Chapter 39 History of money. The evolution of money - its properties, qualities and abilities. Integral system for the development of social relations Whoever wants to get rich in a day will be hanged within a year. Leonardo da Vinci “In modern consumer society, not only and not

V.L. Makarov (Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Academician-Secretary of the Department of Social Sciences of the Russian Academy of Sciences)<Род. – 25.05.1937 (Новосибирск), Моск. гос. эк. ин-т, к.э.н. – 1965 (Линейные динамические модели производства больших экономических систем), д.ф.-м.н. – 1969 (Математические модели экономической

Chapter IV. On public passions If it is unpleasant and painful for us to share the above-mentioned passions due to the fact that our sympathy is divided between persons whose interests are in complete contradiction, then all the more pleasant and deserving of approval

Science, as one of the forms of knowledge and explanation of the world, is constantly developing: the number of its branches and directions is steadily growing. This trend is especially clearly demonstrated by the development of social sciences, which are opening up more and more new facets of the life of modern society. What are they? What is the subject of their study? Read about this in more detail in the article.

Social Science

This concept appeared relatively recently. Scientists associate its emergence with the development of science in general, which began in the 16-17th century. It was then that science embarked on its own path of development, uniting and absorbing the entire system of pseudo-scientific knowledge that had formed at that time.

It should be noted that social science is an integral system of scientific knowledge, which at its core contains a number of disciplines. The task of the latter is a comprehensive study of society and its constituent elements.

The rapid development and complication of this category over the past couple of centuries poses new challenges for science. The emergence of new institutions, the complication of social connections and relationships require the introduction of new categories, the establishment of dependencies and patterns, and the opening of new branches and sub-sectors of this type of scientific knowledge.

What is he studying?

The answer to the question of what constitutes the subject of social sciences is already inherent in it. This part of scientific knowledge concentrates its cognitive efforts on such a complex concept as society. Its essence is most fully revealed thanks to the development of sociology.

The latter is quite often presented as a science of society. However, such a broad interpretation of the subject of this discipline does not allow us to get a complete picture of it.

and sociology?

Many researchers of both modern times and past centuries have tried to answer this question. can “boast” of a huge number of theories and concepts that explain the essence of the concept of “society”. The latter cannot consist of only one individual; an indispensable condition here is a collection of several beings, which must certainly be in the process of interaction. That is why today scientists imagine society as a kind of “clump” of all kinds of connections and interactions entangling the world of human relations. There are a number of distinctive characteristics of society:

• The presence of a certain social community that reflects the social side of life, the social uniqueness of relationships and various kinds of interactions.
• The presence of regulatory bodies, which sociologists call social institutions, the latter are the most stable connections and relationships. A striking example of such an institution is the family.
• Special Territorial categories are not applicable here, since society can go beyond them.
• Self-sufficiency is a characteristic that allows one to distinguish a society from other similar social entities.

Taking into account the detailed presentation of the main category of sociology, it is possible to expand the concept of it as a science. This is no longer just a science about society, but also an integrated system of knowledge about various social institutions, relationships, and communities.

Social sciences study society, forming a diverse understanding of it. Each considers the object from its own side: political science - political, economics - economic, cultural studies - cultural, etc.

Causes

Starting from the 16th century, the development of scientific knowledge became quite dynamic, and by the middle of the 19th century, a process of differentiation was observed in the already separated science. The essence of the latter was that individual branches began to take shape in the mainstream of scientific knowledge. The foundation for their formation and, in fact, the reason for their separation was the identification of an object, subject and research methods. Based on these components, disciplines concentrated around two main areas of human life: nature and society.

What are the reasons for the separation from scientific knowledge of what is today known as social science? These are, first of all, the changes that took place in society in the 16-17th century. It was then that its formation began in the form in which it has been preserved to this day. Outdated structures are being replaced by mass ones, which require increased attention, since there is a need not only to understand but also to be able to manage them.

Another factor contributing to the emergence of social sciences was the active development of natural sciences, which in some way “provoked” the emergence of the former. It is known that one of the characteristic features of scientific knowledge at the end of the 19th century was the so-called naturalistic understanding of society and the processes occurring in it. The peculiarity of this approach was that social scientists tried to explain it within the framework of the categories and methods of the natural sciences. Then sociology appears, which its creator, Auguste Comte, calls social physics. A scientist, studying society, tries to apply natural scientific methods to it. Thus, social science is a system of scientific knowledge that emerged later than the natural one and developed under its direct influence.

Development of social sciences

The rapid development of knowledge about society in the late 19th and early 20th centuries was due to the desire to find levers to control it in a rapidly changing world. Natural sciences, failing to explain processes, reveal their inconsistency and limitations. The formation and development of social sciences make it possible to obtain answers to many questions of both the past and the present. New processes and phenomena that take place in the world require new approaches to study, as well as the use of the latest technologies and techniques. All this stimulates the development of both scientific knowledge in general and social sciences in particular.

Considering that the natural sciences became the impetus for the development of social sciences, it is necessary to find out how to distinguish one from the other.

Natural and social sciences: distinctive characteristics

The main difference that makes it possible to classify this or that knowledge into a certain group is, of course, the object of research. In other words, what science focuses on, in this case, are two different spheres of existence.

It is known that the natural sciences arose earlier than the social sciences, and their methods influenced the development of the methodology of the latter. Its development took place in a different cognitive direction - through understanding the processes occurring in society, in contrast to the explanation offered by the natural sciences.

Another feature that emphasizes the differences between natural and social sciences is ensuring the objectivity of the cognition process. In the first case, the scientist is outside the subject of research, observing it “from the outside.” In the second, he himself is often a participant in the processes that take place in society. Here, objectivity is ensured through comparison with universal human values ​​and norms: cultural, moral, religious, political and others.

What sciences are considered social?

Let us immediately note that there are some difficulties in determining where to classify this or that science. Modern scientific knowledge gravitates towards the so-called interdisciplinarity, when sciences borrow methods from each other. This is why it is sometimes difficult to classify science into one group or another: both social and natural sciences have a number of characteristics that make them similar.

Since social sciences emerged later than natural sciences, at the initial stage of their development many scientists believed that it was possible to study society and the processes occurring in it using natural scientific methods. A striking example is sociology, which was called social physics. Later, with the development of their own system of methods, the social (social) sciences moved away from the natural sciences.

Another feature that unites these is that each of them acquires knowledge in the same ways, including:

• a system of general scientific methods such as observation, modeling, experiment;
• logical methods of cognition: analysis and synthesis, induction and deduction, etc.;
• reliance on scientific facts, logic and consistency of judgments, unambiguity of the concepts used and the rigor of their definitions.

Also, both spheres of science have in common the ways in which they differ from other types and forms of knowledge: the validity and consistency of the acquired knowledge, their objectivity, etc.

System of scientific knowledge about society

The entire set of sciences that study society is sometimes combined into one, which is called social science. This discipline, being comprehensive, allows us to form a general idea of ​​society and the place of the individual in it. It is formed on the basis of knowledge about various things: economics, politics, culture, psychology and others. In other words, social science is an integrated system of social sciences that forms an idea of ​​such a complex and diverse phenomenon as society, the roles and functions of humans in it.

Classification of social sciences

Based on which social sciences relate to any level of knowledge about society or give an idea of ​​almost all spheres of its life, scientists have divided them into several groups:

• the first includes those sciences that give general ideas about society itself, the laws of its development, main components, etc. (sociology, philosophy);
• the second covers those disciplines that study one aspect of society (economics, political science, cultural studies, ethics, etc.);
• The third group includes sciences that permeate all areas of social life (history, jurisprudence).

Sometimes social sciences are divided into two areas: social and humanities. Both of them are closely interconnected, since in one way or another they are related to society. The first characterizes the most general patterns of social processes, and the second refers to the subjective level, which examines a person with his values, motives, goals, intentions, etc.

Thus, it can be said that social sciences study society in a general, broader aspect, as part of the material world, as well as in a narrow one - at the level of the state, nation, family, associations or social groups.

The most famous social sciences

Considering that modern society is a rather complex and diverse phenomenon, it is impossible to study it within the framework of one discipline. This situation can be explained based on the fact that the number of relationships and connections in society today is enormous. We all encounter in our lives such areas as: economics, politics, law, culture, language, history, etc. All this diversity is a clear manifestation of how diverse modern society is. That is why we can cite at least 10 social sciences, each of which characterizes one of the aspects of society: sociology, political science, history, economics, jurisprudence, pedagogy, cultural studies, psychology, geography, anthropology.

