Treści normatywne współczesnej ekonomii niemarksistowskiej

Abstract

Normative contents of the contemporary non-Marxist economics assume quite a diversified form. From the formal point of view, these are utterances postulating a definite state of things, implications of accepted assumptions and assertions about reality, and utterances characterizing the economic (historical) process primarily in ethical categories (e.g. religious ones). As regards their substance, normative layers of the contemporary economics are also differentiated. Basing on the neoclassical economics they are of conservative and apologetic character in relation to the capitalist system. It can be also said that a normative layer of the neoclassical economics restricts its cognitive horizon (which does not mean that its analytical layer is completely deprived of any values). In the Keynesian economics, normative contents are integrated with a cognitively fertile theory of the national income formation regardless of its various shortcomings. These normative contents found their real reflection in the process of transformations of capitalism in the postwar period. The institutional economics places emphasis on normative problems aiming at their expansion and treating them as superior in relation to the descriptive economics. This trend pictures a far-reaching vision of transformations in the capitalist system, which in a way already disturbs its very essence. However, this vision is not linked with an analysis of contradictions of capitalism, and as such it does not seem to be realistic enough. The main tendency in the contemporary non-Marxist economics is treatment of normative assumptions of economics and criteria of their evaluations as issues being as important as analytical problems of economics.