LECTURE 15. RUSSIAN ECONOMIC THOUGHT

Until now, the history of economic thought has been considered within the limited limits of Western European economic thought. And this is not accidental, since it was the latter that had a decisive influence on the formation of modern ideas about the laws and mechanism of the functioning of the market economy system. Nevertheless, the history of the development of Russian economic thought, which is distinguished by a certain originality, is of considerable interest. Within the framework of this course, it is impossible to analyze the views of all prominent representatives of Russian economic thought, so the emphasis will be on the specifics of the latter, on what distinguishes it from Western European economic thought and on the contribution that Russian scientists made to world economic science. The specific features of the "pivotal" Russian economic thought (in relation to the main current of economic thought in the West) are as follows.

First, the spirit of social and economic reformism is inherent in most of the works of Russian economists. This is explained both by the internal conditions of the country's development and by the strong influence of Marxism on all currents of Russian economic thought since the second half of the nineteenth century.

Secondly, for the majority of Russian economists, the peasant question and the whole range of related socio-economic problems is of particular importance.

Thirdly, Russian economic thought has always attached great importance to public consciousness, ethics, the active role of politics, in other words, to non-economic factors.

We can name a number of Russian traditions and features that will help you better understand the specifics of Russian economic thought. It is well known that in Russia, in contrast to Central and Western Europe, Roman property rights, based on a well-organized base of legal codes, did not receive legal recognition.

It was there that the centuries-old culture of private property developed such a quality of the economic personality as economic individualism and economic rationalism. In Russia, for many centuries, the economy was based not on private property, but on a peculiar combination of communal use of land and the power of the state, acting as the supreme owner. This had a significant impact on the attitude towards the institution of private property, leaving a corresponding moral and ethical imprint on it. The Russian person is characterized by the conviction that "a person is above the principle of property." It is no coincidence that in the Russian mentality the idea of ​​"natural law", which is the basis of Western European civilization, was replaced by the ideals of virtue, justice and truth. This defines Russian social morality and economic behavior. And therefore the phenomenon of "repentant nobility" is a purely Russian feature.

Another Russian tradition is a penchant for utopian thinking, the desire to think not in realities, but in images of a desired future. This is also connected with the tradition of relying on "maybe", dislike for accurate calculations, strict business organization.

A characteristic feature of the Russian mentality is also the desire for catholicity (the voluntary association of people for common actions, regardless of property and estate inequality) and solidarity, which are realized in collective forms of labor and ownership of property.

As for Russian economic traditions, despite their diversity, over the centuries they have evolved around two axial lines: the traditions of statehood and the traditions of community. Centralized regulation and social guarantees are the most important forms of their manifestations. As for the traditions of small and medium-sized businesses, in pre-revolutionary Russia, as a nationwide tradition, they were just emerging. On the other hand, large-scale entrepreneurship has existed since ancient times and gravitated from the very beginning to the treasury - the princely, and then the state. Moreover, since the reign of Peter the Great, large-scale entrepreneurship has taken a clear orientation towards the military-industrial complex, and this orientation has turned into a strong national tradition over the course of three centuries.

These Russian features were reflected in the views of the first Russian economist I. T. Pososhkov (1652-1726), whose views represent a unique combination of ideas from both classical political economy and mercantilism.

As you remember, the mercantilists defended the national market, supported domestic trade and active state intervention in economic life, believing that “the policy of the ruler is the main force.” But the views of representatives of this school are heterogeneous. Spanish mercantilists advocated banning the export of gold from Spain and limiting the import of foreign goods. The French focused on the problem of ensuring a positive trade balance. Mercantilism in Russia had its own characteristics due to the fact that foreign trade played a much smaller role in the development of the economy of our country than in Western Europe. And Pososhkov was primarily interested not in issues of ensuring an active trade balance, but in issues of developing the national economy. The title of his main work, “An Inquiry into Poverty and Wealth” (1724), is very reminiscent of the title of A. Smith’s work, “An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations.” And this similarity is not only external. Both works examine the main problems of political economy: the essence and forms of a nation’s wealth, the mechanisms of its growth. Like A. Smith, I. T. Pososhkov saw the source of national wealth in labor, and for him both agricultural and industrial labor are equally important. He was alien to the disdain for agriculture characteristic of the mercantilists of the West. Pososhkov saw the social significance of labor in providing a “profit,” which for him actually represents the difference between price and production costs.