There is no doubt that the source of basic information about society is sociology. It is she who reveals the essence of this multifaceted object of research. In addition, today political science, which characterizes the political sphere, has become quite famous.

Jurisprudence allows you to learn how to regulate relations in society using rules of behavior enshrined by the state in the form of legal norms. And psychology allows you to do this using other mechanisms, studying the psychology of the crowd, group and person.

Thus, each of the 10 social sciences examines society from its own side using its own research methods.

Scientific publications publishing social science research

One of the most famous is the journal “Social Sciences and Modernity”. Today, this is one of the few publications that allows you to get acquainted with a fairly wide range of different areas of modern science about society. There are articles on sociology and history, political science and philosophy, as well as studies that raise cultural and psychological issues.

The main distinguishing feature of the publication is the opportunity to post and introduce interdisciplinary research that is carried out at the intersection of various scientific fields. Today, the globalizing world makes its own demands: a scientist must go beyond the narrow confines of his field and take into account modern trends in the development of world society as a single organism.

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in the section “Economics, sociology, law”

The formation of social sciences

Work plan

• Introduction
• 1. Mercantilists
• 1.1 General characteristics of the era of mercantilism
• 1.2 Main features of early and late mercantilism
• 1.3 Features of mercantilism in different countries
• 1.4 The role of mercantilism in the development of economic ideas
• 2. Physiocrats
• 2.1 Origin of the theory
• 2.2 Predecessors
• 2.3 Physiocrats in Russia
• 3. A. Smith's ideas
• 3.1 Criticism of Smith's dogma and development of an alternative in Marx's theory
• 3.2 Modern formulations of the question
• Conclusion
• Bibliography

Introduction

Goals of work:

1. Consider different points of view on the main question of economics: “How does the state get rich?”

2. Determine the role of social sciences in the development of the economy of states.

- During the transition to industrial civilization, economic problems began to come to the fore. The main question was: what are the sources of the wealth of nations, or, in the words of A.S. Pushkin: “What makes the state rich?” Not an individual person, but a state, since the New Age is the period of formation of national markets and economies.

- Representatives of different economic schools gave different answers to this question.

Background of the issue.

When and where did economic science begin? Scientists give very different answers to this question. Some are looking for its roots in Ancient Egypt and Babylon, several thousand years before the new era. Others claim that she was born only in the second half of the 18th century.

Some clarity can be brought by separating the concepts of “economic science” and “economic thought”. People began to think about economic problems, recording their thoughts on papyrus or a clay tablet long before the new era. But economic science as a system of generalized and ordered knowledge obtained using special analytical methods dates back a little more than two centuries. For what reasons was she so delayed in her birth? After all, geometry, physics, and philosophy originated in Ancient Greece!

We can say that at first the subject of economic science was home economics, that is, the art of managing a household or temple economy, or the royal court.

The word “economy” itself comes from the Greek words house, economy and law. It was first used by the ancient Greek author Xenophon (430-355 or 354 BC)

The great ancient philosopher Aristotle (384-322 BC), in his economic reasoning set out in the treatises Nicomachean Ethics and Politics, first posed the problem: what determines the ratio in which goods are exchanged for each other. This ratio must be “fair”.

Aristotle formulated three of the four known functions of money. The works of Aristotle remained the highest achievement of economic thought of the era of antiquity.

In the Middle Ages, economic thought developed very slowly. But nevertheless, economic thought moved forward. Since the 12th century, self-governing universities independent from the authorities began to be created in Western Europe, in which learned monks and abbots taught. One of them was Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274), later canonized.

He developed Aristotle's idea of ​​a fair price, and like Aristotle, he spoke out against creditors charging interest from debtors.

In the line of prominent representatives of economic thought, Thomas Aquinas follows immediately after Aristotle, which means that in the 15 centuries separating the great thinkers, nothing noteworthy happened in this field. Slowly, literally bit by bit, with inevitable errors, knowledge was accumulated, which later turned into economic science.

1. Mercantilists

1.1 General characteristics of the era of mercantilism

The main direction of economic thought in the XV-XVII centuries. became mercantilism. In fact, this teaching was not a systematic theory; the authors did not recognize themselves as representatives of any general current of thought, did not transmit their ideas to their students, and often did not even suspect each other’s existence. What was later called mercantilism was a collection of ideas and private opinions of many different individuals. The number of mercantilist authors and their works is incalculable; in England alone, before 1764, there were 2,377 pamphlets. The word “mercantilism” (from Italian mercante - merchant, merchant) arose in the 18th century. This is how the thinkers of the Age of Enlightenment ironically dubbed the views of the ideologists of merchant capital that seemed to them erroneous and sometimes absurd.

The definition of this period given by K. Marx, who called it the period of initial accumulation of capital, is widespread in economic literature. The objective reason for this name was the economic policy of states such as Portugal, Spain, Holland, England, France, which aimed at the full accumulation of precious metals in the country and the state treasury. The development of trade and the growth of trade operations aggravate the problem of shortage of precious metals, which at that time served as money, which, in turn, becomes the reason for the search for new lands and markets. The basis of this process was the policy of colonial conquest. The captured lands were plundered, the looted treasures were turned into capital, and the slave trade was also a source of enrichment for the colonialists.

The desire to find new sea routes to India stimulates the development of shipbuilding, the development of new territories and the establishment of new trade relations. The discovery of huge reserves of precious metals in America leads to the first inflation, the so-called price revolution (a decrease in the value of gold and silver, a sharp increase in prices for all goods), which dealt a serious blow to the feudal landowners due to the depreciation of monetary dues. Trade turnover and trade profits grow, cities become stronger, merchants begin to support kings in the fight against feudal lords. These circumstances contributed to the disintegration of feudalism and the emergence of capitalist relations. The noted changes create favorable conditions for the liberation of science from the theological tradition of thinking. Economic science moves from the analysis of abstract categories to the search for economic patterns in the sphere of circulation, to determining the nature and objectives of the state's economic policy.

The focus of the mercantilists was the problem of finding means of enriching the country; it is no coincidence that the French economist Antoine de Montchretien (1575-1621) in one of his pamphlets introduced the expression “political economy,” which at that time meant the principles of managing the country’s economy. The main subject of analysis is the sphere of circulation, since trade was considered the main source of enrichment for the nation.

Linking wealth to the size of the working population, mercantilists paid great attention to solving demographic problems. They associated the wealth of a nation with population growth. It was believed that the lack of products reduces the country's population, so it is necessary to seek and conquer new markets by acquiring colonies, and therefore colonial expansion becomes part of the ideology and policy of mercantilism.

One of the first works where the foundations of the ideology of mercantilism are manifested is the treatise by Jean Bodin (1530-1596) “Six Books of the Republic” (1576). Exploring the general conditions for the well-being and stability of states, he welcomed the active intervention of state power in industrial affairs, high duties on the import of industrial products and low duties on the import of food and raw materials. State power was considered by adherents of mercantilism as something like a master in a huge economy, on which they pinned great hopes. The emphasis was on protectionism, or the policy of government support for national producers and traders.

1.2 Main features of early and late mercantilism

The concept of mercantilism went through two stages in its historical development. The first stage is called early mercantilism and dates back to the first third of the 15th - mid-16th centuries. The second stage, the emergence of which is associated with the second half of the 16th century, was called mature, or late, mercantilism.

Early mercantilism, also called the monetary system, focused on the accumulation of precious metals in the country, which was perceived by its representatives as enriching the nation. Money, in their opinion, was absolute wealth, the universal equivalent of material wealth, capable of ideally performing the function of saving. For a nation to prosper, a country must have large reserves of precious metals, so the main task of the early mercantilists was to ensure a strong monetary balance. The monetary balance is a comparison of the import and export of gold and silver. The difference between import and export is called balance. For a balance to be active, the balance must be positive. This point of view was shared by W. Stafford (England), De Santis, G. Scaruffi (Italy). To achieve this goal, administrative measures were developed to retain money in the country. Without caring about theoretical grounds, governments made decisions that prevented the export of money from the country. In Spain in the 16th century. According to the law, this was punishable by death. In England, the so-called Spending Law was adopted, according to which all foreigners bringing their goods into the country had to spend all the proceeds on the purchase of English goods. English merchant-exporters were obliged to bring at least part of their proceeds home in cash. This type of mercantilist policy in economic literature is called “brothism” (from the English bullion - gold bar). Adherents of bouillonism often identified precious metals with wealth in general, and saw trade as a battle for gold. The Austrian J. Becher wrote that it is always better to sell goods than to buy them, since the first brings profit, and the second - loss.

