E.F. Schumacher was one of the first scholars who recognized the crucial role of metaeconomics.
In his "Small is beautiful" he writes: "The science of economics is 'so prone to usurp
the rest' … because it relates to certain very strong drives of human nature, such as envy and
greed. All the greater is the duty of its experts, the economists, to understand and clarify its
limitations, that is to say, to understand meta-economics." (Schumacher, E. F. 1973: p. 38)
Meta-economics is the basic assumptions about the subject-matter, value-orientation and
methodology of economics. (Zsolnai, L. 1991) The paper attempts to reconstruct the metaeconomic
foundation of mainstream economics and that of alternative economics initiated by
Schumacher. It shows how the emerging alternative economics transcends the erroneous metaeconomic
assumptions of mainstream economics by considering the total economic process,
choosing sustainable livelihood as basic value-orientation, and employing a constructive
methodology