Foreword

The present volume contains studies that reflect the life’s work of a great humanist and outstanding economist and sociologist who generally has been considered the intellectual father of the economic recovery of Europe. The title, Against the Tide, is well chosen. Wilhelm Röpke not only was a distinguished scholar; he also was a courageous man who steadfastly spoke out against the prevalent trends, irrespective of whether they favored fascism, the welfare state, or Marxism.

AGAINST
THE TIDE

I

Weimar Republic, Brown Totalitarianism, and World War II

I

On the Transfer Problem in International Capital Movements*

Some years ago one of the distinguished scholars to whom Dutch economics owes its excellent reputation published an article called “Das Geld als Quelle von Missverständnissen im internationalen Güteraustausch” [“Money as a Source of Misunderstandings on the International Exchange of Goods”].1 It contains the following sentence, which I would like to take as a starting point: “One feels it would be nice to be a Communist, to live in a world that has no need of money, so as to be able to look in the simplest terms

II

The Intellectuals and “Capitalism”*

No one capable of judgment can deny that “capitalism”—that economic system of the Western world that rests upon private ownership of the means of production, upon an extraordinary differentiation of production and a long list of “freedoms”— has, in the course of the century and more of its history, proved to possess a greater power of creating prosperity than any other economic system that preceded it.

III

The Secular Significance of the World Crisis*

I

Some branches of the economy are cyclically sensitive, some are not. The same distinction may be applied to branches of science. While astronomy carries on its work with the majestic calm with which the stars pursue their courses high above all earthly troubles and confusion, there are other disciplines, such as, say, constitutional law, whose tasks are more and more wholly dictated by the rapid succession of political events.

IV

End of an Era?*

The more the day’s political and economic events crowd one upon another, the more is it essential to grasp the wider and deeper context of these disquieting developments. Let us forget for a moment about Hitler and Hugenberg, about East Aid, lard duties, and injunctions, and let us ask ourselves: Where do we stand? Whither are we going?

II

Reconstruction and Red Totalitarianism

V

The Centenary of British Free Trade*

I

This summer it is a hundred years since the day when the abolition of the corn duties sealed the victory of free trade in Great Britain. Few of us can really take the full measure of what came to pass then; for its contemporaries it was an event that, however prosaic its subject may have seemed, burst with dramatic impact upon the scene of England’s public life and was charged with the tension of a great historical moment.

VI

“Repressed Inflation”: The Ailment of the Modern Economy*

INFLATION PLUS COLLECTIVISM

Recent experience in many countries enables us to draw the picture of a strange distortion and stasis in economic life and to diagnose an economic ailment that, more and more, is proving to be the worst of all, and that to a very large extent explains the persistence of Europe’s distress.