Representatives of late mercantilism: T. Man (England), A. Serra (Italy), A. Montchretien (France) sought sources of enrichment for the nation not in the primitive accumulation of treasures, but in the development of foreign trade. They came to understand that successful foreign trade depends entirely on the economic situation within the country. Thomas Man (1571-1641) opposed strict regulation of monetary circulation, was a supporter of the free export of money, and believed that any restrictions in this matter interfere with the expansion of trade operations and the growth of trade profits: “The abundance of money in the kingdom makes domestic goods more expensive. Which... is exactly the opposite of the good of the state in regard to the extent of trade.”

Supporters of late mercantilism considered a positive balance of foreign trade to be the basis for capital accumulation. In this regard, they recognized the main task of the state’s economic policy to be maintaining an active trade balance. The term “balance of trade” was first introduced by the Englishman E. Misselden in his treatise “The Circle of Trade” (1623). Consistently analyzing problems associated with the origin of wealth and the international division of labor, T. Man in his book “The Wealth of England in Foreign Trade, or the Balance of Our Foreign Trade as the Principle of Wealth” (1664) notes that the surplus, or trade deficit, is an indicator of benefits or losses of the country as a result of its foreign trade activities.

The idea of ​​a trade balance allowed us to conclude that trade was mutually beneficial. In 1713, D. Defoe wrote: “Benefit is what the exchange of goods serves... such an exchange brings mutual profit to the traders.”

1.3 Features of mercantilism in different countries

Mercantilist policies were pursued in all Western European countries. However, the results obtained largely depended on the specific historical conditions of the development of a particular country. English mercantilism was the most developed. This is explained by the fact that England already in the 16th-17th centuries. made significant progress in economic development. The works of the English mercantilists W. Stafford and T. Mann are distinguished by the completeness of their presentation of the main provisions of the doctrine. T. Man's theoretical views are applied in practice. Thus, being one of the directors of the East India Company, he published the pamphlet “Discourse on England’s Trade with the East Indies,” where he criticized monetarism and substantiated the theory of “balance of trade.”

Mercantilism in France played an important role in the economic policies of absolutism, especially in the 17th century. The economic program of the monetary stage in the development of mercantilism was set out by Antoine de Montchretien (1575-1621) in his essay “Treatise of Political Economy”. He argued that trading profits are legitimate - they compensate for the risk. Foreigners were compared to a pump pumping wealth out of France. The policy of mercantilism in France was carried out especially persistently by the minister of King Louis XIV, J.-B. Colbert (1619-1683), where it received the name “Colbertism”. At this moment, feudal forms of exploitation were not eliminated, the peasants were ruined by heavy taxes. Having begun reforming the financial system, he reduced the direct tax on peasants, but increased indirect taxes. He managed to reduce public debt and achieve a positive trade balance. Promoting the development of foreign and domestic trade in France, Colbert established customs duties and tariffs; in order to develop new sales markets, contributed to the construction of roads and canals; To carry out the policy of colonial conquests, he doubled the navy. Colbert's policy led to a certain increase in capitalist production and created conditions for the further development of capitalism in France, which met the interests of the bourgeoisie. However, agriculture was in a state of deep decline; the policies pursued did not affect its feudal foundations. He considered low prices for bread a necessary condition for the development of industry and trade; the import of agricultural products was exempt from duties, and export was difficult. These measures had a negative impact on the position of the peasants, whose discontent grew into numerous peasant uprisings.

There were neither economic nor political conditions for practical mercantilism in Italy. However, there were many works that treated issues of economic theory, especially issues of monetary circulation, since banking and usury developed in Italy for a long time. The most prominent representative of late mercantilism was Antonio Serra, who, rejecting the concept of monetarism, adhered to the theory of the balance of trade. In his work “A short treatise on the causes that could lead to an abundance of gold and silver in those kingdoms where there are no mines in relation to the Kingdom of Naples” (1613), he notes that the development of industry is more profitable for the country in terms of exports, since the products agricultural sector is not suitable for long-term storage and transportation abroad. The Italian thinker tried to analyze the factors on which the country's wealth depends, highlighting natural resources, the qualifications of the workforce, the development of industry and commerce, and the role of the government.

In Germany, mercantilism took distorted forms. The economic backwardness and political fragmentation of the country had an effect. Financial science flourished, giving it the name “cameralistics,” whose proponents sought new types of fiscal income for gentlemen. The representative of mercantilism, Johann Becher, argued that it is always better to sell goods to others than to buy them.

Until the 17th century There were no objective conditions for the ideas of mercantilism in Russia; it lagged behind Western countries in its development, which was manifested in the dominance of a natural economy and limited trade operations. The uniqueness of mercantilism in Russia was determined by the fact that before the conquests of Peter I the country was cut off from maritime trade. The first theoretical and practical ideas of mercantilism were expressed in Russia in the middle of the 17th century. Afanasy Lavrentievich Ordin-Nashchokin (1605-1680). Having become the head of the Ambassadorial Prikaz, he pursued a policy of protectionism. From the standpoint of early mercantilism A.L. Ordin-Nashchokin drew up the “New Trade Charter”, which significantly limited the rights of foreign merchants, prohibiting retail trade, increasing import duties levied on gold and silver at a reduced rate. He sought to expand trade, mainly within the country. Foreign trade, under protectionism on a national scale, received significant development during the reign of Peter I. Setting as his goal the economic independence of Russia, he pursued a policy of a mercantilist nature. Peter I was a supporter of high taxes and a high degree of state participation in the economy (monopoly on trade in wine, salt, tobacco). The ideas of mercantilists were reflected in the works of I.T. Pososhkova, V.N. Tatishcheva, M.V. Lomonosov, F.I. Saltykova.

1.4 The role of mercantilism in the development of economic ideas

The ideology of mercantilism subsequently received a variety of assessments. Some, like F. List, saw its essence in the creation and development of the country's productive forces as a prerequisite for national wealth. Others, like K. Marx, condemned the mercantilists for looking for the source of the nation's wealth in the sphere of circulation, and not in the sphere of production, mentioning the latter only from the standpoint of its ability to ensure the flow of money into the country. A. Smith introduced the view of mercantilism as a kind of prejudice. The greatest economist of the 20th century. J. Keynes, in his work “The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money,” devoted a chapter to mercantilism entitled “Notes on mercantilism, the laws against usury, stamp money, and the theories of underconsumption,” demonstrating his interest in the economic policies of the mercantilists. However, J. Schumpeter noted that mercantilism was not so much a scientific direction as a practical policy, and the literature generated by it, being a secondary and by-product, contains, in general, only the rudiments of science.

In the process of studying the works of mercantilists, it becomes obvious that there are grounds for such polar assessments of the significance of mercantilistic ideas. Meanwhile, the practical orientation of the mercantilist system in the field of trade operations and monetary circulation and its influence on the further formation of economic science should in no case be underestimated.

The mercantilist doctrine had the following disadvantages:

- due to historical conditions, mercantilism was limited to the study of phenomena in the sphere of circulation in isolation from production;

- in methodology, mercantilists did not go beyond the framework of empiricism, limited themselves to superficial generalizations of exchange phenomena, and therefore could not understand the essence of many economic processes;

- questions of the theory of commodity production were not resolved, although price was opposed to production costs;

While paying considerable attention to money, they did not reveal its essence and could not explain why money, as a universal form of wealth, is opposed to all other goods. They did not understand that money is a commodity, but a special commodity, since it plays the role of a universal equivalent. Having interpreted the functions of money one-sidedly, monetarists reduced them to the accumulation of wealth; trade balance theorists added the function of world money;

- did not understand the role of domestic trade, although it was an important area of ​​merchant income. It was believed that internal trade does not increase national wealth, since the merchant’s income simultaneously leads to the buyer’s expenses;

- mercantilists declared only export industries to be profitable; the markup on the sale of goods was mistakenly considered the primary source of profit;

- a one-sided approach to the analysis of the economy was reflected in the interpretation of productive labor, which, in their opinion, was only labor employed in export industries.