At the same time, Pososhkov’s mercantilism is clearly evident when characterizing trade. He believed that “every kingdom is rich in merchants” and defended its monopoly. Completely in line with mercantilist ideas, Pososhkov proposed regulating foreign trade: raising export prices, limiting the operations of foreigners to only a number of ports, prohibiting the import of luxury goods, etc. However, he was alien to the one-sidedness of the concept of “trade balance.” Unlike Western European mercantilists, Pososhkov did not identify wealth with money. Moreover, in general he condemned monetary wealth as a symbol of greed and contrary to the moral foundations of society, and this is another feature of Russian mercantilism. Like A. Smith, Pososhkov saw the wealth of nations not in money, but in material wealth acquired exclusively by labor and therefore considered it more useful to increase material wealth than money. In interpreting money, Pososhkov developed a nominalistic concept (which is again in the tradition of classical political economy), believing that its course is determined only by the royal stamp. He views money as a value created by law, a means for creating a certain legal order. True, this applies only to internal circulation, but in the sphere of foreign trade, money must certainly be full-fledged.

Considering trade and production as a single economic complex and seeing in them the source of the nation's wealth, Pososhkov advocated the all-round development of domestic trade, industry, agriculture, strengthening the economic power of Russia and its independence. Like all representatives of mercantilism, he is a supporter of strong state power. At the same time, recognizing the self-sufficient role of the state in the economy, in his essay Pososhkov says that the state cannot be considered rich if money is collected in the treasury by any means and draws a clear distinction between the wealth of the treasury and the wealth of the people. In order to increase the latter, in his opinion, good government of the country, good laws, and a proper court are necessary. He wrote about "truth" as a necessary prerequisite for the possibility of eliminating poverty and increasing wealth in the country.

In search of truth and justice, I. T. Pososhkov shows significant radicalism, condemning the poll tax (as not taking into account the difference in the economic situation of payers), the growth of quitrents and corvee, proposing to fix the duties of peasants when allocating them with land. To this are added proposals for the delimitation of peasant and landowner lands, the reduction of taxes, the establishment of equal courts for all classes, etc. Perhaps it was for these proposals that Pososhkov was arrested and imprisoned in the Peter and Paul Fortress, where he died.

A.V. Radishchev (1749-1802), a Russian humanist and thinker who created a certain system of economic views, also suffered for his views. Of course, his central idea was the need to destroy the feudal system in Russia through a peasant revolution. Radishchev believed that in a society that would be based on the dominance of ownership of small producers in the means of production and personal labor, there would be no economic and class contradictions, property equality would be established and economic and political equality of citizens would become possible. It is worth noting that the call for violence and revolution is again characteristic of many Russian radical thinkers, while Western European thinkers were characterized by an appeal to reason, justice and a call for clarification through enlightenment of the laws of “natural law” and the implementation of their norms reform method.

As for the theoretical works of A.V. Radishchev on economic issues, he considered productive labor in the country’s economy to be the source of wealth and argued that the state that “abundates in its products” grows richer. And in this he is close in views to representatives of classical political economy. At the same time, understanding the importance for Russia of the development of industrial production, he considered it necessary to pursue a policy of protectionism as a policy that protects young Russian industry from foreign competition. Radishchev believed that protectionism would provide an opportunity to develop our own industry to increase domestic consumption. The same point of view was characteristic of most economists of the late eighteenth - first half of the nineteenth centuries, united by the Free Economic Society, created in 1765. They considered labor to be the source of wealth, the increase in its productivity as a result of its division. At the same time, in their opinion, the state is obliged to provide assistance in the development of industry, agriculture, and transport. It is it that must issue loans to industry and agriculture and distribute forms of increasing labor productivity.

