The Social Market Economy in the Digital Age: In Search of a New Balance

The article discusses the transformation of the social market economy in the context of digitalization, automation, and the growing use of artificial intelligence. Contemporary economic activity increasingly produces not only goods, services, and income but also social relations themselves: forms of communication, trust, recognition, reputation, community participation, and access to socially significant opportunities. This gives rise to an “economy of the social”: not a separate sector, but a mode of economic organization in which social ties and positions become objects of allocation, evaluation, and competition. The production of social relations thus becomes a distinct concern of economic policy. Its significance grows as productivity rises and material needs are more fully satisfied. Competition persists, but its focus broadens: people increasingly compete for meaningful work, high-quality education, recognition, status, influence, and the opportunity to be heard. The article shows that digital technologies create new opportunities for communication and cooperation while also generating new forms of dependence and social stratification. Social media may deepen social fragmentation, while artificial intelligence and robotics may polarize employment and concentrate economic power. Universal basic income is considered as a possible safeguard of material independence, but not as a solution to the problems of social inclusion and meaningful activity. The study draws on the theory of economic sociodynamics and the concept of socio-individualism. The author argues that regulating the economy of the social requires a competitive order, social guarantees, limits on the power of high-tech monopolies, and institutions of dialogue. This, in turn, requires a system of relations in which competition remains compatible with recognition of the Other and the shared values that sustain social life. Within such a system, dialogue, mediation, and communicative law acquire a role in economic governance. The article concludes by proposing that monetary valuations of economic outcomes be complemented by a social measure that takes account of their effects on human development, agency, and the character of social relations.

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