However, when assessing the achievements of thinkers of that era, we must not forget that in economic thinking they solved a difficult problem - they overcame religious and ethical principles that had been established for centuries.

Within the framework of mercantilism, a new name for economic science appears - “political economy”, which involves the study of economic issues at the macro level (country, polis). It was the mercantilists who introduced the capacious concept of “national wealth,” which was later widely used by economists and replaced the theological term “common good.”

Mercantilism is the first theoretical development of the capitalist mode of production, capitalism was interpreted as a new mode of production, and its features were identified. Late mercantilism was progressive: it promoted the development of trade, shipbuilding, the international division of labor, in other words, the development of productive forces.

The mercantilists posed a new and important problem of the economic role of the state. State policy, called “protectionism,” is currently actively used by many countries to protect the interests of national producers. However, for the history of economic thought, mercantilistic literature is valuable not so much for its conclusions regarding economic policy, but for the increase in scientific knowledge based on economic analysis.

2. Physiocrats

1. Physiocrats (French physiocrates, from ancient Greek tseuit - nature and xbfpt - strength, power, domination) - a French school of economists of the second half of the 18th century, founded around 1750 by Francois Koehne and called " physiocracy" (French physiocratie, that is, "dominance of nature"), given to it by the first publisher of Koehne's works, Dupont de Nemours, due to the fact that this school considered the soil, nature, to be the only independent factor of production. However, this name could characterize the teaching of the physiocrats in another respect, since they were supporters of the “natural order” (ordre naturel) in the economic life of society - an idea akin to the concepts of natural law or natural law in the rationalistic sense of the philosophy of the 18th century.

The physiocrats resolved the question of how economic relations between people should develop under the free action of the natural order and what the principles of these relations would be. Like the school of A. Smith, and even earlier, its physiocrats expressed the conviction that giving complete freedom to the operation of natural laws alone is capable of realizing the common good. In connection with this, there is a demand for the destruction of old laws and institutions that delay the unhindered manifestation of the natural order, and a demand for non-interference by state power in economic relations - desires that equally characterize both the physiocrats and the “classical” school. Finally, in both cases we are dealing with a reaction against mercantilism, which unilaterally protected only trade and manufacturing; but the physiocrats fell into another one-sidedness, which the theory created by A. Smith avoided.

Physiocrats contrasted trade and manufacturing with agriculture as the only occupation that provides a surplus of gross income over production costs, and therefore the only productive one. Therefore, in their theory, land (soil, forces of nature) is the only factor of production, while A. Smith placed two others next to this factor, labor and capital - concepts that play such an important role in the entire further development of political economy as a pure science. In this last respect the physiocrats may rather be considered the predecessors than the founders of political economy.

The term “physiocracy” is used in a double sense, namely, most often in the narrower sense of a well-known economic doctrine, less often in the broader sense of an entire theory of society, with social and political conclusions. The first view of physiocrats is dominant among foreigners, the second is characteristic of the French. There is no doubt that the physiocrats are of primary importance in the history of political economy, but because of this their political views should not be forgotten, making them the most prominent representatives of enlightened absolutism in France.

2.1 Origin of the theory

English, and after them German and Russian historians of political economy usually consider Adam Smith to be the founder of this science, but the French are more willing to see its beginning in the teachings of the physiocrats, who created the first systematic theory of political economy. In his special work on Turgot as an economist, the German scientist Scheel also considers the physiocrats to be the true founders of political economy, calling “Smithianism” only “an English type of physiocratism.”

The emergence of physiocracy was preceded by the so-called mercantilism, which was more of a system of economic policy than a political-economic theory: the mercantilists did not give any integral scientific doctrine, developing only the theory of monetary circulation and trade. In this sense, the physiocrats were the real founders of political economy, especially since they had a great influence on the teaching of A. Smith. They were the first to proclaim the principle that a certain natural order prevails in the economic life of society and that science can and should discover and formulate it. One has only, they thought, to find out what laws govern the phenomena of economic life - and this will be completely sufficient to create a complete theory of production and distribution of wealth. Hence their deductive method, very similar to the method of A. Smith and other representatives of the “classical school” of political economy .

2.2 Predecessors

The physiocrats had two predecessors: some had long emphasized the great importance of agriculture, others spoke out in favor of giving the natural course of economic life greater freedom. Already Sully, the minister of Henry IV, who was inclined to mercantilism, said that “agriculture and cattle breeding are the two breasts that feed France” and that these two activities are real gold-bearing veins, surpassing all the treasures of Peru. The same point of view was held at the beginning of the 18th century by Boisguillebert, the author of the essay “Le détail de la France sous Louis XIV,” and Marshal Vauban, who were later joined by Cantillon, who had a great influence on the physiocrats through Mirabeau the Father, who commented on the ideas of this English economist in his "Friend of People". On the other hand, Locke laid the foundation for the entire school of natural law of the 18th century, under the influence of which the physiocratic idea of ​​the natural order was formed, and spoke out for freedom of trade; Cantillon, whose ideas were also used by A. Smith, held the same point of view. The immediate cause of the emergence of the new economic school was the material impoverishment of France, which pointed to the fallacy of all previous economic policies. “At the end of 1750,” says Voltaire, “the nation, fed up with poetry, comedies, tragedies, novels, moral reasoning and theological debates, finally began to talk about bread. One could have assumed, leaving the theater of the comic opera, that France had to sell grain on an unprecedented scale.” Indeed, around this time, French society drew attention to the sad state of agriculture, and even a kind of “agronomic fashion” emerged.

Among the people who took up economic issues in the agrarian direction earlier than others was Father Mirabeau, who, in his “Friend of the People,” published in 1756, already expressed thoughts about agriculture as the only source of well-being of states and about economic freedom as the best government policy . Some of Mirabeau's provisions concerning these issues were not clear, however, and were not brought into the system. For the first time, Mirabeau himself realized the meaning of his own ideas when he became acquainted with the theory of Quesne, whose first economic work (“Tableau economique”) was published in 1758. Mirabeau was one of the first to join the new teaching and became its zealous herald in a number of works. At the same time, periodical publications arose that became the organs of the new school, “Gazette du Commerce”, “Journal de l'agriculture, du commerce et des finances” by Dupont de Nemours and “Ephémérides du citoyen”, founded by him together with Abbe Bodo, the author of “ Introduction to Economic Philosophy" (1771). The same Dupont de Nemours published Quesnet's works in 1767-68 under the general title "Physiocratie", after which Quesnay's followers received the name "physiocrats".

They were joined by other prominent economists, such as Mercier de la Riviere and Turgot. The first of them, having first taken part in the “Journal of Agriculture, Trade and Finance,” published in 1767 the book “L" ordre naturel et essentiel des sociétés politiques,” from which for the first time a large public became acquainted with the ideas of Quesnet. It considered not only economic, but also political issues from a physiocratic point of view. According to the teachings of Mercier, the state system should be based on human nature; its whole task is to protect the freedom and property of people, and this can best be done by an absolute monarchy, in which the interests of the ruler coincide with interests of the whole country. This political idea of ​​Mercier de la Riviere was accepted by other physiocrats. At the same time, Turgot’s book “Réflexions sur la formation et la distribution des richesses" (1766) was published, which is already a systematic presentation of the theory of education and distribution of wealth with Physiocratic point of view.The special significance of Turgot lies in the fact that at the beginning of the reign of Louis XVI, he served as (in fact) first minister for twenty months and made an attempt - however, unsuccessful - to put into practice the physiocratic program of reforms. Less important supporters of the Physiocrats were Clicquot-Blervache and Letron. The latter's main work (“De l"intérкt social par rapport a la valeur, a la circulation, a l"industrie et au commerce,” 1777) is considered one of the clearest and most systematic presentations of the doctrine of the physiocrats, which in many matters anticipated the provisions of modern science. On the particular issue of freedom of grain trade, Abbot Morellet also joined the ranks of the physiocrats.