Radishchev's radical ideas were developed in the Decembrist program written by P. I. Pestel (1793-1826), a highly educated man who knew well the works of representatives of classical political economy. In him we find the concept of natural law, which should guide both political laws and political economy. One of the central issues is agricultural. Pestel considered agriculture as the main branch of the economy, and mainly considered labor in agricultural production to be the source of national wealth. If one of the tasks of the new social system was the elimination of poverty and misery of the masses, then the closest way to achieve this was seen by him in providing the opportunity for all citizens of the new Russia to work on land that was either publicly owned and provided for the benefit of the peasants, or in their private property. Pestel gave preference to public ownership of land over private ownership, since the use of land from the public fund should be free and everyone will be able to obtain it at their disposal, regardless of their property status. To be fair, it should be noted that Pestel’s agrarian project was not supported by all members of the Decembrist society. In particular, N.I. Turgenev (1789-1871) allowed the liberation of peasants without land, or for ransom. Unlike Pestel, Turgenev saw the future of Russia in the capitalist development of agriculture, led by large capitalist farms of landowners, where peasant farms were assigned a subordinate role as a source of cheap labor for landowners' estates.

The views of the Decembrists found further development in the economic ideas of the Russian democratic movement, which acted as the ideologists of the peasant revolution. In the 40-60s of the nineteenth century in Western Europe, the contradictions of capitalism became quite clearly evident. Therefore, representatives of the revolutionary democratic movement began to associate the prospects for the further development of Russia not with capitalism, but with socialism. A passionate critic of capitalism was A. I. Herzen (1812-1870), who wrote that both feudalism and capitalism “...represent two forms of slavery, but one is open, and the other is cunning, hidden in the name of freedom.” Herzen noted the growth of poverty and exploitation under capitalism, drew attention to the overproduction of goods, the unproductive destruction of enormous wealth, and unemployment. It was Herzen who began to develop the theory of peasant socialism, which was accepted by the majority of Russian democrats. It is based on the fact that in Russia the peasant community is the embryo of socialism, since it prevents the stratification of the village and gives rise to collectivist principles in everyday life. Herzen considered the transfer of land into the hands of the peasants to be the beginning of socialism and concluded from this that Russia could bypass capitalism and develop along a special, non-capitalist path.

However, the full credit for developing the theory of “peasant socialism” belongs to N.G. Chernyshevsky (1828-1889). In his opinion, the main task should be the gradual limitation and displacement of the trend of private capitalist development by the communal, socialist trend. This could be achieved by transferring the bulk of the land to communal use during the socialist revolution and organizing communal production on communal lands. Chernyshevsky considered it necessary to encourage peasants in every possible way, including with the support of state power, to form agricultural partnerships. He associated such communal production with the mandatory use of agricultural machines and tools, the most advanced technology capable of ensuring the profitability of large-scale farming. Without a doubt, this concept was based on the conviction of the existence of a spontaneous socialist spirit inherent in the Russian peasant community, on the conviction that the community has an internal source of socialist evolution.

As for direct works on political economy, they date back to the period 1857-61. and formally represent reviews of Russian and foreign economic works. Chernyshevsky knew well the work of representatives of classical political economy and shared some of its provisions, in particular, the labor theory of value. And from the position that labor is the only source of value of goods, he concluded that “labor must also be the only owner of production values.” This position is reminiscent of the views of S. Sismondi and anticipates the theory of the “worker’s right to the full product of labor.” Similarities with Sismondi's views are also evident in his view of the subject of political economy. Chernyshevsky notes that wealth is created by labor, but belongs to those classes that do not participate with their labor in its creation. Therefore, the subject of political economy should not be wealth, but the growth of the material well-being of the producers of this wealth. And the task of political economy is to find a form of relations that would ensure the material well-being of people.

