Half a century later and after two devastating wars, the original model of a social market economy continued to display these ambiguities: ordoliberal economists, the German members of the larger neoliberal family of thought, conceived the social market economy in order to offset what they considered to be dangerous trends in the postwar economy. In light of the contemporary misunderstanding of the character of the original social market economy, it is difficult to explain why German trade unions, Social Democrats, and communists fought Ludwig Erhard's efforts to institutionalize the social market economy, why Margaret Thatcher propagated the German model on her way into Downing Street (Cockett 1994), and why Milton Friedman recommended the German model to Chile's dictator Pinochet after the coup (see Fischer, Chapter 9 in this volume).

Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, loc. 498