Condillac, Condorcet, Malesherbes, and Lavoisier were sympathetic to the physiocrats or only partially shared their views. Of the prominent economists of that era, only Necker and Forbonnet continued to adhere to the principles of mercantilism. Some also count Gournay among the physiocrats, who indeed enjoyed great respect among the followers of the school; but he was far from sharing the view that trade and manufacturing were unproductive. What he has in common with the physiocrats is mainly his belief in the benefits of free competition; he owns the famous formula: “laissez faire, laisser passer.” Gournay's significance in the history of the Physiocratic school lies in the fact that it was mainly from him that Quesnay's followers borrowed arguments in favor of economic freedom. Sometimes the entire physiocracy is seen as nothing more than a fusion of the ideas of Gournay and Quesnet, but more often only Turgot is made dependent on Gournay. The latest research (Oncken) has shown that much earlier than Gournay, the idea of ​​economic freedom was expressed by the Marquis d'Argenson.

All the main foundations of the physiocratic theory as a political-economic doctrine were already outlined by the founder of the school, and therefore Quesne’s teaching gives a completely sufficient understanding of them. Historians do not quite agree with each other in assessing their social role, having different understandings of their relationship to individual social classes. There is no doubt that the physiocrats were hostile to the class system of society, to the privileges of the nobility and to seigneurial rights. Some historians especially emphasize the love of the people of the physiocrats. The publisher of the works of the Physiocrats in the 19th century, Dare, credits them with the fact that they “formulated the great problem of just and unjust” in social relations and in this sense “founded a school of social morality that did not exist before.” The latest historian of socialism (Lichtenberger, “Le socialisme du XVIII siècle”) says that “in a certain sense, the physiocrats played a role that has some analogy with the role of modern socialists, since they sought to emancipate labor and defended the rights of social justice.” German writers (Kauz, Scheel, Kohn, etc.) do not go so far in their reviews, but they also emphasize sympathy for the working people and the burdened. In essence, however, the physiocrats were, as Louis Blanc understood, unconscious representatives of the interests of the bourgeoisie; Marx quite rightly noted that “the physiocratic system was the first systematic concept of capitalist production.”

In fact, the physiocrats were preachers of large-scale farming: Quesne already considered it most normal for the lands cultivated for crops to be united into large farms, which would be in the hands of rich landowners (riches cultivurs); Only rich farmers, in his opinion, constitute the strength and power of the nation, only they can provide employment for workers and keep residents in the village. At the same time, Quesne explained that the words “rich farmer” should not be understood as a worker who plows himself, but as an owner who has hired workers; all small farmers had to turn into farm laborers working for large farmers, who are the “true farmers.” According to Ab. Bodo, “in a society truly organized on the basis of economic principles,” there should be simple agricultural workers who would live only by their labor. Often identifying the land and the landowner, the interests of agriculture and the interests of rural owners, physiocrats very often, when they talk about the interests of the productive class, mean only farmers. From here it was not far from taking special care of the latter - and indeed, Quesne advises the government to reward farmers with all sorts of privileges, since otherwise, thanks to their wealth, they can take up other occupations. Concerned about increasing the national income, which, from the point of view of the physiocrats, consisted in the amount of income of individual rural owners, they recognized the need for the well-being of workers, perhaps only because in the interests of the nation, products should be consumed in the greatest possible quantity.

The physiocrats did not at all intend to promote an increase in wages: Quesnet advises taking newcomer Savoyard workers for the harvest, who are content with lower wages than the French, because this reduces production costs and increases the income of the owners and the sovereign, and with them the power of the nation and the labor fund increases payment (le revenu disponible), which will provide the workers with the opportunity for a better existence. Thus, the physiocrats did not know how to separate the accumulation of capital from the enrichment of landowners and large farmers: observing only poverty around them, wanting to increase national wealth, they paid attention exclusively to the number of objects located in the country, without any relation to their distribution. The need for capital in their language was translated into the need for capitalists. He pictured the peasant either as a small owner, barely surviving on income from his land, or as a ladle, forever in debt to the landowner, or as a landless farm laborer, to whom neither one nor the other could provide work. According to physiocrats, large-scale farming, enriching the state, could occupy the free hands of the landless peasantry. In this regard, the physiocrats agreed with many agronomic writers, who pointed out that the small-scale farming of peasant owners and ladles, ignorant and poor, is not able to serve as the basis for those improvements in the methods of cultivating the land that are required to increase its productivity.

There was thus a rather significant contradiction between the theory of the physiocrats, which was favorable to the bourgeoisie, and their people-loving feelings. It was first noted by Louis Blanc when, for example, he spoke of Turgot: “he was not always distinguished by consistency in relation to his principles; Let us not reproach him for this, for this is his glory.” Politically, the physiocrats took the point of view of enlightened absolutism. Already Quesne, dreaming of the realization of his economic system, considered necessary a force that could accomplish this realization. He therefore demanded complete unity and unconditional dominance of the supreme power, rising in the name of the common good over the opposing interests of private individuals. Mercier de la Rivière, in his main work, developed the idea that “legal despotism” (despotisme légal) alone is capable of realizing the common good and establishing a natural social order, which caused sharp objections from Mably. Attacking the theory of separation and balance of powers or the theory of political counterbalances, Mercier reasoned as follows: if the foundations of good government are obvious to the government and it wants to act in accordance with them for the good of society, then “counterforces” can only hinder it - and vice versa, in such counterbalances there is no need, since the foundations of good government remain unknown to the authorities. In vain, out of fear that the ruler may be ignorant, he is opposed to people who barely know how to govern themselves. However, the role of absolute power was understood more in the sense of a force that should eliminate everything that interferes with the “natural order” than in the sense of a force that should create something new.

In the latter respect, Catherine II’s conversation with Mercier de la Riviere, whom she invited to St. Petersburg to consult with him about legislation, is interesting. “What rules,” she asked, “should be followed in order to give the most suitable laws for the people?” “Giving or creating laws is a task, Empress, that God has not given to anyone,” answered Mercier de la Rivière, provoking a new question from Catherine about what, in this case, he reduces the science of government to. “The science of government,” he said, “reduces to the recognition and manifestation of the laws inscribed by God in the organization of men; to wish to go further would be a great misfortune and an overly bold undertaking.” The teachings of the Physiocrats influenced the French Revolution. “From their midst,” says Blanqui in his “History of Political Economy,” “the signal was given for all the social reforms that were carried out or undertaken in Europe for 80 years; one might even say that, with few exceptions, the French Revolution was nothing more than their theory in action.” Louis Blanc, who saw in the physiocrats representatives of the interests of the bourgeoisie who wanted to replace one aristocracy with another, and therefore called their teaching “false and dangerous,” nevertheless glorified them as preachers of new ideas, from which all the transformations of the revolutionary era came. “Economists,” says F. Tocqueville in “The Old Order and Revolution,” “played a less brilliant role in history than philosophers; perhaps they had less influence than the latter on the emergence of the revolution - and, nevertheless, I think that its true character is best known in their writings. Some expressed what could be imagined; others sometimes pointed out what needed to be done. All institutions which the revolution was bound to destroy irrevocably were the special object of their attacks; no one had the right to mercy in their eyes. On the contrary, all those institutions that can be considered as the real creations of the revolution were announced in advance by the physiocrats and glorified with fervor by them. It would be difficult to name even one, the germ of which no longer existed in any of their works; in them we find everything that was most significant in the revolution.” In the works of F. Tocqueville, he notes the future “revolutionary and democratic temperament” of the leaders of the late 18th century, and the “boundless contempt for the past”, and the belief in the omnipotence of the state in eliminating all evils.

Assessing the general significance of the physiocrats, one of the most recent researchers of their teaching (Markhlevsky) calls individual cases of the physiocrats’ influence on life “revolutionary bacilli of physiocratism.” Most historians have a somewhat different attitude towards the purely scientific side of this teaching.