Analyzing the labor theory of value, in particular in his Notes on Mill's Principles of Political Economy (1861), which is formally a review of Mill's work, Chernyshevsky singles out such concepts as exchange value and intrinsic value. He agrees with Mill that exchange value is the purchasing power of a thing. But at the same time, he emphasizes that only those objects that have an objective basis in the form of an internal value hidden from a direct observer have exchange value. And he writes that “No one will give anything for the most necessary and useful item if it is acquired without any difficulty. The difficulty of acquiring it depends on the amount of labor spent on its production, and therefore the exchange value cannot be divorced from the “intrinsic value”. Thus, it is labor costs that form "intrinsic value" that are the ultimate basis of exchange value or price. And continuing his reasoning, Chernyshevsky writes that in a future (socialist) society, not exchange, but internal value will have a purchasing power determined by the difficulty of obtaining an object " .

Chernyshevsky shares not only the labor theory of value of the classical school, but also a view of capital, which he considers material values ​​that go into production as means of production and means of subsistence for workers. But here, too, he draws his conclusions: since capital is the result of labor, it must belong to the class that created it, i.e., to the working people. Thus, from a theory that considers that everything is produced by labor, Chernyshevsky concludes that everything must belong to labor. As we can see, Chernyshevsky's views prepared fertile ground, but on which the "seeds" of Marxism sprouted.

To a large extent, the successors of the Russian tradition of considering economic phenomena in a broad social context were the “populists,” who paid great attention to such issues as the development of Russian capitalism, the path of transition to socialism and the organization of economic relations under socialism. It must be said that populism, represented by such prominent representatives as P. L. Lavrov (1823-1900), M. A. Bakunin (1814-1876), P. N. Tkachev (1844-1885) was one of the leading trends in Russian social -political thought in the 70s of the nineteenth century, which had a very strong influence on the subsequent development of domestic economic thought. The leitmotif of “populism” was the conviction that capitalism should not have been allowed into Russia, and once it had leaked in, it should have been limited as much as possible. However, in their opinion, capitalism in Russia has no basis for development, since it cannot solve the problem of implementation (they shared the views of S. Sismondi on the cause of crises of overproduction as a result of underconsumption). The people are too poor to buy the masses of goods that large capitalist industry is capable of producing, and for Russia such a way of selling goods as foreign markets, which have long been captured, is closed.

The Narodniks advocated a special path of development for Russia: bypassing capitalism, towards socialism. They saw the prospect in the progressive development of "people's production", filling its traditional forms (rural community) with new content - the transition to developed forms of cooperation, capable of competing with capitalist enterprises in their effectiveness based on the introduction of new technology and achievements in agronomy. The goal is to defend the independence of a significant part of the "working class", organizing it, if possible, into collective forms of "people's production." This, in their opinion, could bring closer the prospects for the future socialist reorganization of the country. At the same time, it is curious to note that the "populists" considered the degree of individual development of the individual, the ability of the latter to rise to the enjoyment of self-development, as the ultimate criterion of social progress. (These ideas are similar to the ideas of the "early" Marx, expressed by him in the economic-philosophical manuscripts of 1844.)

The humanistic principles of early Marxism were at the center of the philosophy of Russian populism. Socialism, according to the populist concept, is a necessary stage of social progress, because it realizes the inherent features of collectivism and solidarity in humanity. Types of popular forms of production were supposed to include not only self-government of specific economic units, but also an egalitarian principle. Moreover, the egalitarian principle was considered by the “populists” as the driving element of the transition to socialism. The views of P. L. Lavrov are of interest. The latter paid much attention to the criticism of capitalist relations, showing the negative role of competition, concentration and centralization of capital, the harmful consequences of capitalist working conditions, turning workers into appendages of machines. Lavrov examined in detail the economic problems of the future society. A significant place in his works is occupied by the justification of the need for public property, an analysis of the nature of labor under socialism, and the question of the economic role of the state.

The leading direction of the late nineteenth century were representatives of the Marxist trend, called “legal Marxism” (P. B. Struve, M. I. Tugan-Baranovsky, S. N. Bulgakov, N. A. Berdyaev). With their works they contributed to the development of Marxism, from the theory of value to the theory of economic conditions. N. A. Berdyaev (1874-1948) and S. N. Bulgakov (1871-1944) laid the foundation for modern concepts of ethical socialism, focusing on the problem of spiritual values: they considered the human personality as the absolute value of existence.

