ABSTRACT
The change in economic attitudes [Wirtschaftsgesinnung], economic forms and the social order that has happened over the past 50 years, and which has been continuing since 1948 in the Federal Republic, is expressed in the fact that nowadays we no longer speak of a capitalist economic order but of a “Social Market Economy.” This means an economy based on the principle of private ownership of the means of production, free competition within the framework of the legal order, freedom of contract, individual responsibility, and a stable currency. This type of market economy is called “social” because its protagonists, which include entrepreneurs, are committed to achieving the highest possible degree of social justice and security by using this order as the basis for the production and distribution of goods.
