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² Andrew Skinner's introduction to the Penguin edition of the Wealth of Nations concludes on Smith's theory of the state but does not expound on its indispensability as the executive power of liberty. Skinner, Andrew, ‘Introduction to the Penguin edition of The Wealth of Nations’, in Smith, Adam, The Wealth of Nations (London: Penguin, 1999)Google Scholar. Simon Clarke's account develops Smith's state theory in an insightful manner arguing that ‘the purpose of Smith's analysis of the economic system was to define the proper role of the state’. Clarke, Simon, Keynesianism, Monetarism and the Crisis of the State (Aldershot: Edward Elgar, 1988), p. 39Google Scholar. See also his Marx, Marginalism and Modern Sociology (London: Palgrave, 1992)Google Scholar. The article agrees with this up to a point. It argues that the political state is the historical and also analytical presupposition of the system of perfect liberty.

³ See also Force, Pierre, Self-Interest Before Adam Smith (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003)CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Evensky, Yerry, Adam Smith's Moral Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, who argue akin to Watson for the independence of morality as a matter that belongs to individuals alone.

⁴ The term ‘neoliberalism’ was coined by Alexander Rüstow in 1938. Rüstow was a founding ordoliberal thinker. See Ptak, Ralf, ‘Neoliberalism in Germany’, in Mirowski, Philip and Plehwe, Dieter, The Road from Mont Pelerin (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2009)Google Scholar.

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⁹ Jackson, Ben, ‘At the Origins of Neo-Liberalism: The Free Economy and the Strong State, 1930–1947’, The Historical Journal, 53:1 (2010), pp. 129–51CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁰ See Nicholls, Anthony, Freedom with Responsibility (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994)Google Scholar.

¹¹ Anderson, Perry, ‘The Europe to Come’, in Gowan, Peter and Anderson, Perry (eds), The Question of Europe (London: Verso, 1988)Google Scholar; Moss, Bernie, ‘The European Community as Monetarist Construction’, Journal of European Area Studies, 8:2 (2000), pp. 247–65CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bonefeld, Werner, ‘Europe, The Market and the Transformation of Democracy’, Journal of European Area Studies, 13:1 (2005), pp. 93–106Google Scholar.

¹² Gamble, Andrew, ‘The Free Economy and the Strong State’, Socialist Register 1979 (London: Merlin Press)Google Scholar. See also Sir Joseph, Keith's Freedom and Order (London: Centre for Policy Studies, 1975)Google Scholar, which endorses German neoliberalism as the model of market liberal government.

¹³ Foucault, Michel, Biopolitics (London: Palgrave, 2008)Google Scholar; Peck, Jamie, Constructions of Neoliberal Reason (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010)CrossRefGoogle Scholar doubts Foucault's claim that Chicago neoliberalism derives from German ordoliberalism. According to Foucault, Chicago neoliberalism developed core ordoliberal ideas in its own distinctive deregulatory manner. Friedman's support of, and indeed advisory role in, the Pinochet dictatorship is well known, and does not contradict his market-liberal stance. On this see, Bonefeld, Werner, ‘Democracy and Dictatorship’, Critique, 34:3 (2006), pp. 237–52CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁴ The publication of Foucault's Biopolitics brought the ordoliberal tradition to wider attention – more often than not as a matter of Foucault studies. For example, Behrent, Michael, ‘Liberalism without Humanism’, Modern Intellectual History, 6:3 (2009), pp. 539–68CrossRefGoogle Scholar, reports on Foucault's fascination with neoliberalism, arguing that his lectures entail a strategic reorientation from intellectual rebellion to endorsement of economic liberalism. The circumstance that Foucault lectures illuminate the moral, social, and political presuppositions and ideas of economic liberalism is of no importance to him. In his view, neoliberalism merely serves as an illustration of Foucault's thought processes. McNay, Lois, ‘Self as Enterprise’, Theory, Culture & Society, 26:6 (2009) pp. 55–77CrossRefGoogle Scholar, focuses on Foucault's analysis of ordoliberalism and neoliberalism, but when it comes to the politics gets hung up on resistance to neoliberalism seemingly oblivious to his discussion of ordoliberalism as the foundation of modern neoliberalism. Foucault's lectures argue that ordoliberalism amounts to an authoritarian liberal project of economic liberty by means of strong state action that seeks prevention of liberal emergencies by means of surveillance and transformation of the laws of private property into a character trait.