As regards the admissibility of private property, the majority of Russian socialists were in favor of establishing public property as a necessary constitutive principle of socialism. And this is the fundamental difference between Russian socialism and Western European socialism, which did not put forward a program for a radical change in property relations.

Famous Russian economist M.I. Tugan-Baranovsky. (1865-1919) also pays great attention to the problems of economic and socio-political development of Russia. His famous work “Socialism as a Positive Doctrine” (1918) is devoted to this problem. Unlike representatives of populism, Tugan-Baranovsky believes that Russia has already embarked on the path of development of capitalism and the whole question is whether capitalism brings death or “with it the dawn of hope lights up.” In the traditions of Russian socio-economic thought, he criticizes the capitalist economic system, noting that under this system, the vast majority of the population are doomed to constantly serve as a means to increase the well-being of other social classes, incomparably less numerous. Therefore, the transition to a socialist society is inevitable. The goal of socialism, as Tugan-Baranovsky notes, is to arrange life on the principles of freedom, truth and justice. He believed that the basis of socialism as a doctrine of a just society should be the ethical idea formulated by I. Kant - the idea of ​​​​the equivalence of the human personality, of the human personality as an end in itself. Tugan-Baranovsky writes, “...that people are equal in their rights to life and happiness, they are equal in the respect with which we should treat the interests of them all, they are equal in the infinite value that the personality of each of them possesses.” Under socialism, in his opinion, the development of each individual becomes the main social goal.

Tugan-Baranovsky pays great attention to the analysis of the types of socialism, singling out state, communal and syndical socialism, believing that it is state socialism that gives proportionality and regularity to social production and makes it possible for the rapid growth of social wealth. He believes, considering

These questions he showed that the correctly understood theory of marginal utility not only does not refute the labor theory of value of D. Ricardo and K. Marx, but also represents an unexpected confirmation of the doctrine of value of these economists. Like most Russian economists, Tugan-Baranovsky did not limit himself to a one-sided opposition of utility and costs as two main factors of value. Believing that Ricardo's theory emphasizes objective factors of value, and Menger's theory - subjective ones, he tries to prove that Ricardo's theory does not exclude, but only complements the theory of marginal utility. The logic of Tugan-Baranovsky’s reasoning is as follows: “Marginal utility - the utility of the last units of each type of product - varies depending on the size of production. We can lower or increase marginal utility by expanding or reducing production. On the contrary, the labor value of a unit of product is something objectively given, not depending on our will. It follows that when comparing an economic plan, the determining factor should be labor value, and the determined one should be marginal utility. If the labor value of products is different, but the benefit received in the last unit of time is the same, then the conclusion follows that the utility of the last units freely reproduced products of each kind - their marginal utility - must be inversely proportional to the relative quantity of these products per unit of labor time. In other words, it must be directly proportional to the labor value of the same products." And this means, according to Tugan-Baranovsky, both theories are in complete harmony. The theory of marginal utility clarifies the subjective, and the labor theory of value, the objective factors of economic value. It was Tugan-Baranovsky who substantiated the position that the marginal utility of freely reproduced economic goods is proportional to their labor costs. This position is called the Tugan-Baranovsky theorem in economic literature.

In his work “Socialism as a Positive Doctrine,” M. I. Tugan-Baranovsky emphasized that to build an economic plan, a socialist society will draw utility curves for each product and their labor cost curves, and at the point of their intersection the optimal price for all types of products will be found .

Considering state socialism, Tugan-Baranovsky notes that although the latter ensures planned development, proportionality of development and the priority of social needs, it retains elements of coercion and contradicts the idea of ​​the full and free development of the human personality. And therefore, according to Tugan-Baranovsky, although the creation of social wealth has "considerable positive value," it cannot come at the expense of belittling the human personality. It cannot be considered a public good to reduce a working person to a simple cog in a huge state mechanism, to a "simple subordinate instrument of the social whole." Therefore, Tugan-Baranovsky proposes to supplement the system of state socialism with elements of communal and syndical socialism. He believes that such a form of labor organization as cooperation is most consistent with the ideal of free development of a person, since it is based on the mutual consent of members with freedom to enter and leave the cooperative organization. In the trend, according to Tugan-Baranovsky, society must completely turn into a voluntary union of free people - become a free cooperative through and through. It should be noted that the social ideal of Tugan-Baranovsky is not social equality, but social freedom. A society of completely free people is, in his opinion, the ultimate goal of social progress. In approaching the socialist ideal lies the entire historical progress of mankind. This provision clearly has much in common with the idea of ​​Marx, who considers the future society as a union of free people working with common means of production and systematically spending their individual labor forces as one common force.