After the appearance of The Wealth of Nations, Hell. Smith's Quesnay school fell into complete decline, although it still had supporters even in the 19th century: Dupont de Nemours - until his death (1817), in the thirties - J. M. Dutan and others. In the classical school, political . economy, in general, a very negative attitude towards the physiocrats was established, which was not always fair. In his Capital, Marx quite often speaks of the physiocrats (in the notes) with sympathy; the sheer number of quotations indicates how highly he sometimes rated these predecessors of the classical school. In some cases, he even found the understanding of certain issues deeper and more consistent among the physiocrats than among A. Smith. The very question of the latter’s dependence on the physiocrats was subjected to a careful review, the results of which turned out to be favorable for the physiocrats. The works of the physiocrats were published by Dare in the “Collection des principaux economistes”; Mirabeau's "Friend of the People" was republished by Rouxel in 1883, and Quesne's works were reprinted by Onken.

2.3 Physiocrats in Russia

There were no pure representatives of the physiocratic theory in Russia, but the influence of the applied conclusions of their teaching was felt in the first half of the reign of Catherine II. The ideas of the physiocrats were spread among us with the help of French educational literature: Catherine could get acquainted with them from Voltaire and the Encyclopedia. In the Nakaz, an echo of these ideas is the exaltation of agriculture over industry and trade and the view of free trade. But even here these opinions are surrounded by reservations and limitations. However, from the first years of Catherine’s reign, the privileges given to factories in previous times were destroyed, monopolies on the establishment of factories of one kind or another, including state-owned ones, were abolished, benefits from various duties were abolished; finally, the manifesto of March 17, 1775 established the principle of free competition, abolished the concession order for the establishment of industrial establishments and the system of special fees from factories and factories. During the same period, a comparatively more preferential tariff for imports was issued in 1766. Finally, the interest of those around the empress in physiocratic teachings was expressed in the creation - on the model of European institutions founded by supporters of physiocrats - the Free Economic Society (1765). To the question posed by the Society at the request of the Empress for the award, about the property of peasants, several answers were sent, written in the spirit of physiocrats, and these answers were approved by the Society. With the participation of the book. D. A. Golitsyn, the Russian ambassador in Paris, who corresponded with Catherine in the 60s on the peasant issue, even the representative of the school of physiocrats, recommended by Diderot, Mercier de la Riviere, was discharged, who unpleasantly struck the empress with his conceit and too high an idea of ​​\u200b\u200bthat role, which he prepared for himself in Russia as a legislator. After an 8-month stay in St. Petersburg (1767-68), he was sent back to France, and from then on Catherine began a rapid cooling towards the physiocrats. In her private correspondence, she complains (mid-70s) that “economists” besiege her with intrusive advice, calls them “fools” and “screamers” and does not miss an opportunity to laugh at them. “I am not a supporter of prohibitions,” she says now, “but I believe that some of them were introduced to eliminate inconvenience and it would be unwise and reckless to touch them.” She objects to complete freedom of grain trade and even to the abolition of internal city taxes that followed under the emperor. Elizabeth. In the 80s, Catherine's policy regarding trade and industry finally changed in a spirit opposite to the principles of the physiocrats. In Russian society, the ideas of the physiocrats, as a well-known political-economic doctrine, did not have any noticeable influence: preoccupied with political and philosophical ideas, it paid little attention to political economy. When such interest appeared at the beginning of the 19th century, political economy was already dominated by the ideas of Adam Smith, which penetrated into Russia.

3. A. Smith's ideas

The development of industrial production in the 18th century led to an increase in the social division of labor, which required an increase in the role of trade and money circulation. The emerging practice came into conflict with the prevailing ideas and traditions in the economic sphere. There was a need to revise existing economic theories. Smith's materialism allowed him to formulate the idea of ​​the objectivity of economic laws.

Smith laid out a logical system that explained the workings of the free market based on internal economic mechanisms rather than external political control. This approach is still the basis of economic education.

Smith formulated the concepts of "economic man" and "natural order". Smith believed that man is the basis of all society, and studied human behavior with its motives and desire for personal gain. The natural order in Smith's view is market relations in which each person bases his behavior on personal and selfish interests, the sum of which forms the interests of society. In Smith's view, this order ensures wealth, well-being and development, both for the individual and for society as a whole.

The existence of a natural order requires a “system of natural liberty,” the basis of which Smith saw in private property.

Smith's most famous aphorism is the "invisible hand of the market" - a phrase he used to demonstrate the autonomy and self-sufficiency of a system based on selfishness, which acts as an effective lever in the allocation of resources.

“The invisible hand of the market” is an assumption introduced by Adam Smith, according to which an individual, striving for his own benefit, regardless of his will and consciousness, is directed to achieve benefits and benefits for the whole society “invisibly hand" of the market.

Principle: the manufacturer pursues his own benefit, but the path to it lies through satisfying someone else's needs. The set of producers, as if driven by an “invisible hand,” actively, effectively and voluntarily realizes the interests of the entire society, often without even thinking about it, but pursuing only their own interests.

The “invisible hand” is an objective market mechanism that coordinates the decisions of buyers and sellers.

The signal function of profit is invisible, but it reliably ensures a distribution of resources that balances supply and demand, that is, if production is unprofitable, then the amount of resources involved in this production will decrease. Ultimately, such production will completely disappear under the pressure of a competitive environment. Resources will be spent to develop profitable production.

Adam Smith formulates the fundamental law of commodity production - the law of value, according to which goods are exchanged in accordance with the amount of labor invested in their production.

- By the concept of “capital,” A. Smith understood, first of all, the part of income that is used not for one’s own needs, but for the expansion of production, which, in turn, leads to an increase in social wealth.

- When investing capital in production, people deny themselves a lot and show frugality. Therefore, it is quite fair that the direct producer owns one part of the created value, equal to the amount of labor invested, and the other part, proportional to the invested capital, belongs to its owner.

A. Smith denied the state’s desire to “supervise and control the economic activities of individual people,” but Smith did not deny the regulatory role of the state, which must protect society from violence and external aggression, protect the lives and property of citizens, maintain the army, justice agencies, and take care of the education of the lower classes. classes. At the same time, the state should not be wasteful in its spending.

Smith's dogma is one of the fundamental theses of classical political economy, formulated by Adam Smith, according to which the price (exchange value) of the annual product of society is calculated as the sum of the incomes of all members of society. “Smith's Dogma” is studied in the modern course on the history of economic doctrines along with other provisions of classical political economy.

Formulation A.Smith

Among all contemporary forms of income generation, Smith identified three main types:

- wage,

- profit,

- rent.

In his major work, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Book One, Chapter VI, “On the Elements of the Price of Commodities,” Smith writes: “Wages, profit, and rent are the three original sources of all income, as well as of all exchange. cost. All other income is ultimately derived from one or other of these sources.”

Smith goes on to define the sources of each of these types of income: “Every man who receives his income from a source belonging to himself must receive it either from his labor, or from his capital, or from his land.”

In other words, possible sources of income, according to Smith's dogma, are:

- labor,

- capital,

- Earth.

Social structure of society according to A. Smith.

- Landowners - rent (income from land transferred for cultivation).

- Capitalists - profit (income from invested capital).

- Hired workers - wages (income from own labor).

- A. Smith was a supporter of a freely developing, competitive economy.

Against the background of previous scientific and analytical works, Smith's model at the time of its appearance was obviously the best - excluding the school of physiocrats - an attempt to derive an integral, macroeconomic assessment of the economy as a whole, to measure the annual results of the national economy.

Methodologically, Smith chooses the sphere of circulation as the starting point of his dogma. Indeed, in Smith’s time, it was possible to obtain any reliable statistics to assess the state of the country’s economy, if not from the relatively recently (in 1694) created Bank of England, then only from the archives of tax and customs documents. There were no summary statistics of the results in physical terms, and therefore the search for a more scientifically correct alternative would then be meaningless due to the impossibility of practically applying the improved methodology to government needs.

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The formation of cognitive activity was initially associated with the attempts of ancient thinkers to construct a holistic description of the natural world. Therefore, natural philosophy became the first version of knowledge about the essential characteristics of reality. The person himself in such knowledge systems implicitly appeared in the role of an external observer. Cognitive interest, directed outward, laid the foundation for the tradition within which natural science later arose.

But the experience of studying natural phenomena accumulated over many generations has led to the awareness of the fact that all ideas about the method of the world structure are created and exist only in the form of ideal structures generated by the mental activity of people, and therefore, without a special study of its features, it is impossible to understand the meaning of external phenomena discovered by people in their direct interaction with natural phenomena. Thus, the topic of man gradually began to enter the sphere of theoretical interest.

