ABSTRACT
Since the end of the 1960s, the processes of internationalization and globalization have thoroughly transformed national economies, restricted their room to manoeuvre and the capacities of governments to act, and emphasized the limits of the welfare state. The collapse of the communist regimes seems to mark the victory of the market system. With the failure of development policies in many countries, massive unemployment, the new rise in poverty and the assault on the environment, the world is suffering at the end of this century from illnesses that economists do not know how to cure. This does not prevent economics from appearing as the most firmly structured of all social sciences, efficient through the multiplicity of its applications to limited domains,1 both domineering and expansionist. Distracted by continuous doubts about its own enterprise and the pursuit of ever-renewed ambition, the Babel which constitutes the city of present-day economists may be characterized by three mythological figures: Penelope, Sisyphus and Icarus.