As for the contribution of Tugan-Baranovsky to modern economic science, it largely boils down to the creation of a modern investment theory of cycles. His work "Industrial Crises in Modern England, Their Causes and Influence on People's Life" had a significant impact on the development of this area of ​​economic science. In this work, arguing with the "populists", Tugan-Baranovsky proves that capitalism in its development creates a market for itself and in this respect has no restrictions on growth and development. Although he notes that the existing organization of the national economy, and above all the dominance of free competition, makes the process of expanding production and accumulating national wealth extremely difficult.

Tugan-Baranovsky criticizes not only the theory of underconsumption as the cause of crises of overproduction, but also theories that explain crises by violations in the sphere of money and credit circulation.

In his theory, Tugan-Baranovsky took as a basis the idea of ​​Marx about the connection between industrial fluctuations and the periodic renewal of fixed capital and laid the foundations for the tendency to turn the theory of overproduction crises into a theory of economic fluctuations. Noting that the years of increased creation of fixed capital are the years of a general revival of industry, Tugan-Baranovsky writes "The expansion of production in each industry increases the demand for goods produced in other industries: the impetus for increased production is transmitted from one industry to another and therefore the expansion of production always acts contagiously and tends to embrace the entire national economy. During the period of the creation of new fixed capital, the demand for all commodities rises decisively." But now the expansion of fixed capital has ended (factories have been built, railways have been built). The demand for means of production has declined and their overproduction is becoming inevitable. Due to the dependence of all branches of industry on each other, partial overproduction becomes general - the prices of all goods fall and stagnation sets in.

With good reason, we can say that Tugan-Baranovsky was the first to formulate the basic law of the investment theory of cycles: the phases of the industrial cycle are determined by the laws of investment. The violation of the rhythm of economic activity, leading to a crisis, follows, according to Tugan-Baranovsky, due to the lack of parallelism in the markets of different areas during the period of economic recovery, the mismatch between savings and investment, due to disproportion in the movement of prices for capital goods and consumer goods. products. Tugan-Baranovsky's main idea is that the general overproduction of goods is based on partial overproduction, the disproportionate distribution of "people's labour". Thus, the first is a peculiar expression of the second.

Tugan-Baranovsky also studied the role of loan capital in the process of cyclical fluctuations in the economy. He noted that an increase in loan interest is a sure sign that the free loan capital in the country is too small for the needs of industry, and drawing from this the conclusion that the immediate cause of crises is not an excess of loan capital that does not find its use, but its lack. As we can see, Tugan-Baranovsky reveals many elements of the modern investment theory of cycles.

The views of such a prominent Russian economist as A.V. Chayanov (1888-1937) are also of interest. The main range of his scientific interests is the study of processes occurring in the Russian economy, the specifics of socio-economic relations in domestic agriculture. The main subject of the scientist’s research was the family-labor peasant economy. Chayanov proved the inapplicability of the conclusions of classical economic theory to peasant farming, which was characterized by non-capitalist motivation. Extensive research allowed Chayanov to conclude that a peasant farm differs from a farm in the very motive of production: the farmer is guided by the criterion of profitability, and the peasant farm is guided by an organizational and production plan, representing the totality of the cash budget, labor balance over time and across various industries and types of activities, turnover of funds and products. He noted that a peasant family is not interested in the profitability of production, but in the growth of gross income and ensuring equal employment for all family members.

Chayanov formulated a position on the exceptional survival of agriculture, which for a long time is able to withstand such a decrease in prices and an increase in costs that completely destroys profits and part of wages, which is disastrous for entrepreneurs using wage labor. And precisely because the peasant economy does not pursue profit, but takes care of maintaining the existence of the farmer himself and his family.

