□ Economic Science at a Turning Point U a brief description of scientific heritage of Kondratyev. "Methodological approach to the general theory of economic dynamics□ Long wave theory and discussion around it 3 Regulation, planning and forecasting problems
L. Economic Science at a Turning Point
The social breakdown that occurred after the October Revolution affected all spheres of public life, including science. Economics found itself at the epicenter of radical transformation. The Bolsheviks who held class positions proceeded from the need to subordinate economic science to the interests of the proletariat and expected from it recommendations for achieving politically defined goals. Such aspirations were partly based on Marxist political economy, which affirmed the principle of the class approach and science. However, if it was possible to glean from Marx and his followers some, albeit very vague, ideas about the picture of the socialist economy, then the problem of the transition from capitalism to socialism remained, in essence, not even posed. Driven by the harsh economic necessity of the current moment, the Bolsheviks, although they strove to follow Marxism, were forced to experiment in practice and at the same time create a theory. This left some , scope for analysis, especially since it was about the economic | a new type of policy.
Another aspect that determines the specifics of political economy is | th period, there was some continuation of the former scientific and pedagogical | gogic traditions. Despite the fact that many of the economists of that time negatively perceived the seizure of power by the Bolsheviks, they did not were only in demand Soviet power, but also deliberately | went to cooperate with her. And the point is not only in the pressure of financial necessity - leaving abroad or refusal from professional activity were possible, but also in the attractiveness for the pro |
professions of fundamentally new tasks that arose in the process of the transition to socialism, in the hope of the demand for existing knowledge and their use in the interests of the national economy (which was not typical of the previous government). For those who, at least a little, trusted the Bolsheviks and felt sympathy for the socialist idea, cooperation with the new government became possible. And although history has shown the naivety of such hopes, the 1920s turned out to be very fruitful for domestic economic science. Example N. D. Kondratieva is one of the most indicative in this respect: a graduate of the St. Petersburg School of Political Economy, an active political and public figure during the 1917 revolution, he showed himself as a scientist in the 1920s. It is difficult to say under the influence of what circumstances Kondratyev changed his sharply critical attitude towards the Bolsheviks, expressed by him, for example, in the article "On the way to hunger" [. Apparently, a certain role was played by the fact that the Bolsheviks managed to implement some economic measures that the Provisional Government tried but could not implement, and the socialist views of Kondratyev himself were of great importance. The latter determined not only his political sympathies, but also his position on such issues as the role of the state in the economy, income distribution policy, etc.
Kondratyev went down in the history of world economic science as the author of the theory of large conjuncture cycles (long waves, Kondratyev's cycles) 2, at the same time, his contribution is much larger and extends to the study of economic dynamics, planning and forecasting, economics transition period, agrarian issues and problems of agriculture.
N. D. Kondratyev was born in 1892 in the Kostroma province into a poor peasant family. He studied at a parish school, a teacher's school, a school of gardening, in 1911 he graduated (as an external student) from the Kostroma gymnasium and in the same year entered the law faculty of Petrograd University. After graduating from university and before the October Revolution, he actively worked in public and government organizations, dealing with food supply issues, in the Council of Peasants' Deputies, the League of Agrarian Reforms, the Main Land Committee. He was elected to the Constituent Assembly from the Kostroma province on the list of the party
This article was included in the collection "The Bolsheviks in Power" (Pg., M., 1918). 2 The name of Kondratyev and long cycles were inextricably linked thanks to J. Schumpeter (Schumpeter J. Business Cycles Vol. 2. N.Y., L., 1939).
moat (in this party from 1906 to 1919). He served as Deputy Minister of Food in the third and last cabinet of the Provisional Government. After the dispersal of the Constituent Assembly, he retired from political activity and moved to Moscow.
From 1919 he was a professor at the Petrovskaya (Timiryazevskaya) Agricultural Academy, in 1920 he became the director of the newly created Institute of Conjuncture (the full name is the Institute for the Research of Economic Situations), became a member of a number of commissions at the People's Commissariat of Agriculture, Narkomfin, State Planning Committee. In August 1922 he was arrested and convicted in the case of the so-called Tactical Center, sang for several months in a camp near Moscow, which, however, did not affect his career too much and did not become an obstacle to a long trip abroad - to the USA, Great Britain, Canada , Germany, to study the organization of agriculture and agricultural policy, as well as trends in the world market for agricultural products from the point of view of the prospects of the USSR on it.
