“Economic Policies Are the Best Social Policies”: West German Neoliberalism and the Housing Question After 1945

• Published date: 01 January 2018
• Date: 01 January 2018
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/ajes.12220
• Author: Margaret Haderer

“Economic Policies Are the Best Social

Policies”: West German Neoliberalism and

the Housing Question After 1945

By MARGARET HADERER*

ABSTRACT. This article challenges the widespread view that

neoliberalism had become hegemonic in the late 20

th

century by

zooming into a less well-known variant of neoliberalism, German

ordoliberalism, whose political ascendency dates back to the 1940s and

1950s. Through the lens of post-WWII housing policies—a central field

of political intervention after 1945—this article focuses on the remaking

of social policies as neoliberal policies in West Germany, a remake that

rendered the market economy a key source of political legitimacy of

the newly emerging, liberal democracy.

Introduction

The political ascendency of neoliberalism is typically dated to the late

1970s and early 1980s. It is normally associated with political figure-

heads, such as Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, and linked to the

economic theories of Ludwig Mises, Friedrich August von Hayek, and

Milton Friedman. This article departs from this common depiction of

neoliberalism to shed light on the theory and practice of a specific, but

less well-known, variant of neoliberalism: German ordoliberalism. The

latter gained a strong foothold in politics as early as the 1950s and thor-

oughly shaped the re-building of the West German state and society in

the 1950s. Ordoliberalism had a strong influence on German politics in

the past, but is also shaping the present, as has recently been shown in

the context of Germany’s shaping of austerity politics in the Eurozone

(Biebricher 2013;Dullien & Gue

`rot 2012).

*Ph.D. from Department of Political Science, University of Toronto. Lecturer at the

Department of Political Science, University of Vienna, Austria. Email: margaret.

haderer@univie.ac.at

American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Vol. 77, No. 1 (January, 2018).

DOI: 10.1111/ajes.12220

V

C2018 American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Inc.

The intellectual history of ordoliberalismhas been receiving renewed

scholarly attention (Biebricher 2013; Hien 2013; Ptak 2009). This has

occurred, in part, becauseof an increasing frustration with the dominant

“perspective of a neoliberal one-dimensional man” (Plehwe 2009: 1).

This article draws on this scholarship, yet zooms into how ordoliberal

idea(l)s found their way into one of the most important fields of

political intervention after 1945: housing policies. Reinterpreting West

Germany’s “housing miracle” (as Hanauske (1995: 68–70) has called it)

as neoliberal may raise eyebrows. It was an integral part of West Ger-

many’s “economic miracle” and the “social market economy.” In the

contemporary politics of memory, the post-WWII period is closely

linked to the ideas of prosperity for everyone and upward social mobil-

ity (L€

ohmann and Vogl 2017). That association seems to have nothing to

do with neoliberal rationalities. This article challenges this view and

argues that West Germany’s post-WWII housing policies may very well

deserve the title “neoliberal,” given their emphasis on recommodifica-

tion, private property, social differentiation, and the individualization of

risk.

This article is driven by a general interest in the relationship between

ideologies and everyday spaces (Haderer 2014). It complements current

literature on the intellectual history of ordoliberalism by taking a closer

look at one of its early materializations: West German housing policy.

The success of any socio-political or economic vision hinges on its

reproduction in everyday life. In West Germany, ordoliberalism did

find its way into everyday life. As Althusser famously notes, the primary

focus of ideological production is less on knowing than on doing

(Althusser 1994: 125ff). From this perspective, everyday spatial practi-

ces, including dwelling, are integral to “doing ideology,” which means

the normalizing of certain perceptions of, and behaviors in, a given

environment while marginalizing others. The specific contribution of

this article is to illustrate, through the lens of housing policies, how eco-

nomic freedom became the very foundation of freedom tout court in a

time and place typically associated with the politics of socialization and

redistribution rather than commodification and competition. Methodo-

logically, this article builds on a historical reconstruction of West Ger-

man housing policies and re-interprets them against the backdrop of

current debates on ordoliberalism as a specific strand of neoliberalism.

The American Journal of Economics and Sociology150