After Crisis? – The Only Way: Economics for Sustainable Development

Abstract

  The aim of the paper is to justify why contemporary economics must be reoriented from the direction of Economic Growth to the direction of Sustainable Development. Human society is at a deadly curve. The Economic crisis is only one slice of Gordon’s Knot of Crises of our Civilization. The Economy is facing system challenges without precedence. Reasons for this situation are different fetishes of present positive and normative economics. The au­thor explores the main aspects of diagnoses, prognoses, analyses, assessments, and present solutions concerning economy. Of fundamental importance are: the essence of the global cri­sis, new challenges facing Western civilization in the near future, and fundamental misunder­standings in the proposed solutions of crucial problems. The one chance for an adequate solu­tion to the critical situation is the Strategy of Sustainable Development. In Poland this strategy is absent in mainstream economics as a theory of economy and as the foundation of rational policy. It concerns a very broad front of economic sciences and economic technologies. Eco­nomic academic education is also not adequate to the very serious situation facing graduates in the future. Consciousness, knowledge and abilities of economic professionals are good for the past, not for the nearest future. In Poland, an additional problem is a lack of common eco­nomic academic education in English. Present economics and economy must be verified with many original (not translated) settlements and conclusions concerning sustainable develop­ment from economics and from other sciences and from reality outside economy. Of crucial importance have been settlements and conclusions of ecology and of sociology on the basis of information technologies.