The work of the Conjunctural Institute headed by Kondratyev was highly appreciated abroad, as evidenced by the reviews of S. Kuenets, W. Mitchell, I. Fisher, J.M. Keynes. Recognition of Kondratyev's personal contribution was his election as a member of a number of reputable foreign scientific communities, for example, the American Economic Association, the London Statistical Sociological Society, as well as his participation in the editorial board | economic journals.
In the mid-1920s, Kondratyev worked actively in the field of research and forecasting. He was one of the authors of a long-term plan for the development of agriculture and forestry, dk called "Kondratiev's agricultural five-year plan" tax policy, etc.).
In February 1926, at the Institute of Economics, Kondratyev made a report "Big cycles of the conjuncture", in which, summing up the results of many years of research on cyclical processes in the capitalist economy, he expressed the thesis about the existence of long periods of changing the conjuncture, thereby laying the foundation for a whole directed and modern economic theory.
Discussions about planning and about large cycles are inevitable h; tragedy on issues of a political nature, which gave a special
physical connotation to the nature of the discussion. Therefore, when the political line began to tighten and the curtailment of NEP began, scientific discussions and discussions practical issues began to take on the character of party studies. In this situation, the position of Kondratyev, who advocated a more balanced approach to the issue of the pace and methods of industrialization, advocated support for the middle peasantry and the development of the market, his theory of large cycles, which, with a certain political engagement, could easily be interpreted as contradicting the Marxist theory of the development of capitalism, and his past activities in the bourgeois government - all of this was blamed on the scientist and had far-reaching consequences. In May 1928, he was dismissed from his post as director of the Institute for the Conjuncture, and in June 1930 he was arrested. At the beginning of 1932, N.D. Kondratyev, along with a number of prominent agricultural specialists (A.V. Chayanov, A.N. Chelintsev, N.P. Makarov, A.G. Doyarenko, etc.) was sentenced in the case of the so-called Labor Peasant Party to 8 years in prison with serving time in the Suzdal political isolator.
In the first years of imprisonment, when Kondratyev had the opportunity to receive some scientific materials and allowed health, he continued to work quite actively on books on the problems of economic dynamics. Since 1935, the detention regime has been tightened, and health has deteriorated noticeably. In September 1938, Kondratyev was sentenced to death "for anti-Soviet agitation in places of imprisonment." Only in 1963 was this sentence canceled for lack of corpus delicti, and the cancellation of the 1932 sentence had to wait until 1987.
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On the topic: Economic views Kondratyev N.D.
In the discipline "History of Economic Teachings"
Introduction
1.Brief biography of Kondratyev N.D.
2. Economic views of ND Kondratyev.
3. The theory of "big cycles"
4. Research of problems of economic dynamics
Conclusion
Bibliography
Introduction
Currently, in world economic science with the name of a little-known Russian economist N.D. Kondratyev is associated with such concepts as "Kondratyev's long waves" or "Kondratyev's large conjuncture cycles" or "Kondratyev's cycles", as they were later called in the West.
The creative path of N.D. Kondratyev is closely intertwined with the activities of A.V. Chayanova. However, unlike the latter, Kondratyev is not concerned with organizational and production problems. peasant farms and cooperation, but an analysis of the economic situation in which rural producers have to operate. The solution of the agrarian question N.D. Kondratyev saw in the socialization of the land. He comes to the conclusion that in the countryside there should be an equalizing family-labor use of land and every worker should be provided with land free of charge. The scientist identified three acceptable forms of land use - personal, community and artel, but believed that the choice of the form should be carried out locally.
N. D. Kondratyev believed in the possibility of broad cooperation in agriculture. Positive sides cooperation consists in the absence of an emphasis on profit and in the possibility of increasing labor productivity. TO principles of cooperation the scientist attributed voluntariness and consistent transition to the highest forms of cooperation.
N. D. Kondratyev also opposed the concepts of forced industrialization. He offered to direct part capital investments on the development of agriculture and local manufacturing industry. The tasks of the development of industry were to be linked to the tasks of the development of the agrarian sector. The lack of such a balance can lead to imbalances in the economy and the disruption of the industrialization program (the concept of equilibrium development). These studies quickly brought Nikolai Kondratyev to the problem of long-term trends in economic development. Having processed the data on changes in the series using special mathematical methods critical indicators the state of the economies of England, France, Germany and the United States from the end of the 18th century to the beginning of the 20th century, Kondratyev discovered interesting patterns. After analyzing them, he formulated the theory of "long waves" of the development of a market economy, which made his name famous. Perhaps his interest in long waves was sparked by Tugan-Baranovsky, whom Kondratyev considered "the greatest Russian economist of all time." Kondratyev first formulated his theory of long waves in 1922.
