Introduction

This book describes how experts in the “old” Federal Republic of Germany (1949–1989) sought to make sense of the vast array of state programs, expenditures, and bureaucracies aimed at solving social problems. These observers worked in the fields of politics, economics, law, social policy, sociology, and philosophy. They made sense of the developing welfare state by describing discrete programs and by explaining what the programs meant as a whole. Their real concern was to grasp their state, which was now social (one German word for the welfare state is indeed ...

Rights, Citizenship, and Society

The social rule of law, or social Rechtsstaat, was a second key term used in the first decade of the Federal Republic of Germany to justify extensive state interventions into society, so long as they preserved individual freedoms. Individual freedoms—such as the right to free speech, the right to enter and exit contracts, and the right to own property—required some kind of social supplement to ensure real freedom, or so the term suggested. By cementing this principle in the Basic Law, the founders opened up a debate about the justification, nature, and extent of the welfare state. Some, like Ernst Forsthoff, rejected the entire discussion as non-sensical; others, like Wolfgang Abendroth, viewed the constitutional concept as a spur to social reform. While this debate took place among lawyers, its real significance lay in the way it articulated the relationship between social policy and democracy.

Conclusion

This book has described the development of expert understandings of the welfare state over the course of the “old” Federal Republic of Germany, from 1949 to 1989. It started with calls for a “social” market economy and a “social” rule of law, posing an ethical imperative to two central systems of the modern world, economy and law: Is there a way that capitalism might not just reinforce individualism and inequality, that it might contribute to binding together a political society? Can the rule of law and individual rights serve to protect the weak, rather than simply enabling the strong? That first discussion remained at first distant from concrete institutions of the welfare state, even though both terms generated in this discussion, “social market economy” and “social ...

From Solution to Problem

The 1970s and 1980s saw two important changes in the West German discussion of the welfare state. First, global trade put direct economic pressure on expensive welfare states in the western world. Second, the social science discussion of the welfare state shifted to a language of systems, which no longer viewed the welfare state as a tool of state or society, but asked about how systems of social policy could have unintended consequences—how social solutions could pose their own problems. Young Marxists, breaking with the SPD, questioned the possibility of a welfare state that could aid workers under capitalism; conservative state theorists questioned whether democracy, with its demands for state solutions, could paralyze the state. The result was a more complex reading of how the modern word created complex challenges for individuals and states alike, especially well articulated in the work of Kaufmann and Luhmann.

Modernization and Its Discontents

The period from the mid-1960s to the early 1970s has been characterized by historians as one of “planning euphoria.” This enthusiasm was especially evident in the Social Democrats’ ambitious plans for steering the economy and reshaping society through social policy. At the same time, however, social theorists on both right and left criticized these efforts for their tendency toward alienation and bureaucratization. On the right, Hans Freyer and Arnold Gehlen predicted that secondary institutions would end human creativity, ushering in a period of post-history; Ernst Forsthoff feared state paralysis and the loss of real political leadership. And on the left, both Herbert Marcuse and Jürgen Habermas also feared the “refeudalization” and paralysis of society, and Habermas feared that the logic of these systems would undermine the life-worlds that gave meaning to humans, creating a sense of alienation.

Conceptualizing the New West German Sozialstaat

By the late 1950s, three distinction conceptions of the welfare state had formed in West Germany, each with strong connections to a particular world view. Father Oswald von Nell-Breuning, in the tradition of Catholic social thinking, defended social policies as a dialectical combination of solidarity and subsidiarity, which could counter the inequities of capitalism to help integrate workers into society and ensure human dignity. Hans Achinger, with his roots in private charity and social work, by contrast, was skeptical of the institutions of the welfare state and described how programs created a permanent bureaucracy with a popular clientele, manipulated information, and had a series of unintended consequences on state, family, and individual alike. Ludwig Preller, finally, the leading Social Democratic expert on social policy, justified extensive social policies as a way to empower individuals, to give them the tools they needed to shape their own lives.

The Social Market Economy

The social market economy was a first key term used in the formation of the Federal Republic of Germany, firstly to describe how a market economy (i.e. capitalism) could contribute to social order, and secondly to suggest that the market alone could not preserve social order but required social supplements. The term was initially associated with the self-described neoliberals (now known as ordoliberals), and justified a return to the free market. Even within this group, however, there were differences about how a market economy could be “social” and what kinds of measures were necessary to make capitalism compatible with social order and democracy. Beyond this group, Social Democrats also adopted similar ideas at the same time. Despite the intentions of the most economically liberal of the ordoliberals, the idea of a social market economy came to include extensive state intervention to preserve social order.

The Semantics of Social Security

The West German pensions reform bill of 1957 was the product of a decade-long discussion among German experts about the need for a comprehensive reform of social policy, elder poverty, and adequate pensions in a period of economic expansion. The ultimate bill maintained the income-linked Bismarckian pensions system, but increased payouts and linked them to the overall level of production in society, with the result of dramatically increasing pension levels. Despite harsh criticisms from the right, who argued that the new pensions system would create inflation, deform democracy, and make citizens into domesticated animals, the reform was passed overwhelmingly, forming one of the essential pillars of the West German welfare state. The successful bill was the product of an expert discussion that crossed party lines and pointed toward a new political consensus on the welfare state.