Ideas and Ideals

The article deals with the history and current state of land relations in the agricultural sector of Russia, analyzes the land legislation of Russia, the problems and specifics of land ownership and land use in three sectors of the agricultural economy: agricultural organizations, peasant (farmer) economy, household farms. It is noted that in the process of economic reforms of the 1990s, the institutional framework and legal framework for all types of business activities in rural areas and the formation of a diversified agricultural economy were created. The author considers the institutional conditions of functioning, specialization and efficiency of agricultural production in all categories of farms. It is noted that the market transformation of the agricultural sector of Russia in the 1990s, aimed at adapting agricultural organizations to market conditions, was successful. This is evidenced by a significant reduction in loss-making farms. Peasant (farm) economy as an independent segment of the agricultural economy contrary to the expectations of the reformers did not become a leading sector of the agricultural economy. However, it has occupied a niche and produces about one tenth of the total production. The private sector remains a significant producer of agricultural products, although there is a decrease in its share. The paper considers land relations in historical retrospect. Legislative regulation of land relations is analyzed in the context of the “Land Code of the Russian Federation”. It provides for the rationality of the use and protection of land in the interests of the whole society, while ensuring the guarantees of each citizen for the free possession, use and disposal of land belonging to him. The author comes to the conclusion that the informal agrarian economy has become a form of survival of the rural population in the period of radical socio-economic reforms. The methodological and theoretical basis of the study was the fundamental research of agricultural problems of domestic and foreign authors. The study is based on the analysis of a wide range of statistical data, as well as materials of sample surveys characterizing the specifics of land relations in modern Russia.

The author considers complex systems and problems of their management highlighting the problems in the public sector. The purpose of the study is specification of its complexity as an independent object of management, which requires acceleration of the coordination role and improvement of coordination mechanisms in a complex system management. The paper considers different options of complex systems and elements of their complexity, and then, defines four main types of them: multiplicity complexity of affine components, their behavior and communication and also cognitive difficulties. The object of the research is the public sector having several perspectives of consideration, each of which forms certain specifics of functioning and the corresponding problems, approaches and elements of its management. The author puts forward a hypothesis of the need of an independent vector in administrative activities for the solution of problems of system complexity in the public sector which includes the following functions: modeling and design, coordination, estimation, intellectual analysis and “clever” regulation. In its turn, coordination (the most important complexity management component) represents a difficult mechanism of administrative actions which are implemented at three levels (macro-, meso- and micro-) and three types of interaction (horizontal, vertical and displaced interactions). The methodology of research is based on cross-disciplinary interaction of the economic theory and the system analysis which allows to increase integrity of consideration of the public sector, to unite knowledge for the purpose of formation of new ideas and concepts. The result of research is system representation of the phenomenon of the public sector as a complex system requiring a corresponding set of measures for managing its complexity. The results of the research can be used both in the theory and practice of management, as well as in the development of the public sector economy.

The purpose of the study is to identify and compare the revealed theoretical approaches to the moral economy in order to substantiate the fundamental foundations of the integrative anthroposocial approach. Closely interrelated moral anthropic origin and moral social order are given as such foundations. The subject of the study is the existing approaches to the moral economy. The study is a theoretical analysis of the approaches to the moral economy, united by the author in two aggregated schools– anthropic-moral and socio-economic. The research methodology is the integrated approach for a comprehensive examination of the subject; general scientific principles of complementarity, diversity and unity. The results of the study, which constitute the scientific novelty: 1) it is revealed that there are the corresponding concepts of a moral person – Homo moralis – in all approaches reviewed, and it allows to establish the moral anthropic origin as the first foundation of the moral economy; 2) in the analyzed approaches, the main forms of sociality are revealed and characterized, functioning as “village community”, “religious community”, “Orthodox labour brotherhood”, “social institution”, which allow to define moral social order as the second foundation of the moral economy. The theoretical and practical significance of the study is that by identifying and comparing the existing approaches to the moral economy, its anthroposocial nature is defined 1) as the effective economic activity of a new person of high moral character; 2) as a set of intersubject economic relations based on the ideas of moral humanism. As a result, it becomes possible to compare existing approaches to the moral economy, when there is a person in its centre who respects humanistic morality in interpersonal relations of the economy of the society.

