James Thornton
Wilhelm Röpke maintained that freedom depends upon certain social and moral factors, which are essential for a free enterprise system to be successful, enduring, and truly free.
A Humane Economy: The Social Framework of the Free Market, by Wilhelm Röpke, Wilmington, DE: Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 1998. 200 pp.
Wilhelm Röpke (in some texts spelled “Roepke”), a German economist, taught economics in his homeland until the arrival of Hitler’s regime, at which time he emigrated and after some years settled in Switzerland. During his life (1899-1966), Röpke authored more than 20 books, setting forth his economic and social theories in detail. Implemented by West Germany in the postwar years, these theories were crucial to the revival of that nation’s economy after its near total devastation in the war.
Like von Mises, Hayek, and others, Röpke’s economic views were shaped by the Austrian School, and he was therefore committed to the ideas of freedom, free enterprise, and minimal government activity in the economic domain. Like von Mises, he argued that economic centralization, planned economies, nationalization, and all of the various bromides and catchwords of Leftism, lead men into the grim labyrinth of servitude. However, Röpke’s writings embrace important additional elements, often overlooked by economists and for that reason his outlook is singular and valuable. Let us now consider his ideas as presented in this new edition of one of his classics.
A Humane Economy first appeared in English in 1960 and was hailed by reviewers, one calling it “a seminar on integral freedom, conducted by a professor of uncommon brilliance.” Indeed so, for Röpke maintained that freedom depends upon certain social and moral factors, which are essential for a free enterprise system to be successful, enduring, and truly free.
Röpke writes: “The questionable things of this world come to grief on their own nature, » Read More
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