Concretizing the thesis about the consumer nature of peasant farms, Chayanov used the theory of marginal utility. He argued that in the peasant economy there is a certain "natural limit" to the increase in production, which occurs at the moment when the burden of the marginal expenditure of labor will be equal to the subjective assessment of the marginal utility of the amount received. With certain reservations, it can be said that the expenditure of one's own forces goes to the limit at which the peasant economy receives everything necessary for the existence of its family.

Chayanov's theory of peasant economy is also connected with the theory of cooperation. In his opinion, there are no prerequisites for the development of American-type farms in Russia, despite the fact that large-scale agricultural production has a relative advantage over small-scale one. Therefore, the combination of individual peasant farms with large farms of the cooperative type would be optimal for our country. Chayanov believed that cooperation is able to combine various types and forms of activity, formed vertically "from the field to the market." At the same time, the process of growing plants and animals remains behind the family production. All other operations, including the processing of products, their transportation, sale, lending, and scientific services will be carried out by cooperative organizations. The development of cooperatives, which enter into direct contacts, bypassing the capitalist organized enterprises, weakens the latter. Thus, each new form of cooperation (consumer, production, credit - through the organization of savings banks of cooperation) undermines some type of capitalist exploitation, replacing it with a "comradely" method of satisfying needs.

Such a famous Russian economist as N. D. Kondratiev (1892-1938) also paid tribute to agrarian problems, in particular the theory of cooperation. Kondratiev shared the views of the Socialist Revolutionary Party, based on communal labor views, a view of the land as the common property of all workers. Representatives of this party (V.M. Chernov, P.P. Maslov, S.S. Zak and others) insisted on the socialization of land, i.e., its removal from the private property of individuals and its transfer to public ownership and disposal of democratically organized communities on the basis of equal use. Kondratiev also stands for the transfer of all lands to the status of public property, for the labor use of the people. But Kondratiev, like Chayanov, believes that labor farms themselves, due to their natural economy, are not aimed at an economic perspective, at development in the name of the interests of the state. Kondratiev saw overcoming the economic limitations of these forms through cooperation. Cooperation, in his opinion, has two advantages: the lack of emphasis on profit and the ability to ensure significant labor productivity. And it is he who is responsible for the justification of the basic principles of cooperation - voluntariness and consistent change of forms of cooperation from lower to higher based on economic feasibility.

However, it was not the theory of cooperation that brought N.D. Kondratiev worldwide fame, but the theory he developed of large cycles of the environment, known as the “theory of long waves of Kondratiev.” This theory was presented in the article “The World Economy and Its Conditions During and After the War,” written by him in 1922. Kondratiev's interest in the theory of market conditions and the problem of long-term fluctuations was caused by the desire to clarify the trends in the development of the national economy. This problem corresponded to his scientific interests, since it was Kondratiev who created and headed the Market Research Institute until 1928.

Kondratiev processed time series of the most important economic indicators (commodity prices, interest on capital, wages, foreign trade turnover and others) for four countries (England, Germany, USA, France) over a period of approximately 140 years. As a result of data processing, he identified a trend showing the existence of large periodic cycles lasting from 48 to 55 years.These cycles included a boom phase and a recession phase.These phases can be represented as follows.

Attention to the problems of cyclical development of the economy, to which both Tugan-Baranovsky and Kondratiev paid tribute, was not least associated with the theory of cyclical development, the foundations of which were laid by K. Marx. It is no coincidence that Kondratiev is looking for the roots of long cycles in processes similar to those that, according to Marxist theory, give rise to periodic fluctuations in the capitalist economy every 7-11 years (the so-called Juglar cycles). Kondratiev believes that the duration of a long cycle is determined by the average life of production and infrastructure structures (approximately 50 years), which are one of the main elements of capital goods of society. At the same time, the renewal of “basic capital goods” does not occur smoothly, but in spurts, and scientific and technical inventions and innovations play a decisive role in this.

