EVOLUTION OF THE ECONOMIC SCIENCE AND A NEW PRAGMATISM BY GRZEGORZ W. KOLODKO

Abstract

The author turns to the works by Professor Grzegorz W. Kolodko, whose innovative look at the economic science and its modern purposes is considered to be extremely interesting and important. The article is composed of three parts. The first methodological one considers the purposes of the economic science with regard for the particular features of an object of its studies such as the economy, as well as its variability, diversity, and teleological character. The author disputes the traditional partition of the economic science into the positive and normative ones and introduces the notion “good economy” (“good economic system”), which is analyzed in the second part of the article from the viewpoint of the development of the economic thought from A. Smith and D. Ricardo via K. Marx and J.M. Keynes up to the modern theory of welfare economics.
The third part is devoted to the analysis of key elements of the New Pragmatism conception proposed by Grzegorz W. Kolodko. The author focuses his attention on Kolodko’s look at the form and purposes of the modern economic science and on Kolodko’s comprehension of the category “good economy”. The author makes conclusion that the New Pragmatism conception, being far from the mainstream of the modern economic thought, meets the actual needs of the varying world and simultaneously is well inscribed in the cognitive flow of the economic science, which started else from A. Smith.