This theory proved that countries with market economies in their development regularly go through stages of economic ups and downs, forming standard cycles that repeat every 40-60 years. Thus, for the first time in world economic science, Kondratyev was able to prove that time is independent and important. economic category, which must be reckoned with when regulating the economy of any country.
1. Briefbiography of Kondratyev N.D.
TOondratievHIcolayDmitrievich was born in 1892 into a peasant family.
Graduated from the law faculty of St. Petersburg University (1915), where his teachers were M.I. Tugan-Baranovsky, A.S. Lappo-Danilevsky, M.M. Kovalevsky, L.I. Petrazhitsky, and left at the university to prepare for a professorship in the Department of Political Economy and Statistics.
In 1917, after the February Revolution, N.D. Kondratyev participated in the preparation of the agrarian reform and for a short time was the Deputy Minister of Food in the government of A.F. Kerensky.
In 1918 he taught at the Moscow City University of Shanyavsky, in 1919-1920 - at the Cooperative Institute, since 1920 - professor at the Timiryazev Agricultural Academy. In 1920-1928 - director of the Institute of Conjuncture - a research organization for the study of the economic situation in the USSR and other countries, the methodology of planning the Soviet economy.
N. D. Kondratyev took part in drawing up the first 5-year plan. He believed that plans should be primarily qualitative rather than quantitative, based on rigorous research and proportionality. He was strongly opposed to forced industrialization by siphoning funds from agriculture. In 1920 he was arrested, but amnestied. In 1922 he was accused of assisting the Socialist-Revolutionaries and was under arrest; was on the lists for deportation from the country along with the future passengers of the "philosophical steamer", but thanks to the petition of the Bolshevik P.A. Bogdanov was left. In 1924 he was on a scientific trip to the USA, where he received an invitation from a friend of his youth P.A. Sorokin to teach at the University of Minnesota and stay abroad, but declined.
In 1930 N.D. Kondratyev was arrested and sentenced to a long term on trumped-up charges of creating and leading an imaginary "working peasant party" that allegedly fought against collectivization in the USSR. In 1938 he was convicted again and shot.
N.D. was completely rehabilitated. Kondratyev ("in the absence of corpus delicti") only after almost half a century - in 1987, and the first book of his works came to the current generation of economists only in 1989.
2. Economic views of N.D.Kondratieva
The creative path of N.D. Kondratyev is closely intertwined with the activities of A.V. Chayanov.
However, unlike the latter, Kondratyev is concerned not with the organizational and production problems of peasant farms and cooperatives, but with the analysis of the economic situation in which rural producers have to operate.
N. D. Kondratyev also opposed the concepts of forced industrialization. He suggested that part of the capital investments be directed to the development of agriculture and the local manufacturing industry. The tasks of the development of industry were to be linked to the tasks of the development of the agrarian sector. The lack of such a balance can lead to imbalances in the economy and the disruption of the industrialization program (the concept of equilibrium development). These studies quickly brought Nikolai Kondratyev to the problem of long-term trends in economic development. Having processed, using special mathematical methods, data on changes in a number of important indicators of the state of the economy of England, France, Germany and the United States from the end of the 18th century to the beginning of the 20th century, Kondratyev discovered interesting patterns. After analyzing them, he formulated the theory of "long waves" of the development of a market economy, which made his name famous.
This theory proved that countries with market economies in their development regularly go through stages of economic ups and downs, forming standard cycles that repeat every 40-60 years.
Thus, for the first time in world economic science.
Kondratyev was able to prove that time is an independent and important economic category that must be reckoned with when regulating the economy of any country.
In addition, N.D. Kondratyev, the dynamics of the economy is not a change in the "material relation", when today one batch of raw materials is processed, tomorrow another, a third, and so on. Analysis of the dynamics in the economy assumes that it is not the “material nature” of the economy that is investigated, but the volume and organization of production, the nature of consumption and demand, prices, etc.
Wave-like or reversible N.D. Kondratyev names such processes in which a phenomenon, changing its state, after some time can return to its original state. The scientist refers to reversible, for example, the processes of change in commodity prices, interest on capital, the share of the unemployed in the able-bodied population. Generally speaking, N.D. Kondratyev, process economic development it never happens more than once at the same level, it is only possible to record the transition from one stage of development to another. In this regard, there are no absolutely irreversible processes in the economy, but we can talk about the relative reversibility of some processes.
