Alfred Amonn, Röpkes Internationale Ordnung (1955)

Alfred Amonn’s review article presents the revised second edition of Wilhelm Röpke’s Internationale Ordnung – heute as a compelling diagnosis of international disorder and a programme for overcoming it. The book completes Röpke’s trilogy on the crisis of modern society; its substantial rewriting responds to changes in international problems and debate since the first edition. Amonn follows its four-part structure, moving from political foundations through economic institutions and psychological obstacles to monetary reconstruction. His review is strongly affirmative: exposition progressively becomes advocacy for Röpke’s liberal conception of international order.

The governing argument is that international crisis cannot be separated from the moral, political, and economic constitution of individual societies. International agreements cannot compensate for domestic structures that frustrate cooperation. Reform must therefore reach from individuals, families, occupations, and municipalities to the nation. Amonn treats this connection between internal and external order as Röpke’s distinctive contribution:

Darin besteht das völlig Eigenartige der Röpkeschen Betrachtung des Problems der internationalen Ordnung und zugleich das Fruchtbare, das – im Grunde genommen ja nicht so fernliegend – aus der Sackgasse, in die die internationale Politik hineingeraten, herausführen und dem Ziele einer dauerhaften, gefestigten und befriedigenden internationalen Ordnung zuführen kann.

English translation: This constitutes the distinctive character of Röpke’s approach to the problem of international order and also its fruitful element, which—though fundamentally not so far-fetched—can lead out of the impasse into which international politics has fallen and towards the goal of a lasting, consolidated, and satisfactory international order.

This priority of domestic foundations does not make international politics irrelevant. The first part examines armaments, sovereignty, world government, decentralization, war prevention, pacifism, and appeasement. It considers both power-political realism and moralistic illusionism, while treating European political integration as collective self-assertion against Soviet-led communist imperialism. Amonn emphasizes that the nominal overview already supplies substantial political analysis, although the book does not systematically develop the legal and organizational machinery of international order.

The second part gives the domestic–international connection its economic formulation: genuine world economic integration requires competitive market economies, whereas national planning breaks it apart. Complex exchange depends on reliable legal and moral expectations and on stable, freely usable money. Before the First World War, Röpke argues, the liberal separation of governmental power from economic activity supplied a workable substitute for a world legal authority; the gold standard supplied an international payment community. Politicization destroyed both supports. The essential contrast is between coordination through markets and coordination through sovereign commands:

«Der Bereich, innerhalb dessen die zwangsweise Steuerung des Wirtschaftsprozesses stattfindet, muss sich mit der souveränen politischen Einheit decken, die ihren Wirtschaftsplan erzwingt.»

English translation: “The area within which the economic process is coercively directed must coincide with the sovereign political unit that enforces its economic plan.”

Amonn endorses the conclusion that collectivism undermines both international integration and domestic federalism. Inflation and administrative controls reinforce one another, while transferring planning to the international level would require an extraordinarily centralized coercive superstate. This is the paradox attributed to socialism: a programme proclaiming freedom and internationalism produces national enclosure and diminished liberty.

The discussion of raw materials and population tests this argument against concrete inequalities. Unequal territorial power and resource distribution need not entail unequal economic access if sovereignty is separated from commerce. Amonn praises Röpke’s proposal that great empires exercise their possession as a trust through equal market access, rather than through territorial redistribution or divided sovereignty. International justice and peace thus become arguments for restoring liberal world trade. Population presents a qualification: immigration restrictions can express a genuine conflict between national interests and humanity’s collective interest. Since institutional reform alone cannot resolve demographic pressures, restrictions on migration make freedom of goods and capital movements more urgent.

The third part explains resistance to reconstruction through fear of competition and external deficits. Administrative restrictions have become familiar, while memories of functioning multilateral exchange have faded. Amonn devotes particular attention to Röpke’s distinction between a balance-of-payments equilibrium and the economic level at which adjustment occurs. What appears as permanent foreign-exchange scarcity is interpreted as the effect of incompatible exchange rates, domestic purchasing power, prices, and expenditure:

Die Passivität der Zahlungsbilanz in diesem Sinne ist also ein durch die Politik herbeigeführter willkürlicher Zustand.

English translation: A balance-of-payments deficit in this sense is therefore an arbitrary condition brought about by policy.

Controls suppress symptoms while preserving their causes. Inflationary demand, restrained by price ceilings and exchange controls, continues pressing against inadequate supplies. Röpke’s criticism of Marshall aid follows this diagnosis: assistance should have supported domestic monetary and fiscal stabilization rather than treating measured external deficits as the criterion of need.

The fourth part surveys reconstruction institutions, including the IMF, World Bank, GATT, European Payments Union, and Schuman Plan, before returning to convertibility. Amonn accepts Röpke’s advocacy of a genuine gold standard, conditional on market flexibility and noninflationary domestic policy. The review’s relevance lies in this sustained challenge to institution-centred internationalism: durable cooperation depends on national economic arrangements. Its concluding judgment also reveals how little critical distance Amonn maintains:

Es hätte keinen Sinn, gegenüber diesem Werk kleinliche Krittelei zu üben, auch wenn man zu manchem noch Ergänzendes sagen könnte; denn in der Konzeption der massgebenden Ideen und in deren Begründung ist es unangreifbar und unwiderlegbar.

English translation: There would be no point in subjecting this work to petty fault-finding, even if supplementary observations could be made on some matters; for in its conception of the governing ideas and their justification it is unassailable and irrefutable.

Amonn ultimately recommends the book as both a synthesis and a call to action, addressed especially to those responsible for national and international policy.