In the European tradition, a clear interest in what can be described as “the inner world of man” is associated with the school of the Sophists (5th and 4th centuries). Protagoras (480-410 BC) and Gorgias (483-375 BC) carried out the first revolution in philosophical and general cultural consciousness. The Sophists discovered subjective reality for people. One of the main problems for them is a person’s individual perception of his existence. Their predecessors proceeded from the belief that all people are built the same and therefore the images of the world in their minds have similar features. All people must have the same opinions.

The famous formula of Protagoras - “Man is the measure of all things” - expressed a qualitatively new intellectual position of ancient thinkers. The expansion of the boundaries of the cultural world, the growth of cities, the destruction of blood and family ties - all this inevitably gave rise to the conviction that the rules of human behavior cannot be innate and equally binding for everyone. It became clear that virtue is not formed immediately, that this process is directed and regulated by education.

Protagoras and other sophists believed that a person may or may not accept the demands placed on him by society. Human behavior is not passive submission to external circumstances, but an active action, depending on the internal subjective motives of the individual.

Thus, the problem of individual freedom and individual responsibility appeared in the field of view of thinkers. If natural philosophers tried to see the organizational principle of society, then the sophists abandoned the installation of absolute norms. From their point of view, the world is ruled by a measure that allows each person to build his behavior on the basis of assessments “better-worse”, “more useful-more harmful”. The opportunity to choose has appeared, without which there is no freedom. It is no coincidence that Gorgias is considered the creator of the so-called ethics of situations, i.e. a system of rules that determine the behavior of each person depending on his perception and assessment of a specific state of affairs.

The discussion of this topic represented such a new area of ​​knowledge that its absolutization by the discoverers was inevitable. Hence the relativism of knowledge about the world, characteristic of the philosophy of the Sophists. It was due to their attempts to present the opinion of each individual as equivalent elements of general cultural phenomena. After all, if “everyone is right,” then there cannot be any general truth. In this case, a person is left alone with his own inner world, determined by the state of his soul, his personal knowledge, and assessments. This caused active objections from Socrates (469-399 BC). He also tried to understand the inner essence of man. Socrates felt that many attempts to once and for all solve the problem of a holistic description of reality were unsuccessful precisely because their creators did not take into account the influence of reason on the form of organization of knowledge about the world in which people exist. Therefore, it is necessary to understand the nature of thought itself, the form of reasoning with the help of which people built descriptions of the world order.

According to Socrates, focusing people's attention on the natural world could hardly lead them to knowledge of the truth. He believed that stones and trees cannot teach us. The first step that Socrates takes when setting out on the path of self-knowledge: “I know that I know nothing, but others are even worse than me, because they do not even know this.” For him, “knowledge of ignorance” is knowledge of one’s own imperfection. Such knowledge is a necessary condition for improving one’s own nature, because someone who is always confident that he already knows everything has no incentive to develop.

The statement about one's own ignorance is an axiom. Socrates suggests starting from scratch in order to jointly build a system of emerging knowledge. The stimulus for this process is the awareness of the distance between what everyone is in their existing existence and what they can and should become in order to correspond to the universal human essence as a certain ideal. Knowledge of this ideal not only gives an impulse that brings the individual out of a state of blissful complacency, but also sets the direction of action of this impulse. Knowing oneself, as Socrates understands it, does not refer to clarifying the details and details of a specific biography, but to the ideal of a person, which he may be able to realize only as a result of moving along the path along which he takes the first step. This knowledge does not relate to what is, but to what does not yet exist, and therefore it cannot become the object of any empirical experience. Consequently, the daily, momentary life activity of people is actually determined by some entities that are absent from this momentariness.

What does not and cannot exist as an immediate reality determines, implicitly for most people, their aspirations and actions. Socrates was the first to explicitly draw the attention of philosophers to an object that radically differs from the object of natural philosophy in three fundamental characteristics:

• it does not exist really, materially;
• inaccessible to empirical experience;
• it cannot be described in the language of mathematics.

But this does not mean that it does not exist at all. Some new level of being is simply revealed. Being devoid of signs of materiality, the ideal has signs of reality, for, being outside the boundaries of the material world, it actively influences the formation of the latter, determining the meaning and purpose of everything that exists. It is the ideal that determines the purpose of human life, filling it with deep meaning, and directs the actions of those who have realized its presence in their soul. It is precisely this that becomes the subject of study of the so-called sciences of the spirit, the sciences of that non-existent, without which everything that exists has no meaning or significance.

The active process of formation of social sciences and humanities begins in the first half of the 19th century. However, until the end of the 19th century. the cognitive ideal of classical mechanics extended to the social sciences. The dominant trend in the methodology of the humanities was naturalism - the universalization of the principles and methods of the natural sciences in solving problems of social cognition.

The development of society was explained either by mechanical or various natural factors, biological and racial characteristics of people, etc. However, the desire to explain the development of society by the laws of nature, ignoring the actual social laws, increasingly revealed its one-sidedness and limitations. On the specifics of social and humanitarian knowledge, see Chapter. 6 of this edition.

Social (social and humanities) sciences- a complex of scientific disciplines, the subject of study of which is society in all manifestations of its life activity and man as a member of society. The social sciences include such theoretical forms of knowledge as philosophy, sociology, political science, history, philology, psychology, cultural studies, jurisprudence (law), economics, art history, ethnography (ethnology), pedagogy, etc.

Subject and methods of social sciences

The most important subject of research in social science is society, which is considered as a historically developing integrity, a system of relationships, forms of associations of people that have developed in the process of their joint activities. Through these forms the comprehensive interdependence of individuals is represented.

Each of the above-mentioned disciplines examines social life from different angles, from a certain theoretical and ideological position, using its own specific research methods. So, for example, the tool for studying society is the category “power”, due to which it appears as an organized system of power relations. In sociology, society is considered as a dynamic system of relations social groups of varying degrees of generality. Categories “social group”, “social relations”, “socialization” become a method of sociological analysis of social phenomena. In cultural studies, culture and its forms are considered as value-based aspect of society. Categories “truth”, “beauty”, “good”, “benefit” are ways of studying specific cultural phenomena. , using categories such as “money”, “product”, “market”, “demand”, “supply” etc., explores the organized economic life of society. studies the past of society, relying on a variety of surviving sources about the past, in order to establish the sequence of events, their causes and relationships.

First explore natural reality through a generalizing method, identifying Nature laws.

Second through the individualizing method, non-repeatable, unique historical events are studied. The task of historical sciences is to understand the meaning of social ( M. Weber) in various historical and cultural contexts.

IN "philosophy of life" (V. Dilthey) nature and history are separated from each other and opposed as ontologically alien spheres, as different spheres being. Thus, not only the methods, but also the objects of knowledge in the natural and human sciences are different. Culture is a product of the spiritual activity of people of a certain era, and in order to understand it, it is necessary to experience the values ​​of a given era, the motives of people’s behavior.

Understanding how direct, immediate comprehension of historical events is contrasted with inferential, indirect knowledge in natural sciences.

Understanding Sociology (M. Weber) interprets social action, trying to explain it. The result of this interpretation is hypotheses, on the basis of which an explanation is built. History thus appears as a historical drama, the author of which is a historian. The depth of understanding of a historical era depends on the genius of the researcher. The subjectivity of a historian is not an obstacle to understanding social life, but a tool and method for understanding history.

The separation of the natural sciences and the cultural sciences was a reaction to the positivist and naturalistic understanding of the historical existence of man in society.

Naturalism looks at society from the perspective vulgar materialism, does not see fundamental differences between cause-and-effect relationships in nature and in society, explains social life by natural causes, using natural scientific methods to understand them.

Human history appears as a “natural process,” and the laws of history become a kind of laws of nature. For example, supporters geographical determinism(geographical school in sociology) the main factor of social change is considered to be the geographical environment, climate, landscape (C. Montesquieu , G. Buckle, L. I. Mechnikov) . Representatives social Darwinism reduce social patterns to biological ones: they consider society as an organism (G. Spencer), and politics, economics and morality - as forms and methods of struggle for existence, a manifestation of natural selection (P. Kropotkin, L. Gumplowicz).

