ABSTRACT
The remarkable reactivity and resilience of China, India, and Brazil in response to the world crisis generated by the burst of the American real estate subprime bubble seem to have convinced most analysts that contemporary societies are entering a new, albeit unchartered, epoch in the history of capitalism. Mainstream economics was found powerless to explain such a major event, since it had, to date, adhered to the vision of a self-regulated market economy, a situation in which, they believed, the very interests and rationality of actors would lead to a stable equilibrium, devoid of any crisis. This world economic crisis is also the expression of the collective failure of a scientific community and its market economy paradigm.
