“Rhenish capitalism” has been in season since the term was coined in the early 1990s. Most recently, a conference in Bonn on “Rhineland Capitalism and the Social Market Economy” sang about him. Organized by the Ludwig Erhard Foundation. Introduced by a clever head of the NRW state government: Mark Speich (CDU), State Secretary for Federal Affairs. That’s a tradition. CDU heads of government in NRW, from Rüttgers to Laschet to Wüst, invoke Rhenish capitalism just as regularly as the Greens and Reds. Why?
According to the father of the term, Michel Albert, it describes the central and northern European economic system in contrast to the Anglo-Saxon one, at least up to the 1990s: the rejection of extensive shareholder orientation, developed co-determination, reliable protection against life risks, a state willing to intervene, which guaranteed. It goes without saying that the SPD parliamentary group leader in North Rhine-Westphalia, Jochen Ott, has already praised Rhenish capitalism in several books: Because there wasn’t much back then that shouldn’t exist from the comrade’s point of view.
A huge low-wage sector did not exist. The security for pension and unemployment was at a level that one dreams of today. The threat of poverty in old age was a marginal phenomenon. And wealth was far more evenly distributed. For reds and greens, the term is full of promise: once upon a time. And what was can be again.
A return to this time is far from the Union – what the SPD and Greens like to hold against you. Why does the CDU continue to swear by the Rhenish market economy? Why are their representatives happily quoting Ludwig Erhard’s warning that absolutizing freedom is “idolatry”?
Because of course the CDU also stands for a variant of the Rhenish economy. For the Union, too, it is clear that markets need to be regulated, that the state must intervene and guarantee a level of existence (no matter how much one may argue about the level). And for the CDU in North Rhine-Westphalia, that was always a bit more than for the rest of the Union. But none of this can be taken for granted anymore. In North and South America, forces that want to largely abolish the state have long been struggling for power. In this country, too, libertarians are proclaiming their anti-state slogans. And thus shake up an elementary understanding of state and market, for which the Union stands in principle just as much as, for example, the SPD.
The appeal to Rhenish capitalism also offers the Christian Democrats an opportunity to distinguish themselves once again as a force of mean and modest, somewhere between obsessed with the state and those who have forgotten the state. In this respect, the racket of the Union’s libertarians comes at just the right time.