In addition to this display of an authoritarian bent, the early writings of Eucken, Rüstow, and Müller-Armack demonstrate that ordoliberal identity was mainly fueled by an opposition to major contemporary economic and political ideas, primarily against Marxist positions in general, but also against Keynesian economic theory, which had emerged alongside neoliberalism. “This frontal opposition explains its aggressive element” (Riese 1972, 27)—and has remained inherent in ordoliberalism up until the present day. By masking this negation as the starting point of building a theory, ordoliberalism eventually gained notoriety as a rather dogmatic theory designed to reassign legitimacy to the ideas of competition and the market.

Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, loc. 528