Der Generationenvertrag

Abstract

Amid the general sense of helplessness, an old remedy might help: what are social politics the politics of? It is a simple question: »who helps whom – and why?« This question is only relevant to someone who believes that mankind by nature depends on help and cannot survive without it. Individuals need to be helped in a double sense, both actively and passively, through give and take. Egoism is a kind of disease and one which takes a heavy toll. It forces mankind to permanently calculate costs and benefits.
A booming economy cannot replace justice between the generations. If there are less children born, and neither the number of people in work nor productivity increase, then a smaller number of these children will have to make the contribution of those that have not been born, no matter whether pensions are paid from capital accumulation or directly from income, organised privately or in a system of social solidarity.
Social politics is subject to ever increasing pressure for legitimation. As long as competition between the political systems of East and West dominated international relations, the German welfare-state was used as proof of the superiority of the western political system. Now that there is no longer a socialist alternative, the western world seems ever more tempted to give up the model of the social-market economy in favour of the old capitalism. But this is a fatal error, for in the long run the market economy can function only in the context of a functioning social order.