People have been concerning making a lot of goods necessary for their life maintenance for ages. Little by little for miscellaneous goods exchange there appeared money and the idea of "Economy", and even the science of "Economics" was formed. It is common knowledge that it is one of the most ancient sciences. It had always been attracting scientists and educated people. It is explained by the fact that studying economics - is the realization of the objective necessity of learning people´s motives, activity in their business operations, management laws at all times - from Aristotle and Xenophon up to this day. It is interesting to remember that in XIX century Pushkin A.S., who Tsar Nikolay I charged to think over the youth upbringing principles, first of all spoke against family education, and among obligatory sciences to study mentioned political economics. At the end of XIX century in his book "Foundations of Political Economics" Bunge V.N. noted that there was no political economics in those nations, who were at the lower step of the panhuman development. Today the interest of educated people in economic theory (political economics) grows more and more. It is explained by those global changes, which take place in the whole world and especially in Russia. An outstanding American scientist Samuelson P. called economic theory the Queen of Sciences. The Nobel Prizewinner Freedman M. wrote that economics -was a charming science, it was amazing because its fundamental principles were very simple, they could be written in one piece of paper, though they understood by few. The difficulty of this science reflecting the multiform world of economy is in the fact that its study requires, according to the words of a well known specialist in the economic idea history Heilenbronner A., "the stamina of a camel and patience of a saint" from the reader. The graduates of higher educational institutions in modern conditions must be able to show discrimination in a broad spectrum of economic issues, evaluate conservative and positive tendencies of social evolution to define their position in the changes taking place independently, be ready for practical activities and have a certain world outlook. A range of academic disciplines including economics is called up to solve this problem. Samuelson P. wrote in his textbook "Economics" known all over the world that the human having not studied the economic theory regularly was like a deaf man trying to value a piece of music.
Many hundreds years ago philosophers noticed that the economics of separate countries and even the world´s economics develop in cycles. Much later economists got interested in the economic cycles. But the economic development cyclicity nature remained unknown up to the present time. As our research showed, there was a lack of methods and techniques to investigate economic processes. Thus, one should get interested not in the cyclicity problems in economics, but develop a theory of economics. The significance of the theory consists not in the fact that it is a set of ready recommendations applied immediately in business practices and policy, but in the fact that it serves, according to Keynes J., an intellectual instrument, thinking technique, helps the one, who knows it, come to the right summaries and conclusions. Thereat, the unreasonable theorizing is undesirable as well, as it is useless. An English economist Litte I. figuratively called such scientists "non-economists" and fairly took up the position that the "non-economists" are usually too much academic, they separate themselves from the real world extremely hard. A severe crisis of all the life sides of our society could not help being reflected on the modern state of the economic science of Russia. The economic science crisis as a private form of the general crisis manifestation is natural, for economics is the reflection of the economic idea; one can notice that it is the economic processes that served powerful impetuses for the economic theory development in the past. So, the theory of economics of Marshall A. appeared and got wide spread as a result of the crisis of 1872 and the following 20 years´ depression, Keynesianism - after the crisis of 1829-1933 and the following depression, monetarism - after the crisis events of 1960-70-s, etc.
The inconsistency of the sights developed in the economic theory and representations about the world, the modern economic idea crisis - are not local phenomena (peculiar to the Russian economic theories only), but a universal tendency of XX century and the West. So, J. Galbraith wrote: "Economics, remaining in the narrow framework of the market micro- and macro- analysis, ceases to be a science and turns into a conservatively used system of beliefs pretending to be a science ". Russian scientists Kondratyev N.D., Vernadsky V.I., Bogdanov A.A., Slustky Ye.Ye., Gumilev L.N. and others also proved the necessity to review our idea of the world in their works.
Some scientists blame Marxism in dogmatism. However, we can´t help admitting that Marxism - is significant stage in the economic theory development. Samuelson P. especially marks out only three eminent thinkers having had a defining effect on the economic theory development in the history of the economic idea: A. Smith, K. Marx, J. M. Keynes. Another prominent American scientist J. Galbraith considered that Marx´s doctrine is too important to be entirely given to Marxists. J. Schumpeter also referred Marx to great scientists, and it didn´t prevent him from criticizing Marxism. At the beginning of XX century the doctrine of K. Marx was subjected to criticism in the works of Russian economists (Tulgan-Baranovsky, Rubin, Zheleznov and others, for example).
