Wolfgang Streeck – Social Contract or Expert Rule: Capitalism, Democratic Politics, Economic Expertise, and the Battle against “Populism”

The German Wirtschaftswunder was not the result of economic
expertise applied by Ludwig Erhard to postwar West Germany. There is no uni–
versally applicable theory-cum-practice of a “social market economy.” A capitalist
economy is a political economy that requires an – always fragile – political settle–
ment between capital and labour, one that needs to be re-negotiated on a current
basis in the light of changing relations of power between the classes. To the
extent that this requires expertise, it is the expertise of political practitioners, not
of economists.“The economy” is not a second nature but a social battlefield.

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