K. Marx fragmentarily presented the theory of industrial cycles in “Capital”, which investigated the formation and development of capitalism up to the maturing of free competition. A brief review of this theory shows that J. Schumpeter’s criticism is superficial. K. Marx did not deduce the mathematical laws of crises. The present paper partially fills this gap for the state-monopoly capitalism on the basis of the laws of surplus value and monopoly profit. Two models are considered, the transition from the first TM-2 to the second TM-2m is an ascent from the abstract to the concrete.Whereas TM-2 endogenously reproduces cycles in the positive growth rate of net output, TM-2m endogenously generates industrial cycles with decreases in net output in crises. This is achieved by converting a key parameter of the automation function into a new discrete variable, depending on the excess accumulation of capital. In addition, proportional control over the rate of capital accumulation has been introduced.TM-2m allows comparing impacts of economic policies on industrial cycles and on long-term trends in the US economy depending on a target rate of capital accumulation chosen by the State and financial capital in distinct scenarios.In 2018, the crisis will start, opening the next industrial cycle ending in 2025 according to scenario 1 or in 2026 according to scenario 2. The state monopoly-capitalism is entering a new period of over-production when sound economic policy becomes even more critical.

The article is devoted to the substantiation of the status of Marxism as a revolution in economic science. To achieve this goal, the author has to resolve a number of methodological difficulties associated with the interdisciplinary nature of Marxism, as revolutionary changes may relate to the philosophical, sociological, political spheres of Marxism, but do not affect the economic area. The author shows the role of the ideological filter accompanying Marxism, which for a long time did not allow to grasp an idea of authentic Marxism. In addition, Marxism in its development has gone through several stages, so you need to choose a starting point to assess its revolutionary character. In the course of the study, the author comes to the conclusion that Marxism has led to fundamental changes in economic theory, having formed an independent direction of economic thought, which remains in demand in our time. However, from the standpoint of T. Kuhn’s theory of paradigms Marxist political economy is not the result of a revolution and a new paradigm in relation to the classical political economy, but it can be considered as its continuation in the form of synthesis of ideas of classical political economy and German classical philosophy, especially Hegel dialectical method and materialistic approach to understanding the nature of social relations, suggested by L. Feuerbach. However, the theorists of Marxism evaluate it as the result of revolution in economic science, since the development through contradictions and qualitative jumps constitute the essence of Marxism.

The placement of Marx, together with Marxism, in a religious context may seem strange, at least to those people who still remember “opium for the people” and “a sigh of the oppressed creature”. There is a habit of associating the author and his teachings exclusively with the forms of scientific knowledge. However, it turns out that a more careful and consistent examination shows that despite the prevailing stereotype of the exclusively scientific identification of the Marxist doctrine, referring Marxism precisely to the religious context allows to understand its true place in history and culture. As the Russian philosopher of the Silver Age, S. N. Bulgakov, said, religion carries “the highest and last values that a person recognizes above himself and higher than himself, and that practical attitude, a human being is put in, in relation to these values”. But what are values? Values are the ultimate basis of choice and goal setting. Religion is the social form of the hierarchy of values existence. The article substantiates the thesis that the genesis of Marxism was the product of a complex collision in a general cultural process that embraced philosophy, science, and religion in their interrelation. The features of the interaction of these cultural phenomena in a certain social context explain the culturological features of religion, which are inherent in Marxism.

The paper analyzes K. Marx’s theoretical heritage from the modern standpoints, especially regarding his political and economic works. The author tries to answer the question – why his ideas were popular in the past and remain popular at present. The author discusses K. Marx’s scientific program and paradigm and shows that his scientific program fundamentally differs from those of other leading economists of the first half of the 19th century and his paradigm – from that of classical economics. Marxism created his own original paradigm which combined elements of classical economies and historical school. The paper also shows how K. Marx’s scientific program and some basic elements of his economic theory influence the works of scientists working within alternative schools. The author presents his critical notes to several elements of K. Marx’s theory, namely his historical concept, sociology, and especially, political economy. The author pays special attention to the terms used by K. Marx which allow making ambiguous conclusions and avoiding the critics. The author highlights the influence of Marx’s works on the choice of the subject and statement of problems made by researchers of neoclassical, Austrian, and institutional schools of economics. A major achievement of Marxism is that K. Marx states the problem of how modern bourgeois societies emerge, develop, and die as well as their institutional systems which define the economic dynamics and distribution of public wealth. The way how the Marxists explain economic processes (such as dynamics of prices, profits, and incomes, cyclical patterns of production development, and many others) as well as theories of historical dynamics, why states rise and fall, class structure of societies, and inefficiency of decentralized market economies have not been verified. However, at present K. Marx’s works are very attractive due to the ambiguity of his criticism of bourgeois society and, above all, an aphoristic nature and emotionality of his works. The reason for this is an integrated character of K. Marx’s political, economic, sociohistorical, and even ideological and psychological doctrine. As compared to Marx’s doctrine, modern science is comprised of specialized sectors and, therefore, it is less attractive and understandable.