Reversible changes in the elements of the economic process, their susceptibility to fluctuations are the essence of the laws of cyclical dynamics. Not only economic, but also social and political phenomena are subject to cyclical fluctuations.
It was with N.D. Kondratyev associated statistical identification and theoretical substantiation of long-term cycles - "long waves of the conjuncture", or "big cycles", or "Kondratyev's cycles", as they were called later in the West.
Such large cycles, according to the Russian scientist, are born after or together with serious innovations in the economic life of society (the introduction of major inventions and discoveries of scientists, the appearance of new groups of countries on the world market, etc.). Moreover, the rise of the wave is usually accompanied by a particularly large number of wars and all kinds of political upheavals, including revolutions. The real material basis of "long waves" is a radical renewal by mankind of those types of production facilities and equipment that have a particularly long service life (railways, bridges, canals, dams, etc.).
These conclusions aroused great interest all over the world: the works of Nikolai Dmitrievich Kondratyev were immediately praised by prominent scientists, including Keynes, Schumpeter and others. A different fate awaited the theory of "long waves" and its author in Russia itself.
The conviction, born of long-term research, that the economy develops according to objective laws, played a fatal role in the fate of Nikolai Kondratyev.
His views and arguments contradicted the theory of the "party approach to planning the economy", which, under Stalin's supervision, became dominant in the USSR. Just like A.V. Chayanov, Nikolai Dmitrievich Kondratyev did not fit into the plans for transforming agriculture.
The scientist opposed excessive detailing, poor validity of plans, "fetishism of numbers." Even for state enterprises the planned figures should have been advisory rather than mandatory.
N.D. Kondratyev to the idea of channeling material resources to support the poorest peasant farms. He believed that it was necessary to strengthen the marketability of the agricultural sector. Help, however, must be provided to strong farms capable of rapidly increasing the volume of grain production. This was supposed to lead to a massive upsurge in high-value farms.
N. D. Kondratyev advocated free cooperation of peasant farms, warned that the inclusion of all the strong strata of the countryside in the "kulaks" would lead to a struggle against those who alone could be the basis for the production of marketable products. Only when commodity production in the countryside gets stronger can one think of material support for the poorest strata. These ideas of N.D. Kondratyev, like the idea of combining the plan and the market, was at odds with the then course of the Communist Party, and therefore were not in demand in practice.
Kondratyev wrote about the greatest economic justification of a small economy, which is not associated with the production of surplus value, does not depend on the free labor market, does not lead to the mortification of a significant part of fixed capital during the long “dead seasons” from suffering to suffering.
“The industrialization program requires large-scale agricultural machinery as a necessary condition for its reconstruction on the principles of collectivization .-- Pardon me, are we against? We are "for" advanced technology, for the most advanced technology in the capitalist countries, although we are still far from them. But ... beware of violating the eternal "law of all laws" - about diminishing soil fertility - it puts a limit to the "profitable" saturation of agriculture with capital, that is, "instruments of production." Here is a very "learned" Law of our "scientists" A.V. Chayanovaand N.D. Kondratievaabout "optimal sizes". "Intensive, mechanized farming from 5-6 to 100 acres of land in the hands of an individual user" - would be quite suitable. business. Well, as for collectivization - "you understand yourself; - you can't do anything with a plan, let the peasants decide themselves. Only they are unlikely to need large-scale equipment, because the experience of America, Germany, Denmark says ..." and so on. . etc.
So the singers of the kulak economy and the ideologues of capitalist restoration muttered everywhere and where they managed to penetrate - in literature, at meetings, in plans.»( Let's complete the defeat of the Kondratyevshchina A.A. Sadovsky M. Selkolkhozgiz. 1931)
Kondratiev's teaching on the role of the state in economic life is very original. He shared Pareto's views on the role of the market in reconciling a multitude of individual interests. But he did not agree with his strictly individualistic approach. For Kondratyev, man is not a passive material for the manifestation of the market element, but an active being capable of changing the future. The state concentrates the will of the people to change. However, not all of his activities are for the good. In this regard, Kondratyev formulates two concepts: probable changes in the economy and desirable changes in the economy. Economic activity the state is the more favorable, the more desirable changes in the economy coincide with its probable changes.
At first glance, it seems that this approach simply masks the concept of state non-intervention. In fact, Kondratyev does not even in his thoughts admit that the state, since it exists, will play a passive role in the economy.
