I find myself captivated by this new entry into the Austrian Study Guide: a very rare treatise indeed. It is International Economic Disintegration by Wilhelm Roepke, from 1942. He explains how the world unraveled the 1930s from a combination of protectionism and monetary destruction. But he can’t get very far with this analysis without relating what seems to be an epiphany for him: there are non-economic reasons the world collapsed. The rise of nationalism frightens him. The old code of morals and manners, even the code of honor among people, seems to have been shredded. People long for more than prosperity; they want cultural and social coherence and stability, and states with a mission. The market cannot provide this. It must come tradition or religion or something else.
Observing this, he seems to suggest that the old liberal creed failed: we must speak of more than individualism and utility; we must begun speaking of goodness and right and truth. We must revive honor and civility.
Whether the collapse of the economy fed the cultural decline or the reverse is a question that he examines in detail. But his whole analysis keeps the reader rather suspended, mainly because you suspect something rather awful is at work in his brain: he seems to be losing a bit of trust in the idea of freedom. But reading it can be frustrating because he is never quite clear on what he regards as the foundational cause of nationalist warmongering and social decline. But as we approach the end of the book, he seems rushed to find an answer and it is here where he seems to take the path that we had long suspected he is headed. He denounces materialism, mass behavior, individualization, and consumerism–not always in those exact words but in some variation of them.
But is he really suggesting that capitalism itself, as versus the state, contributed to the decline and disintegration? No, he never quite says this. But the reader can come away with the view that he has begun to believe it.
My own analysis is that we have here an intellectual in shock, reaching for straws, tired of the old liberal faith in reason, exasperated that nations would so gladly destroy themselves, despairing at the prospect of a cure, and scoffing at the notion that all we need are free markets. He observes a deep pathology at work in the world, one that must be repaired by much more radical change than merely adopting free trade and sound money.
This is a troubled intellectual. He seems to lack stamina in this book, and certainly he was nowhere near the giant in understanding and intellectual courage that Mises was. Roepke seemed confused and disoriented by the horrors he saw around him. What’s interesting is that he never really seemed to gain his footing again after this book. His works are packed with insight, and they are so challenging to read. He is quite brilliant. And yet, he behaved pretty much as we might all behave: his attachment to science grew weaker and he sought some sort of refuge in something else. Roepke never gave up his liberalism but he seems to come very close here.
This book is particularly interesting to read in light of the way many libertarians let 9-11 shake them up. Imagine what living through war and depression would do! All the more reason to admire Mises, truly.
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Of course just how does revive honor, goodness, civilty and truth? And how does one define it and then carry it out? Woe to those who fail the defintion.
He certainly seems to think that a New Liberalism needs to come into being, having robust States lead by a Philosopher King and His Band Of Merry Men, who will maintain a proto-leviathan but still honor individual rights. It’s simply the template of the mid-grade socialist UN’ism that the State exists a priori and hands out rights like party favors. Once this view point is accepted, and is the foundation of one’s advanced opinions on the matter, the cause is lost. Inevitably the State will promise more than it can deliver, programming the people to be right, and civil, and honarable as an extension of the State (and have those qualities collapse as the State inevitably will without use of greater force to maintain it) versus being so in ones own self-interest.
WWII (or WWI) didn’t happen because of capitalism, it happened because of Statism. Imperialism is a State backed and funded proposition. Both wars have their origin in Imperialism. Empires are created to dope people with more than they otherwise could have had. It is the system of Leaders securing their place, whether a despot or a vote-whore, to the people swapped for domestic harmony. But domestic harmony is only disrupted when the notion strikes that people are due more than they’ve collectively created (either through central planning or a market). Empires are created to divert foreign resources to the domestic treasury. How that is capitalism I’ll never know. Granted industrialists may war-profiteer and some may have enough clout to spur on the State, but it still is foremost a Statist function. And the State exists in the first place to have leaders who will ensure honorable behavior, and civility, and truth etc etc etc. And the cycle continues…
I do think that libertarians need to take seriously broader ethical and cultural issues beyond the focus on rights, liberty, and free markets. But without, of course, compromising our belief in the absoluteness of these core values. Roepke’s seems more like a conservative reactionary turn rather than the enriching of the libertarian tradition that I espouse.
I really like Ropke, but I am like you Jeff, his constant limbo and lack of real conclusions is a bit frustrating. But I guess we all “see through a glass darkly”. It remindes me of Star Wars, episode IV, where the pilot keeps saying “almost there, almost there”. It seems Ropke was “almost there” on both capitalism and socialism, well maybe not full socialism, but some degree of state interventionism. I think the example of his life is much for defining than his written word: His works being destoyed by the Nazis, his fleeing to the neutral Swizterland, his continued intellectual fight against totalitarinism while still remaining in Europe, his return to Germany and influence with the German Miracle. He was a hero in the cause of freedom. And even though reading his works can drive me crazy at times, I still really enjoy reading them.
Jeffrey,
Thank you for an excellent commentary, and for the comparison with Mises, who, despite the horrors he also lived through, managed to better maintain his scientific discipline and his spirit.
I have not read Roepke’s book, but does he not overlook the fact that Classical Liberalism died in virtually every major country with the outbreak of World War I? And regarding the large majority of intellectuals and academics, Classical Liberalism was abandoned by them at least 10 or 20 years prior to 1914.
The horrors of the first part of the 20th century are overwhelmingly the result of the abandonment of Classical Liberalism and the implementation of socialist and interventionist policies. This is even more disconcerting since Classical Liberalism was the economic/political system that had brought an unprecedented increase in the standard of living to the masses when it was most consistently implemented in the period following the conclusion of the Napoleonic Wars to the late 19th century.
“But he can’t get very far with this analysis without relating what seems to be an epiphany for him: there are non-economic reasons the world collapsed.”
I’m a bit confused. You don’t seem to view
this position with much sympathy, but is it
because you regard the claim (that there are non-
economic factors at play in societal phenomenon)
as rather obvious (such that it would be strange
for someone to portray it as deep), or is it
because you are puzzled that someone could
actually believe it to be true?
“This book is particularly interesting to read in light of the way many libertarians let 9-11 shake them up.”
Yes, indeed it is very suprising. In fact one would think the more prominent ones would point out the fact that it was an INSIDE JOB! I know if Rothbard was still alive, that’s what he would be saying.
The more I look into the facts (something I never bothered to do), the more it seems that we either reject the State’s conspiracy theories (“it was the terrorists!”) or we reject the laws of physics. Physics and Austrian Economics both suggest that the State had a motive, opportunity, and in fact carried out an act of terrorism against the public.
Every libertarian should have “the state is responsible for crisis X” as a knee-jerk reaction, and then follow up with the evidence and the list of private accomplices. Roepke did not stick to the libertarian formula.
Roepke can seem confused here, but only because he steps outside the ‘wertfrei’ framework upon which I suspect Mises was so keen in order to focus people on the relentless truth of his irrefutable economic a priorism, rather than allowing his opponents to distract him by venturing into the ‘thymology’ rather than the praxeology..
However, what Roepke is surely struggling to articulate is the old truth given expression by (I think) Burke: namely that men cannot be free unless they first govern themselves.
To the extent that we are devoid of ethics, morals (and – just possibly – faith), our free market materialism is prone to becoming unbridled and unchanneled and we become as petulant, spoiled favourite nephews in a sweet shop, doing harm to ourselves and (more importantly) to those around us.
As we know, nothing is better designed to perpetuate and intensify this collective infantilism than the secular, mass democratic Welfare/Warfare state.
I would argue that this is what Roepke wishes to deprecate – not free markets as such.
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