Das Ausgleichsprinzip der Sozialen Marktwirtschaft zwischen Solidarität und Korporatismus. Korreferat zum Beitrag von Wolfgang Ockenfels.

The Social Market Economy has been seen as a third path between capitalism and socialism shaped by the principle of solidarity. The rhetoric of the third way can be mere mediation as indecisiveness or the consequence of a third conception of the economic order. Solidarism and personalism as the base of the economic system are opposed to individualism and collectivism. Different conceptions of the human person form the basis of different economic systems. Personalism is also a critique of the belief in systems. It claims that the economic order must be based on (multiple) principles, not on the idea of a closed system. A weakness of the Social Market Economy is its belief in personal and corporatist decision-making aiming at consensus between central interest groups. It does not give sufficient consideration to the role of the capital market as the market for corporate control. Paternalism and corporatism of the dominant interest groups are failed developments originating from underrating the control by impersonal competition.