He only insists that in achieving its goals the state chooses the path that is closest to the real trends of economic development.
3 . Long wave theory
In the early 1920s, Kondratyev launched an extensive discussion on the issue of prolonged fluctuations under capitalism.
In those days, there were still very strong hopes for a speedy revolution in the advanced capitalist countries, and therefore the question of the future of capitalism, the possibility of its new rise, its achievement of a higher stage of development was extremely relevant.
The discussion began with the work The World Economy and Its Situation During and After the War, published in 1922, in which Kondratyev suggested the existence of long waves in the development of capitalism. Despite the negative reaction of the majority of Soviet scientists to this publication, N. D. Kondratyev continued to consistently defend his position in the following works:
"Controversial issues of the world economy and the crisis (answer to our critics)" - 1923.
"Great cycles of the conjuncture" - 1925.
"On the issue of large cycles of the conjuncture" - 1926.
"Big cycles of the conjuncture: Reports and their discussion at the Institute of Economics" (together with DI Oparin) - 1928.
Kondratyev's research and conclusions were based on an empirical analysis of a large number of economic indicators different countries over fairly long periods of time, covering 100-150 years. These indicators: price indices, government debt securities, nominal wage, indicators of foreign trade turnover, mining of coal, gold, production of lead, pig iron, etc. The mathematical research method used by Kondratyev was not without flaws and was justly criticized by his opponents, but all objections concerned only the exact periodization of cycles, and not their existence. N. D. Kondratyev understood the need for a probabilistic approach in the study of statistical series of economic indicators. In his article "Large conjuncture cycles" he wrote that it is impossible to consider the existence of such cycles as proven, but the probability of their existence is high. None of the available methods of mathematical statistics can with a sufficient degree of probability confirm the presence of 50-year cycles in the interval of 100-150 years, i.e. based on information containing a maximum of 2-3 fluctuations.
However, objecting to the statements of critics that one cannot speak of "correctness", that is, the periodicity of large cycles, since their duration ranges from 45 to 60 years, Kondratyev rightly objected that large cycles from a probabilistic point of view are no less "correct" than traditional cyclical crises. Since the length of a traditional cyclical crisis varies from 7 to 11 years, its deviation from the average is more than 40%, and such a deviation from the average for a large wave, the duration of which varies from 45 to 60 years, is less than 30%.
Kondratyev also made 4 important observations regarding the nature of these cycles.
Two of them relate to the upward phases, one to the downward phase, and one more pattern appears at each of the cycle phases.
1) At the origins of the upward phase, or at the very beginning, a profound change occurs in the entire life of capitalist society. These changes are preceded by significant scientific and technical inventions and innovations.
In the upward phase of the first wave, that is, at the end of the 18th century, these were: development textile industry and the production of pig iron, which changed the economic and social conditions of society. Growth in the second wave, that is, in the middle of the 19th century, Kondratyev connects with the construction of railways, which made it possible to develop new territories and transform agriculture. The upward stage of the third wave in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, in his opinion, was caused by the widespread introduction of electricity, radio and telephone. Kondratyev saw the prospects for a new rise in the automotive industry.
2) The periods of the upward wave of each large cycle account for the largest number of social upheavals (wars and revolutions).
Here is a list of the most important events.
I upward wave: the Great French Revolution, the Napoleonic Wars, the wars between Russia and Turkey, the war for the independence of the United States.
I downward wave: the French Revolution of 1830, the Chartist movement in England.
II upward wave: the revolutions of 1848-1849 in Europe (France, Hungary, Germany), the Crimean War of 1856, the Sepoy uprising in India in 1867-1869, the American Civil War in 1861-1865, the wars for the unification of Germany in 1865-1871, the French Revolution of 1871 ..
II downward wave: the war between Russia and Turkey in 1877-1878
III upward wave: the Anglo-Boer War of 1899-1902, the Russo-Japanese War of 1904, the first World War, revolutions of 1905 and 1917 and the civil war in Russia.
It is clearly seen that social shocks of upward waves far outnumber those of downward waves both in the number of events and (more importantly) in the number of victims and destruction.
3) Downward phases have a particularly depressing effect on agriculture. Low commodity prices during a downturn increase the relative value of gold, prompting increased production.
The accumulation of gold is helping the economy to recover from a protracted crisis.
4) Periodic crises (7-11-year cycle), as it were, are strung on the corresponding phases of the long wave and change their dynamics depending on it - during periods of a long rise, more time is spent on "prosperity", and during periods of a long recession, crisis years become more frequent.
