THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF SOCIAL CHOICE AND THE ACHIEVABILITY OF JUSTICE IN THE KENNETH ARROW'S INTERPRETATION (In memory of Kenneth Arrow)

The economic science traditionally focused on efficiency often demonstrates distancing from the problems of justice. The economic justice achievement is an integral part of the field of social choice. Kenneth Arrow's main contribution to the theory of social choice lies in the impossibility theorem. It defines the social choice achievability only as a dictatorial imposed decision. On the one hand, thus, the distributive justice is doomed to liberal unattainability. At the same time, it opens the possibility of integrating interpersonal comparisons of utility as a source for establishing a collective decision in favor of the requirements of justice. Thus, from the Arrow's impossibility, social choice actually becomes the basis of rational, conscious and deliberate social progress and justice.