Page 30 - The Making of the German Post-war Economy

INTRODUCTION 3

and political scientists have focused on Ludwig Erhard and his policies
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encapsulated in the concept of the Social Market Economy. This meant
that other German parties’ ideas and efforts to influence the post-war
economic reconstruction were widely eclipsed.
This study seeks to illuminate the individual academic and political
approaches of that time. However, this research is confined to the
activities of the three most influential schools of economic thought,
namely the academically little researched Arbeitsgemeinschaft Erwin von
Beckerath (AGEvB) within the Freiburg Circles, the often misleadingly
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equated but distinctly different ordo-liberal Freiburg School with its main
proponent Walter Eucken, and, finally, the Cologne School of
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Economics around Alfred Müller-Armack. The reason for this
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confinement is that other economic programmes and doctrines,
principally Marxism or communism, were either prevented by the
occupying powers or were discredited and thus their influence remained
negligible. Apart from German think tanks and individuals, naturally the
major political parties gave impulse to and then shaped economic
developments in occupied Germany. Thus, this book includes the
economic and socio-political conceptions of the socialist Sozialdemokratische
Partei Deutschlands (SPD), the conservative Christlich Demokratische Union
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(CDU) as well as the programmatically and organisationally different
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Bavarian Christlich Soziale Union (CSU). While the first two Volksparteien
(people’s parties) and their respective economic philosophies are relatively
well researched, the socio-political and economic programme of the latter
has received considerably less attention with a few notable though
incomplete exceptions. Largely, this desideratum with regard to the CSU
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and Bavaria’s economic reconstruction seems due to the fact that more
and more regional responsibilities were passed to the bizonal then trizonal
Economic Council and to the widespread misconception that the CDU
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and CSU shared the same economic policy. Moreover, the liberal Freie
Demokratische Partei (FDP) and the Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands (KPD)
must be acknowledged as political alternatives distinct from the above-
mentioned parties; but, both being small in size and with varying degrees
of potential importance, they have received relatively little attention in
academic research, and informative publications on their socio-political
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and economic concepts are still missing. With regard to the political
parties and their respective Fraktionen, i.e. parliamentary party groups in
the first legislative parliament in the Anglo-American Bizone, the
emerging Economic Council is also subject to examination. Although this
research could draw on the edited minutes of the caucuses of the SPD
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and CDU/CSU, one should not forget that these records had to be
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submitted for approval to the Allied military authorities; therefore,