Oikonomía vs. crematística: base de las contradicciones del desarrollo moderno

The distinction once drawn by Aristotle between economics and crematistics is the basis for this article, which analyses how the advent of modernity brought about a fundamental change both in the practice and in the conception of the economic process. By showing how wealth is linked to the use values generated and not to the accumulation of exchanges values, we demonstrate that any definition of sustainable development must consider this fundamental dialectics between use value and exchange value, beyond the ambiguity and lack of meaning that increasingly characterises the notion of sustainability.