The article analyzes the phenomenon of cryptocurrency. The authors reconstruct three versions of its creation: 1) it is a scam in the spirit of the Mavrodi pyramids, 2) it is new money that allows to earn adequately, 3) a conspiracy version. The authors sort out the myths about cryptocurrency. Namely, that money must necessarily be provided by gold or the economy of the country, and also be material (visible and perceived). Today, money is not provided with anything, and the "materiality" of money lies in their importance and efficiency. In this case, the authors characterize the efficiency with the help of four classical functions of money: money as a measure of value, a means of circulation, accumulation, and a means of payment. In addition to these functions, two more are singled out: money as a social institution and money as a tool for regulating economic relations. Cryptocurrency in its functions and structure is correlated with the sphere and functions of conventional money. The conventional money and cryptocurrency are two different systems of principles and conditions. In the first system, the state and elites are interested in manipulating conventional money and therefore created financial and other institutions that guard these manipulations. In the second one - financial institutions and consumer societies are still developing, but, in terms of their principles, they look like opponents of the first system. The authors suggest a hypothesis that the idea of creating cryptocurrency is to block manipulations with conventional money (their source is the state, economic and financial elites). With further improvement, as well as the disappearance of feverish demand, the cryptocurrency is likely to be able to more or less effectively perform the first four classical functions of money, and it wasn’t supposed to provide the other two functions (if we are talking about the existing system of management, economy and supporting social institutions). The paper considers different variants of the development of cryptocurrency and the possible interrelationships of crypto-communities with the state. The authors come to the conclusion that the victory of the state over the crypto-communities is not predetermined, both because of the crisis of modern civilization and its institutions, and the lack of control over these communities by the state.

Fundamental goal-setting of the functioning of economic systems is manifested in the intention for the sustainable development in the environment which is represented by “chaos” and is filled with uncertainty and the fundamental goal-setting is limited to “fundamental stochasticity” and “fundamental instability”. This feature stimulates the development of theoretical and practical aspects of new control mechanisms which include robust control that is a control configured to dampen uncertainty in an application to open systems. The article considers the development of the concept of robust control of economic systems in the continuum of fundamental paradigms “subject-object”, “subject-subject” and “subject-polysubjective environment” which determine the evolutionary view of control. The research is aimed at revealing the changing environment of the functioning of economic entities and developing models of reflexive and robust control of their interaction.             The model of market (polysubjective) environment used in the analysis takes into account the chaos and uncertainty and reflects the fundamental characteristics of the behavior of market participants: the existence of different pictures of subjective perception of the surrounding reality, the need for decision-making in the conditions of uncertainty, the emergence of reflexive processes that accompany the interaction of market actors. The methodology of introdu robust control into the polysubjective environment is based on the approach to structuring a reflexively active method, where the business situation, regarded as the carrier of uncertainty, and the elementary organizational structure, is the "subject-subject" interaction as its elementary organizational structure. The action in the context of "subject-subject" is determined by the generated model of reflexive control, which differs from the model of J. Soros, by the introduction of an interpreting function. It is shown that the result of interaction between economic entities is a random variable and to assess the admissibility of making a decision in the "point of agreement" it is necessary to seek compliance of the meeting result with the constraints imposed by the robust limit. The image of the process of generating control actions is represented by means of functions of reflexive governance acting within the limits of a robust limit.

The object of this research is the regional labor market (on the example of the Zabaykalsky Krai). In the research process the authors applied methods of factor analysis, cluster analysis, system and comparative analysis, extrapolation using trend models, calculative and analytical methods. The results of the study are an analytical review of the basic concepts, elements, classifications and functions of the labor market, overview of the main models of labor market and their characteristics. The authors have identified regions with similar strategies of employers and workers behavior during making the supply and demand for labor and have determined two factors affecting the regional labor market. Equilibrium and cobweb models of the Zabaykalsky Krai labor market were developed and the level of equilibrium price and employment was determined. The authors made a set of recommendations for regional authorities to regulate the situation in the labor market of the region. The results of this research can be applied to: the activities of the municipal and state government to assess the situation in the regional labor market; departments of labor and employment as a basis for the analysis, monitoring and selection of the regional employment policy models; educational institutions in the specialists training who are engaged in vocational guidance work with young people; associations of employers and regional government to develop the model and train specialists with necessary qualifications and a sufficient level of skills.