Second Modernity and Modernization

Abstract

The welfare state, the relativization of individualistic professional ethics through social-state redistribution programs, the gender revolution, the optimization of rights, and the crisis of full employment are called the second modernity and modernization. We should classify it as the Keynesian membership order. It is worth remembering that the Weimar Constitution was the first constitution of a welfare state (Kaufmann 2001, 79–80). It was institutionalized as a consequence of the uncontrollable economic cycles and crises in the political system. Kaufmann reinterprets modern constitutional democracy on the basis of claims to be granted by the social state, for example, the social obligation of property. It is typical of the welfare economy, the New Deal after year 1932, the program of the Great Society of the 1960s of President Lyndon B. Johnson in the United States, and the Western European welfare state after World War II. In retrospect, these were transitional solutions and time-specific programs that did not adequately consider their own requirements and did not properly respect the governance opportunities of social systems. This also points to the theoretical shortcomings of the programs. One of the improper conditions is, for example, the failure to take account of economic dynamism through mass consumption through the increase in incomes and the associated change in social stratification. This includes the innovation of the industrialization of agriculture. It should be remembered, for example, that industrial gainful employment without agricultural work was outside the horizon of workers before World War I (Plumpe 2019, 447–457).