Alexander Rüstow | |
|---|---|
 Rüstowc. 1960 | |
| Born | (1885-04-08)8 April 1885 |
| Died | 30 June 1963(1963-06-30) (aged 78) |
| Academic background | |
| Doctoral advisors | Paul Hensel |
| Influences | Parmenides ·Oppenheimer |
| Academic work | |
| Discipline | Macroeconomics |
| School or tradition | Ordoliberalism Neoliberalism[1] |
| Notable ideas | Social market economy |
Alexander Rüstow (8 April 1885 – 30 June 1963) was a Germansociologist andeconomist. At theColloque Walter Lippmann in August 1938 he popularised the term "neoliberalism". He became one of the fathers of the "Social Market Economy" that shaped the economy ofWest Germany afterWorld War II. Rüstow was the grandnephew ofWilhelm Rüstow, the grandson ofCäsar Rüstow and the father ofDankwart Rustow.
Rüstow was born inWiesbaden in thePrussian Province ofHesse-Nassau in to the family of a Prussian military officer. From 1903 till 1908, he studied mathematics, physics, philosophy, philology, law and economics, at the universities of Göttingen, Munich and Berlin. In 1908, he obtained his doctorate underPaul Hensel, at theUniversity of Erlangen, on a philosophical topic,Russell's paradox. He then worked at the Teubner publishing house inBerlin, until 1911, when he started working on hishabilitation, on the knowledge theory ofParmenides. He had to interrupt his work though at the outbreak of theFirst World War, when he volunteered for theGerman Army.
After the war, Rüstow, then still asocialist, participated in theNovember Revolution, and obtained a post at the Ministry of Economic Affairs, working on the nationalization process of the coal industry in theRuhr Area. Disillusioned withsocialist planning, he started working for the VdMA, the German Engineering Federation in 1924. The engineering companies in Germany suffered much by the protected and subsidized coal and mine industry.
In the 1930s, the climate inGermany became too unfriendly for Rüstow; he was blacklisted in 1933 and fled to Switzerland, where he was offered a chair in economic geography and history at theUniversity of Istanbul,Turkey. In Istanbul, he worked on his magnum opus,Ortsbestimmung der Gegenwart (in English published asFreedom and Domination), a critique of civilization. In 1938 at theColloque Walter Lippmann, it was Rüstow who created the term 'neoliberalism' to separatenew liberalism fromclassical liberalism. Rüstow promoted the concept of the social market economy, and this concept promotes a strong role for the state with respect to the market, which is in many ways different from the ideas which are nowadays connected with the term neoliberalism.[2]
In 1949, Rüstow returned to Germany and obtained a chair at theUniversity of Heidelberg, where he remained until his retirement in 1956. He died in 1963 at age 78 in Heidelberg.
Together withWalter Eucken,Wilhelm Röpke andFranz Böhm, Rüstow provided the necessary foundational work ofOrdoliberalism.
