The social model has a negative image attached to it. At the “NZZ Podium”, the guests highlighted its advantages – and discussed how it will develop in the future.
The “NZZ Podium” guests: Daniel Fritzsche, Diana Gutjahr, Rainer Hank, Jacqueline Fehr, Christian Gattiker (from left to right).
Matthias Ferdinand Döring
Capitalism has few friends, said journalist Rainer Hank on Falkenstrasse on Thursday evening. Greed, profit-seeking and self-indulgence were attributed to him. Not prosperity, freedom and justice. The latter has been hoped for since the beginning of the 19th century, when the steam engine and electricity, market economies and competition between companies, cities and countries emerged. Ever since Marx, he has been criticized as an instigator of misery, exploitation and alienation.
A group of guests discussed at the “NZZ Podium” the question of whether the capitalist social order keeps its promises. In addition to the business journalist and author Rainer Hank, the Zurich SP government councilor Jacqueline Fehr, Christian Gattiker, head of research at Bank Julius Baer, and the SVP national councilor and entrepreneur Diana Gutjahr sat on the podium. The head of the NZZ’s Zurich department, Daniel Fritzsche, moderated the event.
Hank, who headed the business editorial team of the “Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung”, admitted to the critics that capitalism had caused two collateral damages. On the one hand, the mechanism of competition, whether intended or not, has brought about inequality. On the other hand, CO2 emissions rose exponentially during the heyday of capitalist production.
But capitalism cannot be accused of not keeping something, for example complete equality, because it has never promised anything, said Hank. Rather, it is an ongoing revolution. “The model shapes our lives, and not to our detriment.”
World population data speaks in favor of capitalism
This is how the achievements of capitalism are shown through numbers, said Hank. People’s lives have improved worldwide since industrialization, although not to the same extent for everyone: the gross domestic product rose, life expectancy rose, prosperity rose and with it life satisfaction. Child mortality fell and the proportion of the world’s population living in extreme poverty fell.
To prove that capitalism played a major role, Hank pointed to the different developments of North and South Korea. While North Korea tried communism, South Korea chose capitalism. That’s why it’s clear to Hank: “The reputation of capitalism needs to be polished.”
Government councilor Jacqueline Fehr then said that she was happy to agree with Hank on at least one point: performance, equality and justice are not promises of capitalism. While the current social model was defended on the podium, she alone took a different point of view.
“The recipe for success lies in the social taming of predatory capitalism and its inclusion in a social market economy,” said Fehr. All the developments that Hank listed can be traced back to this. Where welfare states can reduce inequality, innovation and prosperity are high. There are goods that are not suitable for the private market: the privatized Deutsche Bundesbahn, for example, could never provide the same services as the state-controlled SBB.
She is not a critic of growth, said Fehr. But the social model does not work without responsibility, responsibility from those who hold positions of power, but also from each individual. For example, you have to ask yourself whether the money is flowing to the right place with the right incentives, for example in the expansion of renewable energies. “We are not where we could be.”
The Crisis of the West
“Each of us should be a capitalist, because that is how wealth is created,” said Diana Gutjahr, who set a good example and described herself as a capitalist. Contrary to perception, the term is not a bad thing; it shows that you go through life independently and responsibly. The state should not be allowed to become more and more bloated and demand more taxes so that people have less to live on.
According to Christian Gattiker, capitalism has also established itself as a superior system. Other countries with counter models have now understood this. That is why the West is in crisis today. In the future, totalitarian countries would also internalize the characteristics of capitalism: “We will see some experiments.” The Western social model would then no longer have any advantage over these counter-proposals.
Hank also expressed concern that milder forms of socialism were coming back. Sahra Wagenknecht’s new party, a mixture of a strong welfare state and protectionism, follows this tradition and is met with great approval. Fehr said that Wagenknecht was only successful because today’s system cannot give people the right answers. They did not receive what they had hoped for in return for their existence. “But we can relax, communism is not coming back.”
In the discussion round it was finally agreed that it was a Capitalism doesn’t exist. There are various definitions and differences between the models, the states are free to decide how much dynamism, welfare state and inequality they want to afford, said Hank. So there is still no final verdict on the system.