N. D. Kondratyev in his work "Long waves of the conjuncture" wrote that wave-like movements are a process of deviation from the states of equilibrium to which the capitalist economy strives. He raises the question of the existence of several equilibrium states, and hence the possibility of several oscillatory movements. Kondratyev proposes to talk not only about crises, but to explore the entire set of undulating movements under capitalism, that is, to develop general theory hesitation.
According to Kondratyev, there are three types of equilibrium states
1) Equilibrium "first order" - between normal market supply and demand. Deviations from it give rise to short-term fluctuations with a period of 3 - 3.5 years, that is, cycles in inventory.
2) Equilibrium of the "second order" achieved in the process of formation of production prices by means of inter-sectoral overflow of capital, invested mainly in equipment. Kondratyev associates deviations from this equilibrium and its restoration with cycles of average duration.
3) The balance of the "third order" concerns "basic material goods". In this category, Kondratyev includes industrial buildings, infrastructural structures, as well as a skilled workforce serving this technical mode of production. The stock of "basic capital goods" must be in equilibrium with all the factors that determine the existing technical mode of production, with the existing sectoral structure of production, the existing raw material base and energy sources, prices, employment and social institutions, the state of the monetary system, etc.
Periodically, this equilibrium is also violated and there is a need to create a new stock of "basic capital goods" that would satisfy the emerging new technical mode of production. According to Kondratyev, such a renewal of "basic capital goods", reflecting the movement of scientific and technological progress, does not occur smoothly, but in impulses and is the material basis of large cycles of the conjuncture.
In foreign literature, there is an opinion that in terms of the forms of development of scientific and technological progress, Kondratyev's concept is close to the innovative theory of long waves, developed by J. Schumpeter.
Kondratyev did not follow the path of Schumpeter, primarily due to his own scientific convictions. Unlike Schumpeter, he sought an explanation for long waves not in the readiness of entrepreneurs to innovate and not in transient bursts of entrepreneurial activity, but, first of all, in the very foundations of the reproductive process, he expanded the material basis of long waves, including in it - through the need to maintain a third-order balance - the entire amount of capital and labor resources providing this technical method of production on a long-term basis. Thus, he directly approached the concept of the life cycle of a technical mode of production.
The renewal and expansion of "basic capital goods" that occurs during the upward phase of a long cycle radically change and redistribute the productive forces of society. This requires huge resources in kind and money. They can only exist if they were accumulated in the previous phase, when more was saved than invested.
In the upswing phase, the constant rise in prices and wages gave rise to a tendency among the population to spend more, during a recession, on the contrary, prices and wages fall. The first leads to a desire to save, and the second leads to a decrease in purchasing power. The accumulation of funds also occurs due to a drop in investment during a general recession, when profits become low and the risk of bankruptcy increases.
It can be noted that such phenomena took place in the capitalist economy in the 1980s, when there was an outflow of capital from the production sphere into the sphere of speculative exchange transactions.
According to the forecasts of most scientists, the top point of recovery was passed by the economy in the early 70s. Since the mid-70s, the economy has been in a state of crisis.
Even in our country, despite the fact that it is premature to talk about the capitalist system and taking into account the specifics of the political situation and the tax system, one can nevertheless note a similar situation.
Thus, the main elements of the Kondratyev long cycle mechanism are as follows:
1. The capitalist economy is a movement around several levels of equilibrium. The balance of "basic capital goods" (production infrastructure plus skilled labor) with all factors of economic and social life determines this technical mode of production. When this equilibrium is disturbed, it becomes necessary to create a new stock of capital goods.
2. Renewal of "basic capital goods" does not occur smoothly, but in jerks. Scientific and technical inventions and innovations play a decisive role in this.
3. The duration of a long cycle is determined by the average life of industrial infrastructure facilities, which are one of the main elements of the capital goods of society.
4. All social processes - wars, revolutions, population migration - are the result of the transformation of the economic mechanism.
5. Replacing "basic capital goods" and getting out of a long recession requires the accumulation of resources in kind and money. When this accumulation reaches a sufficient amount, there is an opportunity for radical investment, which brings the economy to a new recovery.
4 . Study of the problems of economic dynamics
The last work of N.D. Kondratyev - " The main problems of the economic statics and dynamics ", was supposed to play the role of the first "introductory general methodological part" to an even more extensive work of five books. Kondratyev hoped to create a fundamental work on the general problems of economic development (balance and growth, statics and dynamics, cycle and crisis).
