Ideas and Ideals

The article combines research on state statistics of the USSR and the Russian Federation and the author's memories of the society's reaction to the work of the author and his colleagues in the alternative assessment of macroeconomic indicators of the economy of the USSR and Russia. The article by V. Selyunin and G. Khanin “The Crafty Figure”, published in the February issue of “Novy Mir” magazine in 1987, was a real shock to millions of Soviet people. In this paper, the author returns to the problem of statistics distortion in the Soviet and post-Soviet years, focusing on the huge distortions of the results and factors of the economic development of the USSR during 1928-1987 period by the Soviet economic statistics. The author describes the reaction to the “Crafty Figure” of the statistical service, the scientific community and the population of the USSR, as well as foreign economic Sovietologists, the Central Intelligence Agency of the United States. The author criticizes S.C. Dzarasov’s evaluation of the debate in the United States around the “The Crafty Figure” as the proof of the correctness of the estimates of the Central Statistical Administration of the USSR. The author shows that the quality of economic statistics in the Russian Federation has not improved compared with the Soviet period, and the cost and dynamics of fixed assets, natural indicators of production, financial indicators, employment have even significantly worsened. The article presents the results of alternative assessments of the economic development of the Russian Federation for the 1992-2015 period. The author and his colleagues received these estimates using a different methodology than similar estimates of the Soviet period. The results of the calculations of recent years allow us to conclude that real economic indicators are much worse than those published by the Federal State Statistics Service: the dynamics of GDP and the output of the real economy, labor productivity, and the dynamics of fixed assets. The author also analyzes the reaction of the statistical service of the Russian Federation and the executive authorities, the scientific and economic community, the media, the population of the Russian Federation, Western economists and research centers to this research on alternative assessments of the post-Soviet period, conducted by the author and his colleagues. The author explains the reasons for the difference in the reactions during the Soviet and the post-Soviet periods.

The authors analyze the rare experience of philosophical understanding of the accounting phenomenon reflected in the scientific heritage of one of the American accounting tradition founders – Charles Ezra Sprague. The article reveals the ideas of the American scientist on the nature, the form and construction of an account as a key category of accounting theory, his view on logic of communication between accounts and the balance sheet, and specific author's interpretation of balance sheet equation and objects of accounting. Basing on the historical parallels and analogies built between Ch. E. Sprague's ideas and urgent provisions of modern theories of financial accounting the authors come to the conclusion about the need to ensure a balance of foresight research in the field of accounting practice and historical, philosophical and science studies of the accounting theory and methodology.

In this article the problem of moral and ethic norms in accounting and auditing professions is discussed on the background of historical cases, described in the Treatise about damage of customs in Russia and publications on Panama swindle. Appealing to the Roman Pope’s Francis I conscription the conclusion on the necessity for fulfillment of the requirements of the Accountant Ethics Code is made.

In the article the author analyzes the concept and stages of economic development, as well as the process of economic technologizing on the material of three cases - Sumerian ideas about the price of the goods, Aristotle's views on wealth and the peculiarities of tea trade in Victorian England. There are two ways of representing the economy: maintaining the life of the social organism and as a special type of technology, providing the development of the economy, which at the same time acts as a source of economic and social crises. The author discusses the conditionality of the economy in the conceptual, cultural, psychological and social relations. The conclusion is that the economy develops, along with ensuring its social and cultural conditions that involve conscious participation of economic and cultural subjects in this process.

The article identifies the social-philosophical roots of neoliberal ideology, which as a project is in a very strong position in today's globalizing world. Classic authors of the neo-liberal approach are Western scholars Karl Popper and Friedrich Hayek, who developed the concept of "open society" ("extended order"), where the reference methodological designs are hard anthropocentrism, evolutionism and market relations. According to theorists of neoliberalism, the meaning of the historical process as a movement from "closed society", support for which was made by the collectivist structure, to the "open society", where relations of exchange based on individual aspirations and initiative are at the forefront. From this follows the introduction of a number of concepts, turning into a neo-liberal ideology – individual freedom, a market. The article shows the limited explanatory possibilities of the theory of Karl Popper and Friedrich Hayek, as well as the abstractness of the mentioned ideologies that often forces neo-liberal leaders to resort to double standards in the course of political practice. However, the strength of neoliberal tenets are not in scientific, but in their class nature that makes them useful as expressions of the interests of leading social groups.

The artcile considers the Max Weber's interpretation of the interrelations between economy and religion. The concept of «elective affinities» which played one the central roles in explaining complex correlations between the material culture and the religious experience is in the focus. The article argues that Goethe's famous novel «Die Wahlerwanschaften» (1809) and various critical replies do help to understand better the logic of Weber’s essay “The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism” (1905). In addition, this interpretation gives an opportunity to show the formal similarities and the content differences of the role of Protestantism and Old Belief (Schism of the Russian Orthodox Church) in the economic modernization of Europe and Russia.

The article considers the theoretical views of French monetary economists of the second half of the XVI century in connection with the price revolution of the period. The usual explanation of this inflation is based on the quantity theory of money, which was first propounded by Martin de Azpilcueta Navarro (1492-1586) in Spain and by Jean Bodin (1529-1596) in France. According to this theory, the precious metals, arriving in Spain from the New World, increased the quantity of metallic currency in the state. This in turn led to the increase in prices in Spain and to a balance-of-payments’ deficiency, as the demand for foreign merchandise, including goods supply from Spain to America, exceeded the Spanish own export abroad. This deficiency was financed by metallic currency which, respectively, affected price increase in foreign countries. However, the French theorists, besides the increase of precious metals in circulation, emphasized also other reasons for the inflation, such as a population growth, the actions of monopolists and the increased demand for luxury goods. In their works, they also offered a number of measures for a stabilisation of national currency. Their conclusions promoted the preparation of the monetary reform which was carried out by the government of France in 1577.

The author analyses the tendencies of the discipline formation such as philosophy of economy. The author hypothesizes that it was impossible to form autonomous philosophical-economic knowledge in Russia of the 18-th century. The prerequisites of philosophical and economic trends in Russia were investigated in the article as well as the history of scientific rational thinking formation within the framework of religiously-utopian discourse in the 18-th century Russia. According to the basic thesis of the article the philosophical-economic discourse could not be formed in Russia of the 18-th century because of the absence of cultural pre-conditions. The economic aspect was included into the religiously-utopian context, the author states the fact, that cultural space was not prepared to accept the economic ideas and concepts. Nevertheless, there was a need in scientific economic thinking able to specify the way of modernization of economy inspired by historical transformations of Peter I, who generated competition with the European states in such areas as: trade, military business and shipbuilding.

The main thesis of the article is that the concept of economic reality cannot be interpreted from the point of view of such a category as “matter”, although in the Marxist tradition this is exactly the case. This was associated with characteristic intention of Marx to direct transfer of the scientific picture of the world created by the earlier scientific forms of natural science into the area of economic and general social knowledge. However, as it is shown in the article, the scientific picture of the economic world is represented by the forms of culture that are fundamentally different from natural phenomena. For example, according to F.A. Hayek it is linked to the concept of "subjectivity", according to K. Popper's – with the “Third world”.