Social Policy and the Social Market Economy

Abstract

The title I have been given invites the inference that there are principles of ‘social policy’ and principles of the ‘market economy’ which, when integrated, provide the overall guiding principles of the ‘social market economy’ and that my task should consist of the identification of those principles as well as the evaluation of actual ‘social’ policies pursued in West Germany in the light of them. I did not expect the task to be simple, not least because the term ‘social policy’, used to identify something intrinsically distinguishable from ‘economic policy’, is inherently ambiguous, but also because I have had to rely essentially upon literature available in the English language and must consequently be prepared to discover that nuances apparent in the German sources have escaped me. But the available literature is extensive enough for me to feel fairly confident that I have missed nothing of fundamental consequence for this reason: my errors are more likely to result from misconceptions that would have emerged whatever source language I had used.