Kondratyev was a versatile researcher. Living in a country where the overwhelming majority of the population were peasants, he, like many Russian economists, early became interested in precisely agrarian problems.
Already the first works of Kondratyev "Development of the economy of the Kineshma zemstvo of the Kostroma province" (1915), "The bread market and its regulation during the war and revolution" (1922) are devoted to the agrarian sector of the Russian economy. regulation of agricultural production. Already here Kondratyev considers bread fixed price model, at which the degree of administrative interference is the highest, indirect price impact model, the essence of which was to "guess, imitate the free price", and finally, mixed pricing method based on a combination of a firm price basis with forecasts of its possible changes... Analyzing the ratio of fixed and free (market) prices for the period 1914-1918, Kondratyev points out the growing gap between them and comes to the conclusion that “the policy of fixed prices was powerless to master the movement of prices, eliminate free illegal prices, the dualism of free and fixed prices. ".
In the monograph "Bread Market ..." he first approached the concept of mixed forms of influence on the economy - from the state, trade and business structures, local authorities (cities and zemstvos), as well as from individual peasant farms. The problem of the grain market appears as a synthetic problem - many actors are involved in its solution, various, often contradictory methods of regulation are used. N. D. Kondratyev, even in the most difficult conditions of war and revolution, put forward the demand for a "market test" of the methods of state policy. With the active participation of the scientist, the Planning Commission of the People's Commissariat for Land of the RSFSR drew up the first-ever long-term plan for the development of agriculture and forestry of the RSFSR (1923-1928) (the so-called Kondratyev Five-Year Plan). began ", put forward the central idea of" close connection "and" balance "of the agrarian and industrial sectors. In the mid-20s. these provisions were finally formed in the form the concept of parallel equilibrium development of agriculture and industry. Kondratyev wrote that only "a healthy growth of agriculture presupposes ... a powerful development of industry." An effective agricultural sector is able to ensure the growth of the entire economy, become a guarantee of the stability of the entire national economy, including the process of industrialization.
It is characteristic that Kondratyev did not oppose the nationalization of the land. However, he considered it necessary to more boldly develop the commodity and trade foundations of the NEP village, to minimize the restrictions on the free development of the peasant's labor economy, inherited from the era of "war communism."
Kondratyev proposed to free the economic policy in the countryside from any inclinations in order to create a monopoly for the state and cooperative trading apparatus, proclaiming a course towards strengthening the marketability of the agricultural sector. In this vein, his ideas were developed on the priority assistance to farms approaching the farm type, capable of ensuring a rapid increase in the volume of marketable grain, including for export.
Kondratyev protested against the indiscriminate inclusion of all "strong strata of the village" in the kulaks... His program focused on the priority support of strong family labor farms that can become the basis of economic recovery in the country. The desire to direct the main financial and material resources to support at first the poor and poor middle peasants Kondratyev considered unjustified, unrealistic: these strata could really be helped only when the agrarian sector and the national economy as a whole were sufficiently strengthened, stood, as they say, on their feet.
Most of the decade of the 20s. was also filled with Kondratyev's hard work to develop theory of national economic plans. The scientist has repeatedly emphasized that in post-revolutionary conditions, the state, using nationalized property (on land, the predominant part of industry, transport, credit system and a significant part of trade), is able to exert a much stronger impact not only on the public, but also on the private sector, the people the economy as a whole. He considered planning to be the main method of such influence.
For a number of years, he headed the Department of Agricultural Economics and Planning Works of the People's Commissariat of Agriculture of the RSFSR, was the director of the Institute of Conjuncture under the People's Commissariat of Finance of the USSR. The young director (Kondratyev was not even forty then) set the institute the task of creating a macroeconomic theory of planning and forecasting. In addressing market research issues (price dynamics, indices of production volumes in industry, agriculture, etc.) Kondratyev and his collaborators stood at the forefront of world science.
By the mid-20s. in domestic economic thought, there are two main approaches to planning.
First ( genetic) was built on the basis of extrapolation into the future (by the size of the planning period) of those main trends in the development of the economy that were present in the present.
Second ( teleological) made the main emphasis on the formulation of a certain task of the plan in order to then find out the ways of its implementation. Kondratyev, like most of the major economists of the time, advocated a reasonable combination of both methods.
