is Professor for Economic and Social History at Goethe University, Frankfurt am Main, Germany, and chairman of the Association of Historians in Germany.
What constitutes economic expertise? Looking at how European politics has answered this question over the last four centuries, Werner Plumpe argues that, at any given time, economic expertise is judged according to its coincidence with the conjuncture.
It is not capitalism that has come to an end but a mode of politics that seeks to guarantee market stability, argues economic historian Werner Plumpe. The crisis must be allowed to serve its cyclical function, the state limiting itself to compensating for the social consequences of structural economic transformation.