¹⁵ The weak state is one that retreats in the face of global economic power. See, amongst others, Strange, Susanne, The Retreat of the State (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1996)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also the debate in Bieler, Andreas, Bonefeld, Werner, Burnham, Peter, and Morton, Adam, Global Restructuring State, Capital and Labour (London: Palgrave, 2006)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁶ Brandt, Ulrich and Sekler, Andrea, ‘Postneoliberalism – catch-word or valuable analytical and political concept?’, Development Dialogue, 51 (2009), pp. 5–13Google Scholar; Jessop, Bob, ‘The “Return” of the national state in the current crisis of the world market’, Capital & Class, 34:1 (2010), pp. 38–43CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁷ Peck, Constructions of Neoliberal Reason, p. 275.

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¹⁹ Peck, Constructions of Neoliberal Reason, pp. 19, 275.

²⁰ ‘You can call it’, says David Cameron, ‘liberalism. You can call it empowerment. You can call it freedom. You can call it responsibility. I call it The Big Society’. Cited in Daily Telegraph (21 July 2011). Norman, Jesse, The Big Society (London: University of Buckingham Press, 2010)Google Scholar.

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²² Martin Wolf, ‘The need for a new imperialism’, Financial Times (10 October 2001).

²³ On this distinction, see Clarke, Simon, ‘The Neoliberal Theory of the State’, in Saad-Filho, Alfredo and Johnston, Deborah (eds), Neoliberalism – A Critical Reader (London: Pluto, 2005), pp. 50–9Google Scholar.

²⁴ Marx, Karl, Capital, I (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1983), p. 703Google Scholar.

²⁵ Smith, AdamThe Wealth of Nation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976), pp. 428, 726Google Scholar.

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²⁷ The distinction between Austrian laissez-faire liberalism and German ordoliberalism is of less importance in the context of Realpolitik. See, for example, von Mises, Ludwig, The Free and Prosperous Commonwealth (Irvington: The Foundation of Economic Education, 2000), p. 5Google Scholar. He asserts that uninhibited market forces are the only remedy to resolving economic crisis, and then argues that ‘fascism and similar movements have … saved European civilization’.

²⁸ Eucken, Walter, Grundsätze der Wirtschaftspolitik (Tübingen: Mohr Siebert, 2004)Google Scholar.

²⁹ This is the theoretical context for Hayek's praise of the Pinochet dictatorship. He argued that a state that yields to the social forces becomes unlimited in its character, requiring ‘well-meaning dictators … genuinely anxious to restore’ free economy. Quoted in Cristi, Carl Schmitt and Authoritarian Liberalism, p. 168.

³⁰ Müller-Armack, Alfred, ‘The Social Market Economy as an Economic and Social Order’, Review of Social Economy, 36:3 (1978), pp. 325–31CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

³¹ Röpke, Wilhelm, The Social Crisis of Our Time (New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 2009), p. 56Google Scholar.

³² Rüstow, Alexander, ‘General Social Laws of the Economic Disintegration and Possibilities of Reconstruction’, Afterword to Röpke, Wilhelm, International Economic Disintegration (London: Hodge, 1942)Google Scholar.

³³ The ordoliberals, Rüstow and Röpke in particular, accept that the freedom of the worker is a double freedom: it is the freedom from the means of subsistence and the freedom to sell her labour power to gain subsistence. They therefore argue that resolution of the ‘workers question’ has to focus on the determination of the true interest of workers, which lies in the progress of the common wealth, see below. Rüstow, Alexander, Freiheit und Herrschaft (Münster: LIT, 2005)Google Scholar; Röpke, Wilhelm, A Human Economy (Wilmington Delaware: ISI, 1998)Google Scholar. Marx's account on this freedom of labour can be found in Capital, I, chap. 26. Bonefeld, Werner, ‘Primitive Accumulation and Capitalist Accumulation’, Science and Society, 75:3 (2011), pp. 379–99CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

³⁴ See Rüstow, ‘General Social Laws of the Economic Disintegration and Possibilities of Reconstruction’.

³⁵ Röpke, A Human Economy, p. 152; Röpke, Wilhelm, Welfare, Freedom and Inflation (London: Pall Mall Press, 1957), p. 24Google Scholar; Röpke, A Human Economy, p. 155.

³⁶ Like Hayek, The Road to Serfdom, Röpke, Human Economy, p. 172, rejects freedom from want as a most ‘dangerous and seductive’ enunciation of tyranny.

³⁷ This part draws on Clarke, Keynesianism, Monetarism and the Crisis of the State; Clarke, Marx, Marginalism and Modern Sociology, and Bonefeld, Werner, ‘Free Economy and the Strong State’, Capital & Class, 34:1 (2010), pp. 15–24CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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³⁹ On this, see Fine, Robert, Democracy and the Rule of Law (London: Pluto, 1981)Google Scholar and Pashukanis, Evgeny, Law and Marxism (London: Pluto, 1987)Google Scholar.