In the dynamics of economic cycles, Kondratyev identified some regularities. Thus, the "upward" phase of a large cycle (the upswing phase) occurs, in his opinion, under the following conditions:

▪ high savings intensity;

▪ relative abundance of supply and cheapness of loan capital;

▪ its accumulation at the disposal of powerful financial and business centers;

▪ low level of commodity prices, which stimulates savings and long-term investment of capital.

If these conditions are met, then sooner or later a moment comes when a significant investment in large facilities that cause radical changes in the conditions of production becomes quite profitable. A period of relatively grandiose new construction begins, when the accumulated technical inventions find their wide application, when new productive forces are created. In other words, the intensive accumulation of capital is not only a prerequisite for the economy to enter a phase of a long recovery, but also a condition for the development of this phase.

The impetus for the transition to the "downward" phase (phase of recession) is the lack of loan capital, leading to an increase in loan interest, and ultimately to curtailment of economic activity and falling prices. At the same time, the depressive state of economic life pushes for the search for new ways to reduce the cost of production, namely, technical inventions. However, these inventions will be used already in the next "upward" wave, when the abundance of free money capital and its cheapness will make radical changes in production profitable again. At the same time, Kondratiev emphasizes that free money capital and low interest rates are a necessary but not sufficient condition for the transition to the "upward" phase of the cycle. It is not the accumulation of money capital in itself that brings the economy out of depression, but its activation of the scientific and technological potential of society.

The theory of “long waves” by N. D. Kondratiev generated an extensive literature on this issue, giving impetus to the development of various concepts of long-term economic fluctuations. Discussions are ongoing regarding the causes of large cycles, but few deny that “long waves” are associated with processes of structural restructuring of the economy.

The economic views of the representative of Russian Marxism V. I. Ulyanov (Lenin) were largely presented in the lecture “Theories of monopoly and monopolistic pricing.” As for the model of socialism, in Lenin’s concept a model of state socialism was developed, in which all citizens turn into employees of the state, becoming workers of one nationwide state “syndicate”. It is no coincidence that the inevitable principle of violence that accompanies this model (this danger was pointed out by both M.I. Tugan-Baranovskaya and M.I. Bakunin) in Russia after the victory of the Bolsheviks is expanding and finally, from a means of suppressing opponents of the revolution, it becomes a means of purely economic problems. The final expression of these views was the economic program of one of the leaders of the Bolshevik Party, L. Trotsky, which he outlined at the Ninth Congress of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) in 1920 and was called the concept of militarization of labor. Its main idea is the creation of a system of forced labor, a barracks-like organization of society. Production was organized according to a military model, where the issue of labor discipline was resolved according to wartime laws, and the highest government bodies made decisions on all economic and political issues. And although this model of economic development was rejected in connection with the transition from the policy of “war communism” to the NEP, its main features were reproduced in the 30s, when a command-administrative system for managing the national economy was created.

But no matter how paradoxical it may seem at first glance, the real model of socialism, which has taken place in the Soviet Union for more than seventy years, has its theoretical roots not only in the works of Marx, but has a deeper foundation - two centuries old traditions of Russian socio-economic thought, which, in turn, is associated with a special psychological type of personality inherent in the Russian people. This is a pronounced desire to arrange life on the basis of truth and justice. It is no coincidence that in Russian economic literature so much attention is paid to the problems of the future structure of society (where the supporting structures are precisely the idea of ​​community and statehood) and so few theories dealing with the definition of the principles and mechanisms of the functioning of a given society. It does not contain developed theories of general and partial equilibrium of the economic system, theories devoted to the analysis of the contribution of this factor to the growth of social wealth, factors of the dynamic development of the economy. But at the same time, the strength of Russian economic thought is its ethical orientation, the emphasis on the problems of ensuring the growth of welfare, considered from the standpoint of improving distribution.

Within the framework of these lectures, we will not consider the content of Soviet political economy, which essentially boiled down to the explanation and propaganda of the works of Marx, Engels, Lenin and proof of the advantages of socialism over capitalism. The only exceptions are the works of representatives of the mathematical direction, in particular, L. V. Kantorovich (1912-1986), who in 1975 won the Nobel Prize in Economics for developing the theory of optimal use of resources.

Author: Agapova I. I.

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