2017; Ryner & Cafruny 2016; Streeck 2015).
Ordoliberalism pivots upon the notion of the political creation of an ORDO, or cosmos. This cosmos is conceptualised as the harmonious social order of a freely competitive market society which is supposed to express the inner correspondence between the essence of the human species – conceptualised as freedom to compete – with a concomitant structure of being (Bonefeld 2017: 3). The ordoliberals follow Smith in seeing market exchange and competition as intrinsic to human nature, civilisation and progress, and so distinguishing the species from other animals (Fromm 1956). Thus, ordoliberalism stands an ideology which expresses the ethic of ‘commercial fairness’ which is seen to be maintained through strict adherence to a set of rules issuing forth from the political practice of Ordnungspolitik – or, the politics of ordering (Bonefeld 2017: 69-70). Bonefeld traces the development of these ideas through the work of prominent ordoliberal theoreticians including Rüstow, Eucken, Böhm, Röpke, Müller-Armack and Miksch. By way of their critique of laissez-faire liberalism in the context of the Weimar Republic, Bonefeld exposes the roots of these theoreticians’ political economic and sociological concepts in Smithian liberalism and Schmittian political theology, positioning ordoliberalism within a constellation of social thought often seen as opposed to it. Bonefeld then applies the critical reading of ordoliberalism he develops to the EU, examining in particular the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) and Eurozone policy.
To this end, the book begins with a brief introduction of ordoliberalism and the contemporary debates surrounding it. Chapter 2 situates ordoliberalism within the context of classical political economy – particularly the thought of Adam Smith – and brings out the critical role played by the state in the reproduction of conditions which facilitate the work of the ‘invisible hand’. Chapter 3 explores the critique of mass democracy put forward by ordoliberals and their argument for ‘state independence’ from collective demands. This chapter assesses ordoliberalism as a form of authoritarian liberalism, its relation to the thought of Carl Schmitt and its consonance with individualist liberal and neo-liberal thinking of the 1970s. Chapter 4 develops the ordoliberal notion of the attainment of an ethic of commercial fairness via strict adherence to rules, examining the meaning of ‘complete competition’ and ‘economic constitution’ in ordoliberal thought. Chapter 5 examines ordoliberal social policy as a form of vitalpolitik (life politics) popularised by Foucault (2008) as biopolitics, in relation specifically to the class antagonism which marks capitalist society and the phenomenon referred to by Röpke as the proletarianisation of the masses. The final three chapters bring together elements developed throughout the text to apply ordoliberal concepts to an understanding of European federalism (drawing on Hayek’s notion of subsidiarity) and the EMU understood as a form of ordnungspolitik.
Bonefeld’s book, true to his conception of critique (see Bonefeld 1987; 2014; 2016a), does not examine ordoliberal thought from the outside. His perspective is not positioned as an externally derived normative judgement about the desirability or otherwise of ordoliberalism. Rather, Bonefeld seeks to ‘think through ordoliberalism’ so as to ‘establish its rationality as an authoritative statement about the political preconditions of a free labour economy’ (2017: 13). Therefore, the book stands as an immanent critique aimed at exposing ordoliberalism as ‘a theoretical expression of a definite form of society’ (Bonefeld 2017: 13). Bonefeld’s argument follows Marx’s critique and exposes what ordoliberals identify and posit as the political principle of capitalist society (2017: 16). Namely, that the state exists as ‘the political form of […] capitalist social relations’, as ‘the concentrated power of bourgeois society’ (Bonefeld 2017: 4). Thus, the concepts of the ordoliberal ideology are revealed as ‘moments of a reality that requires their formation’ (Bonefeld 2017: 13). It is precisely this approach to a reading of ideology developed from the critical currents within Marxian thinking (see Bonefeld et al. 1992; Burnham 1994) that marks Bonefeld’s exposition of ordoliberalism off from other accounts and renders his book so compelling and tightly argued.
In contrast, Streeck (2015) – of the Weberian tradition – describes the authoritarian liberal state form, as espoused by ordoliberal thinkers, as a ‘strong-and-weak state’ (p. 362). Streeck argues that such a state is strong when dealing with democratic demands while simultaneously weak when intervening in the economy. The weakness here lies in the uncritical acceptance of the notion of a logic of two systems, that of politics and that of economics, which further mystifies the character of the liberal state form. Bonefeld’s argument, on the other hand, aims to reveal depoliticisation – ‘the process of placing at one remove the political character of decision-making’ (Burnham 2001: 128) – as a central strategy for the management of class struggle and capital accumulation. He demonstrates through his reading of ordoliberal ideology that the state which resists democratic, collective demands is strong precisely because this is a form of intervention within the economy. The state as ‘market police’ intervenes through depoliticising strategies to facilitate the functioning of the ‘invisible hand’. Through its strength in resisting popular demands, the state ensures the reproduction of a competitive market order by enabling price functions to coordinate accumulation without the distortion of ‘monopoly’ interests. Thus exposing the authoritarian liberal state as an interventionist state. As Miksch argues, the sustaining of complete competition might mean as ‘many economic interventions as in a policy of planning’ (in Bonefeld 2017: 80). However, such interventions are aimed precisely at the maintenance of ‘depoliticised market relations between buyers and sellers of labour power’ (Bonefeld 2017: 42). Bonefeld’s account of ordoliberalism articulates the inner relation of the political and economic by way of the depoliticisation of socio-economic relations posited as necessary by ordoliberal thinkers in relation to the state.
It is this inner connection between the political and economic, and the consequent presentation of depoliticisation, which distinguishes Bonefeld’s critique of the EU from other treatments. Though a somewhat truncated analysis, the final chapters present a compelling argument regarding the depoliticisation of socio-economic relations attempted through the European project. His analysis of the EMU is perhaps the most compelling in this regard. At a time where discussion of the EU has degenerated into opposed normative judgements regarding its desirability, Bonefeld’s intervention enables a more critical perspective to be developed, one which foregrounds class struggle and the consequent necessities of state management in a society constituted through the antagonism of labour and capital. This discussion of (de)proletarianisation also promises to be fruitful in understanding the degeneration of the welfare state in the post-war period, positioning the emergence of neoliberalism firmly within dynamics of class struggle and (de)politicisation.