Die Gesellschaftstheorie der Sozialen Marktwirtschaft. Eine kritische Reflexion der normativen Grundlagen des Ordoliberalismus

For more than the past 60 years, the idea of a social market economy has been the guideline for German economic policies. While the economic principles of the social market economy and its underlying theory of ordoliberalism have been elaborated and discussed rather extensively, the explicitly normative social assumptions and claims of ordoliberal authors have often been ignored. For a comprehensive understanding of these economic theories and in order to answer the question whether the social market economy still offers orientation in questions of economic policy today, those normative demands need to be considered. The following essay discusses the normative claims we can find in ordoliberal thought and critically questions those demands.