There is no escape from noticing that the accumulation of dogmas represents an unavoidable phenomenon in any science. Thus, the theory of conditioned reflexes of Pavlov I.P. was seen as a cure-all, the pick of this absolutization falling on the 50-s of XX century. A dogma - is a useless reality. What was the truth at one stage of the human thought course in the cognitive process, gets treated as an absolute at another one, becomes an axiom with a stark content and is already useless. But life is changing, and our ideas of life can´t help changing as well, and then a need for new concepts, new approaches and new paradigm requiring changing the social thought course itself arises. The new theory appears as an immediate response to the crisis. (All the references before and after the paragraph ate taken from the mentioned textbook).
The majority of scientists and experts see an outlet from the present-day socio-economic crisis of Russia in the transition to the market economy focused on the people´s growth in prosperity, in the abandonment of the closed economy and its substitution with the open one, which received the development in the USA, Japan, some countries in the West and other countries. That is why our searches in the passing rich world´s experience in teaching the economic theory are quite natural. Thereat, certainly, one shouldn´t blindly copy the achievements of western scientists. If to estimate the western economic science as a whole, it is impossible to be unconscious of its being pretty much mathematized and asocial, overloaded with diagrams. It can lead to the risk of too much formalization and devolution of the economic theory as an objective science, whereat the attention of the world´s scientific community was directed again and again. The default of the present theory lasted for this long. At the same time one should begin comprehending. For example, economy (Greek oikonomike, from oikos = dwelling + nomos = law) - is 1) an aggregate of production relations at a certain stage of development of the society; 2) the economy of the country, region, district, any enterprise, etc. That was lack to build the present theory of economy (non-economic theory) - it is much. (Further is ours).
Over the years after the invention of a nomogram and creation of automatic control systems (ACS) theory within the space of 30 years, i.e. after getting some results, gradually it became clear that the material production theory backbone is flows, the basis of process mathematical models - is flow balance equations in processes, and even the source of music is sound. Processes are primary, and theories describing them are secondary.
Let us remember the role of mathematics in building of theories. Still E. Fermi wrote about the topicality of physical processes modeling: "In magnetohydrodynamics it is possible to make such a mistake, that you shouldn´t believe the result of long and complex mathematical manipulations, if it is impossible to understand its physical sense, at the same time one mustn´t rely upon a long and composite chain of physical arguments, if it is impossible to illustrate it mathematically". But to use mathematics conditions are also required. Before our publications [1] there was no even scheme of enterprises´ current assets circulation in the correspondences of accounting records, there was no scheme of monetarized and monetary flows circulation between primary market segments, mathematical models of controlled production processes were required. To develop a theory of economy the models of association of the flows and control means were needed. Potential conditions for this are the combination of the three professions: "Business accounting", "Computer-aided manufacturing" and "Mathematic simulation of operating procedures" [2]. An overwhelming surprising by the total absence of any flows and a scheme of enterprises´ current assets circulation in the correspondences of accounting records has become an impulse for this. Our works differ both from foreign and Russian ones with the fact that the abovementioned combination of the three professions is the educational starting point in them. Besides, they have been begun with the invention of a nomogram (nomogram - from Greek nomos = law + gramma = theoretical or empirical dependences graphic presentation simplifying practical computations) for the closed-loop feedback systems and immediate production of control means of operating procedures for the first time in the world´s science. Using the nomogram for the ACS in developing the economic theory resulted in understanding economy as a closed-loop feedback system and put a stop to concoction of different variants of the economic theory [3].
It is important to remember that the word "Economics" in English was rendered into Russian as economy, economic theory and political economics. But from the same dictionaries it follows: (from Latin Liquidus = free of debts) - 1) financial, readily marketable, shiftable into cash (for example, liquid funds); 2) monetary assets; 3) efficiency, promotability - this is already the word management. With this comprehension it turns out that Economy = liquid estate property + monetary assets + management.
References:
- Ziganshin G.Z. Preconditions of present-day discoveries in economic science. Topical problems of Russian modern economy. International Scientific and Practical Conference. Kazan. 2005
- Ziganshin G.Z. Theory of industrial process control and modeling. Kazan: Publishing Department of MEI KB, 1998, p. 210.
- Ziganshin G.Z. Thirteen unknown properties of the economical system. EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF NATURAL HISTORY. № 5 2006.
The work was submitted to international scientific conference «Prospects for the development of university science», Dagomys (Sochi), 20-23 September 2008, came to the editorial office on 22.07.2008.
Библиографическая ссылка
Ziganshin G.Z. FOUNDATIONS OF ECONOMIC THEORY // European Journal of Natural History. – 2008. – № 5. – С. 67-69;URL: https://world-science.ru/ru/article/view?id=20856 (дата обращения: 25.11.2024).