Economic activity based on division of labour is a societal process designed to satisfy the human need to preserve and sustain the quality of life. It seems to lie in the nature of things that a rational social form of economic activity must be oriented towards the service of life if it is to be meaningful. Consequently, in the words of Alfred Müller-Armack, man must indeed have a central place in the inherent logic of the economic system.

All well and good! In the practice and the theory of the modern market economy, however, we more and more frequently encounter what is called the inherent logic of the economy as a strangely anonymous and coercive logic. It occasionally contradicts our intuitions and governing ideas about the good life and just ways of living together in a well-ordered society of free and equal citizens. This logic condemns some people to unemployment and subjects others who are still on the labour market to increasingly hard pressure to perform at work. In this way it incessantly improves ‘productivity’ or what we regard as productivity, yet it still fails to provide everyone with what is minimally necessary for a life worthy of a human being at a national, let alone at a global, level.