International Order and Economic Integration

Some of Röpke’s best work has remained long out of print, this book among them.

With great sincerity and passion he explains how the old liberals of his generation came to reject war as a first principle and then reject socialism as nothing but the domestication of the warfare state to economics. His focus here is Europe and the dream of a unified continent. He argues that trade and freedom form the basis of order, and warns with biting prescience against the formation of a European state, which he predicts will lead to economic disorder.

More than anyone of his generation Röpke saw the relationship between trade and peace, and that it was possible to have tiny states and expanding unity via economic integration. This books represents some of his most extraordinary work on behalf of freedom and peace.