Naturalism and positivism (O. Comte , G. Spencer , D.-S. Mill) sought to abandon the speculative, scholastic reasoning characteristic of metaphysical studies of society, and create a “positive,” demonstrative, generally valid social theory in the likeness of natural science, which had already largely reached the “positive” stage of development. However, based on this kind of research, racist conclusions were made about the natural division of people into higher and lower races (J. Gobineau) and even about the direct relationship between class affiliation and anthropological parameters of individuals.

Currently, we can talk not only about the opposition of the methods of the natural and human sciences, but also about their convergence. In the social sciences, mathematical methods are actively used, which are a characteristic feature of natural science: in (especially in econometrics), V ( quantitative history, or cliometrics), (political analysis), philology (). When solving problems of specific social sciences, techniques and methods taken from the natural sciences are widely used. For example, to clarify the dating of historical events, especially those remote in time, knowledge from the fields of astronomy, physics, and biology is used. There are also scientific disciplines that combine methods from the social, humanities and natural sciences, for example, economic geography.

The emergence of social sciences

In antiquity, most social (socio-humanitarian) sciences were included in philosophy as a form of integrating knowledge about man and society. To some extent, jurisprudence (Ancient Rome) and history (Herodotus, Thucydides) can be considered as separate disciplines. In the Middle Ages, social sciences developed within the framework of theology as an undivided comprehensive knowledge. In ancient and medieval philosophy, the concept of society was practically identified with the concept of the state.

Historically, the first most significant form of social theory is the teachings of Plato and Aristotle I. In the Middle Ages, thinkers who made significant contributions to the development of social sciences include: Augustine, John of Damascus, Thomas Aquinas , Gregory Palamu. Important contributions to the development of social sciences were made by figures Renaissance(XV-XVI centuries) and New times(XVII century): T. More ("Utopia"), T. Campanella"City of Sun", N. Machiavellian"Sovereign". In modern times, the final separation of social sciences from philosophy takes place: economics (XVII century), sociology, political science and psychology (XIX century), cultural studies (XX century). University departments and faculties in the social sciences are emerging, specialized journals devoted to the study of social phenomena and processes are beginning to be published, and associations of scientists engaged in research in the field of social sciences are being created.

Main directions of modern social thought

In social science as a set of social sciences in the 20th century. Two approaches have emerged: scientistic-technocratic And humanistic (anti-scientist).

The main topic of modern social science is the fate of capitalist society, and the most important subject is post-industrial, “mass society” and the features of its formation.

This gives these studies a clear futurological overtone and journalistic passion. Assessments of the state and historical perspective of modern society can be diametrically opposed: from anticipating global catastrophes to forecasting a stable, prosperous future. Worldview task Such research is the search for a new common goal and ways to achieve it.

The most developed of modern social theories is concept of post-industrial society , the main principles of which are formulated in the works D. Bella(1965). The idea of ​​a post-industrial society is quite popular in modern social science, and the term itself unites a number of studies, the authors of which seek to determine the leading trend in the development of modern society, considering the production process in various, including organizational, aspects.

In the history of mankind stand out three phases:

1. pre-industrial(agrarian form of society);

2. industrial(technological form of society);

3. post-industrial(social stage).

Production in a pre-industrial society uses raw materials rather than energy as the main resource, extracts products from natural materials rather than producing them in the proper sense, and intensively uses labor rather than capital. The most important social institutions in pre-industrial society are the church and the army, in industrial society - the corporation and the firm, and in post-industrial society - the university as a form of knowledge production. The social structure of post-industrial society loses its pronounced class character, property ceases to be its basis, the capitalist class is forced out by the ruling elite, possessing a high level of knowledge and education.

Agrarian, industrial and post-industrial societies are not stages of social development, but represent coexisting forms of organization of production and its main trends. The industrial phase begins in Europe in the 19th century. Post-industrial society does not displace other forms, but adds a new aspect associated with the use of information and knowledge in public life. The formation of post-industrial society is associated with the spread in the 70s. XX century information technologies, which radically influenced production, and consequently, the way of life itself. In a post-industrial (information) society, there is a transition from the production of goods to the production of services, a new class of technical specialists is emerging who become consultants and experts.

The main resource of production becomes information(in a pre-industrial society this is raw materials, in an industrial society it is energy). Science-intensive technologies are replacing labor-intensive and capital-intensive ones. Based on this distinction, it is possible to identify the specific features of each society: pre-industrial society is based on interaction with nature, industrial - on the interaction of society with transformed nature, post-industrial - on interaction between people. Society, thus, appears as a dynamic, progressively developing system, the main driving trends of which are in the sphere of production. In this regard, there is a certain closeness between post-industrial theory and Marxism, which is determined by the general ideological prerequisites of both concepts - educational worldview values.

Within the framework of the post-industrial paradigm, the crisis of modern capitalist society appears as a gap between a rationalistically oriented economy and a humanistically oriented culture. The way out of the crisis should be a transition from the dominance of capitalist corporations to scientific research organizations, from capitalism to a knowledge society.

In addition, many other economic and social shifts are planned: the transition from an economy of goods to an economy of services, an increased role of education, changes in the structure of employment and human orientation, the emergence of new motivation for activity, a radical change in the social structure, the development of the principles of democracy , the formation of new policy principles, the transition to a non-market welfare economy.

In the work of a famous modern American futurologist O. Toflera“Future shock” notes that the acceleration of social and technological changes has a shock effect on individuals and society as a whole, making it difficult for a person to adapt to a changing world. The cause of the current crisis is the transition of society to a “third wave” civilization. The first wave is an agricultural civilization, the second is an industrial civilization. Modern society can survive in existing conflicts and global tensions only under the condition of a transition to new values ​​and new forms of sociality. The main thing is a revolution in thinking. Social changes are caused, first of all, by changes in technology, which determines the type of society and the type of culture, and this influence occurs in waves. The third technological wave (associated with the growth of information technology and a fundamental change in communications) significantly changes the way of life, the type of family, the nature of work, love, communication, the form of the economy, politics, and consciousness.

The main characteristics of industrial technology, based on the old type of technology and division of labor, are centralization, gigantism and uniformity (mass), accompanied by oppression, squalor, poverty and environmental disasters. Overcoming the vices of industrialism is possible in the future, post-industrial society, the main principles of which will be integrity and individuality.

Concepts such as “employment”, “workplace”, “unemployment” are being rethought, non-profit organizations in the field of humanitarian development are becoming widespread, the dictates of the market are being abandoned, and narrow utilitarian values ​​that led to humanitarian and environmental disasters are being abandoned.

Thus, science, which has become the basis of production, is entrusted with the mission of transforming society and humanizing social relations.

The concept of post-industrial society has been criticized from various points of view, and the main reproach was that this concept is nothing more than apology for capitalism.

An alternative route is proposed in personalistic concepts of society , in which modern technologies (“machinization”, “computerization”, “roboticization”) are assessed as a means of deepening human self-alienation from of its essence. Thus, anti-scientism and anti-technicism E. Fromm allows him to see the deep contradictions of post-industrial society that threaten the self-realization of the individual. Consumer values ​​of modern society are the cause of depersonalization and dehumanization of social relations.

The basis of social transformations should be not a technological, but a personalist revolution, a revolution in human relations, the essence of which will be a radical value reorientation.

The value orientation toward possession (“to have”) must be replaced by a worldview orientation toward being (“to be”). The true calling of a person and his highest value is love . Only in love is the attitude towards being realized, the structure of a person’s character changes, and the problem of human existence is solved. In love, a person’s respect for life increases, a sense of attachment to the world, unity with existence is acutely manifested, and a person’s alienation from nature, society, another person, and himself is overcome. Thus, a transition is made from egoism to altruism, from authoritarianism to genuine humanism in human relations, and personal orientation to being appears as the highest human value. Based on criticism of modern capitalist society, a project for a new civilization is being built.

The goal and task of personal existence is to build personalistic (communal) civilization, a society where customs and lifestyles, social structures and institutions would meet the requirements of personal communication.

It must embody the principles of freedom and creativity, harmony (while maintaining differences) and responsibility . The economic basis of such a society is the economy of gift. The personalist social utopia is opposed to the concepts of a “society of abundance”, “consumer society”, “legal society”, the basis of which are various types of violence and coercion.

Recommended reading

1. Adorno T. Towards the logic of social sciences

2. Popper K.R. Logic of Social Sciences

3. Schutz A. Methodology of social sciences