⁴⁰ Marx, Karl, The Holy Family (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1975)Google Scholar.

⁴¹ Marx, Karl, Grundrisse (London: Penguin, 1973), p. 604Google Scholar.

⁴² I owe this insight to Phil Cerny.

⁴³ Force, Self-Interest Before Adam Smith, and Evensky, Adam Smith's Moral Philosophy, argue that for Smith morality is a matter that individuals resolve for themselves by means of their own effort at moral learning, and they refer to the ‘impartial spectator’ as a product of the individuals imagination. Or as Smith put it: the impartial spectator is ‘the inhabitant of the breast, the man within, the great judge and arbiter of our conduct’ (Moral Sentiments), p. 61. Foucault, Michel, ‘Governmentality’, in Burchell, Graham, Gordon, Colin, and Miller, Peter (eds), The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality (Chicago: University of Chicago Press), pp. 87–104Google Scholar, captures this inhabitation of moral virtue as a form of governmentality, which describes the internalisation of the function of government into the mentality of the acting subjects. Marx, The Poverty of Philosophy, called it the inner physiognomy of society. I have no reason to doubt the strength of Presbyterian self-discipline at the time of Smith's argument. Nevertheless, for Smith, the poor do not seem to have the requisite civitas of moral restraint. Instead, their ignorance makes them unruly, which, he says, requires the state to protect the rich (Moral Sentiments), p. 161. The impartial spectator is both a particular residing in each individual and a universal in re, which is independent from the individuals and their self-interested calculations. The state is the force of moral entrenchment, and punishment.

⁴⁴ Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, pp. 340, 89, 91, 749.

⁴⁵ Smith, The Wealth of Nations, p. 723.

⁴⁶ Smith, , Lectures on Jurisprudence (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978), p. 6Google Scholar.

⁴⁷ Smith, The Wealth of Nations, p. 770.

⁴⁸ Ibid., p. 83.

⁴⁹ Ibid., pp. 84, 85, 86–7, 87.

⁵⁰ Ibid., pp. 91, 333

⁵¹ See Clarke, Simon, ‘The global accumulation of capital’, in Bonefeld, Werner, Gunn, Richard, and Psychopedis, Kosmas (eds), Open Marxism, I (London, Pluto, 1992), pp. 133–50Google Scholar; and Bonefeld, Werner, ‘The Spectre of Globalisation’, in Bonefeld, Werner and Psychopedis, Kosmas (eds), The Politics of Change (London: Palgrave, 2000), pp. 31–68CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁵² Smith, The Wealth of Nations, p. 109.

⁵³ Ibid., pp. 848–9.

⁵⁴ Smith, Lectures on Jurisprudence, p. 5.

⁵⁵ Smith, The Wealth of Nations, p. 105.

⁵⁶ Smith, Lectures on Jurisprudence, p. 5.

⁵⁷ Smith, The Wealth of Nations, pp. 10, 723.

⁵⁸ Smith, Lectures on Jurisprudence, p. 338.

⁵⁹ Müller-Armack, Alfred, ‘Thirty Years of Social Market Economy’, in Thesing, Josef (ed.), Economy and Development (Mainz: Hase und Köhler, 1979), pp. 146, 147Google Scholar.

⁶⁰ Rüstow, Alexander, ‘Die staatspolitischen Vorraussetzngen des wirtschaftspolitischen Liberalismus’, Rede und Antwort (Ludwigsburg: Hoch, 1963 [orig. pub. 1932]), p. 255Google Scholar.

⁶¹ Böhm, Franz, Ordnung der Wirtschaft (Berlin: Kohlhammer, 1937), p. 11Google Scholar.

⁶² Röpke, Wilhelm, Two Essays by Wilhelm Roepke (London: Lanham, 1987), p. 17Google Scholar.

⁶³ Müller-Armack, ‘The Social Market Economy as an Economic and Social Order’, p. 329.

⁶⁴ Röpke, The Social Crisis of Our Time, p. 181.

⁶⁵ Röpke, A Human Economy, p. 130.

⁶⁶ Rüstow, ‘Die staatspolitischenVorraussetzngen des wirtschaftspolitischen Liberalismus’, p. 258.

⁶⁷ Röpke, A Human Economy, p. 155,

⁶⁸ Sir Joseph, Keith and Sumption, Jonathan, Equality (London: John Murray, 1979)Google Scholar capture this well when they declare that poverty is not the opposite of freedom. It is an opportunity.

⁶⁹ Röpke, Welfare, Freedom and Inflation, p. 22.

