Röpke's concerns about the cultural implications of capitalism did not end with its infl uence on religion. He also drew attention to the collapse of local economies, and in par tic u lar to the decline of traditional modes of agriculture, as signs of the dehumanizing infl uence of unregulated competition on interpersonal relationships. At the 1947 meeting he extolled "the social life of the family farm" and observed that it required economic "units smaller than would otherwise be rational for normal business standards." Röpke's respect for ways of life that stood outside the pure logic of competition and his evident contempt for the "proletarian nomads" engendered by capitalist industrialization revealed deep reservations about the social effects of capitalist systems of labor.

Angus Burgin, The Great Persuasion, loc. 293