ABSTRACT
This article focuses on the early years of the German post-war economy (1945–1950). My aim is to highlight the back and forth between the ordoliberal stance on their contemporary German situation on the one hand, and their theoretical analysis of centrally administrated economy on the other. I do so by reconstructing the argumentation they developed in the period immediately before the currency and liberalisation reforms of June 1948. Ordoliberals began by pointing at the economic order as the major ill afflicting the German economy. Second, they built a circular cumulative link between (repressed) inflation and planning. Third, they showed how, from an exchange economy to a planned economy, Germany eventually found itself with no economic order at all, faced with the propagation of black markets, the rise of a barter and personal subsistence economy. I conclude that some aspects that qualified ordoliberalism as a serious competitor to Keynesianism in Germany can be found both in their historical analysis and in the way they appreciate practical economic policy.
