ABSTRACT
To understand the contemporary shape of the German variant, looking back on the history of the social market economy is quite illuminating. The Guidelines promised to “create social peace and grant each individual the freedom and opportunity to participate in the economic process and secure a political democracy by means of social and economic democracy.” The right to co-determination is being recognized in social, personnel and economic questions.” The state of the American model of capitalism and its future have generated plenty of research and argument among the social sciences. Like the American occupation authorities in particular, Eucken, too, wanted to destroy concentrations of power, whether dominated by state agencies or by private individuals and large corporations. In short, he was opposed to both the ‘overweening power of the economic state' as well as the no less suspect Übermacht of the private employer.