⁷⁰ William Campbell, ‘Introduction to the Transaction Edition’ of Röpke, The Social Crisis of Our Time, p. xvi.

⁷¹ Müller-Armack, Alfred, Wirtschaftsordnung und Wirtschaftspolitik (Stuttgard: Paul Haupt, 1976), p. 182Google Scholar

⁷² Röpke, Wilhelm, ‘The Guiding Principles of the Liberal Programme’, in Wünsche, Friedrich (ed.), Standard Texts on the Social Market Economy (Stuttgart: Fischer, 1982), p. 188Google Scholar.

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⁷⁴ Müller-Armack, Wirtschaftsordnung und Wirtschaftspolitik, p. 253.

⁷⁵ Müller-Armack, Alfred, Genealogie der Sozialen Marktwirtschaft (Stuttgard: Paul Haupt, 1981), p. 79Google Scholar.

⁷⁶ Müller-Armack, Wirtschaftsordnung und Wirtschaftspolitik, p. 133. Müller-Armack coined the phrase soical market economy in 1946, which became not only an election slogan for the German CDU but, also, the term that expresses the apparent distinction of the German economy as a socially conscious capitalism. On the ideological force of this distinction, see Wagenknecht, Sarah, Freiheit statt Kapitalismus (Frankfurt: Eichhorn, 4th ed. 2012)Google Scholar. Akin to Brown's appeal to Smith as a counter to the invisible hand, Wagenknecht appeals to the ordoliberal tradition as a counter to neoliberalism, on behalf of Die Linke.

⁷⁷ Röpke, Wilhelm, Maß und Mitte (Zuerich: Rentsch, 1950), p. 252Google Scholar.

⁷⁸ Röpke, A Human Economy, p. 99. Different social characters do however experience the coined freedom and the way in which the coinage is produced differently. As Marx, Grundrisse, pp. 156–7, put, ‘the power which each individual exercises over the activity of others or over social wealth exists in him as the owner of exchange value, of money. The individual carries his social power, as well as his bond with society, in his pocket’.

⁷⁹ Röpke, The Social Crisis of Our Time, p. 218; Röpke, Human Economy, p. 27; Müller-Armack, ‘The Social Market Economy as an Economic and Social Order’, p. 328.

⁸⁰ On this, see Müller-Armack, Wirtschaftsordnung und Wirtschaftspolitik, p. 235.

⁸¹ Böhm, Franz, Reden and Schriften (Karlsruhe: Müller, 1969), p. 171Google Scholar.

⁸² Rüstow, Alexander, ‘Diktatur innerhalb der Grenzen der Demokratie’, Vierteljahreshefte für Zeitgeschichte, 7 (1959 [orig. pub. 1929]), pp. 87–111, pp. 100fGoogle Scholar, Röpke, International Economic Disintegration, pp. 246, 247. On the connection between Schmitt and the ordoliberals, see Haselbach, Autoritärer Liberalismus und Soziale Marktwirtschaft.

⁸³ Röpke, The Social Crisis of Our Time, p. 52.

⁸⁴ Hayek, Friedrich, The Constitution of Liberty vol. III (London: Routledge, 1960), p. 217Google Scholar.

⁸⁵ Friedrich, Carl, Constitutional Government and Democracy; Theory and Practice in Europe and America (London: Blaisdell Publishing, 1968), p. 581Google Scholar.

⁸⁶ Foucault, Michel, Ethics: Subjectivity and Truth (London: Penguin, 1997), p. 97Google Scholar.

⁸⁷ Röpke, International Economic Disintegration, p. 68.

⁸⁸ Ferguson, Adam, Essays on the History of Civil Society (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1966), p. 122Google Scholar.

⁸⁹ Ronaldo Munck therefore argued that Chile is the practical birthplace of neoliberalism because its demand for a decision to impose free economy, and force a people to be free, saw its first successful manifestation in the Chilean dictatorship of 1973. ‘Neoliberalism, necessitarianism and alternatives in Latin America: there is no alternative (TINA)?’, Third World Quarterly, 12:3 (2003), pp. 495–511Google Scholar.

⁹⁰ Friedman, Milton, Capitalism and Freedom (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1962), p. 15, see also pp. 25, 27Google Scholar.

⁹¹ Marx, Grundrisse, p. 108.

⁹² BBC News, ‘Spending Review 2010’ (20 October 2010), available at: {http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-11579979}.

⁹³ Holloway, John, Crack Capitalism (London: Pluto, 2010), pp. 253–61Google Scholar.

⁹⁴ Philip Bond, ‘Common Purpose’, Ethos, 12 (2011), retrieved from: {www.ethosjounral.com/home/item/26500-common-purpose} accessed 3 Oct. 2011.