A staunch supporter of the combination of "teleology" and "genetics", he did a lot to study the objective characteristics and trends of the market economy. For him, the market was seen as a link between the nationalized, cooperative and private sectors, as well as an important source of economic information. The scientist saw the purpose of the plan in ensuring a faster rate of growth of productive forces than with spontaneous development. In addition, the scientist saw the task of planning in ensuring not only rapid, but balanced growth of production. The concept of a reasonable combination of market and planning principles seemed to him suitable for all sectors of the economy.
At the same time, as Kondratyev showed, this concept was modified depending on which sector was considered as an object of planning. So, in the field of agriculture, then based on private property peasants, by necessity, methods of indirect influence on the market had to prevail, the plan here had to assume a predominantly genetic character. On the contrary, in nationalized industry, elements of conscious, planned influence were capable of gaining much greater weight. Accordingly, the importance of teleological planning techniques increased. But in any case, it was possible to build a scientific plan, and most importantly, to bring it to life only in accordance with the real situation, the objective laws of the market, striving for an equilibrium of supply and demand, and the stability of money circulation.
The merit of N.D. Kondratyev was that he developed a rather coherent concept of scientific planning, a conscious impact on the economy, and in the conditions of the NEP, while maintaining the mechanisms of market regulation and market balance. It is not surprising that this concept turned out to be "not to the taste" of the Stalinist leadership, which outlined a forced, but without taking into account real conditions, transition to administrative state socialism. In his speech at a conference of agrarian Marxists, Stalin roughly criticized the theory of equilibrium (equilibrium development) developed by Kondratyev and his associates, calling it one of the "bourgeois prejudices."
World economic science Kondratyev is known primarily as the author the theory of large cycles of the economic environment. In a number of his works - "The world economy and its conditions during and after the war" (1922), the report "Large cycles of economic conditions" (1925) - the scientist developed the idea of a plurality of cycles, highlighting various models of cyclical fluctuations:
Seasonal (duration less than a year),
Short (duration 3-3.5 years),
Commercial and industrial (medium) cycles (7-11 years),
Large cycles lasting 48-55 years.
The big cycle concept fell into three main parts:
1) empirical evidence of the existence of a "large cycle model";
2) some empirically established patterns accompanying long-term fluctuations in the market environment;
3) an attempt to explain them theoretically, or actually the theory of large cycles of the conjuncture.
To establish whether large cycles exist, Kondratyev processed considerable factual material. He studied statistics for the four leading capitalist countries - England, France, Germany and the United States. Kondratyev analyzed time series of prices, interest on capital, wages, volume foreign trade, as well as the production of basic industrial products. The dynamics of production of coal and pig iron was also taken into account according to the "indices of global production".
Most of the data taken showed the presence of cyclical waves with a duration of 48-55 years. The period of statistical observations and analysis was at most 140 years (according to some data, less). For this period of time - by the middle of the 20s. - there were only two and a half completed large cycles.
According to Kondratyev's estimates, periods of large cycles from the end of the 18th century. turned out to be approximately the following.
1. An upward wave: from the late 80s - early 90s. XVIII century until 1810-1817
2. A downward wave: from 1810 to 1817. until 1844-1851
3. An upward wave: from 1844 to 1851. until 1870-1875
4. A downward wave: from 1870 to 1875. until 1890-1896
5. Upward wave: from 1890-1896. until 1914-1920
6. Probable downward wave: from 1914-1920.
Thus, despite the rather high conjuncture observed in the 1920s in the main capitalist countries, N.D. Kondratyev attributed this decade to the beginning of the next downward wave, which soon found confirmation in the dramatic events of the world economic crisis 1929-1933 and the subsequent multi-year depressive phase.
In general, the prediction of N.D. Kondratyev, the dynamics of long-term fluctuations in the market situation turned out to be quite accurate. It is no coincidence that interest in the model of “big cycles” has sharply increased precisely since the mid-1970s, when, almost half a century after the “Great Depression,” another general economic recession was observed everywhere in the West.
Kondratyev also identified a number of empirical patterns that accompanied long-term fluctuations in the economic environment. Thus, he believed that “before and at the beginning of the upward wave of each large cycle, profound changes are observed in the conditions of the economic life of society. These changes are expressed in significant changes in technology (which, in turn, are preceded by significant technical discoveries and inventions), in involvement in world economic ties new countries, changes in gold production and money circulation ”.
The main role, according to Kondratyev, was played here scientific and technical innovations... Thus, in the development of the first upward wave (the end of the 18th century), inventions and advances in the textile industry and the production of cast iron played a decisive role. The growth during the second wave (mid-19th century) was primarily due to the construction of railways, the rapid development of maritime transport, which made it possible to develop new economic territories and transform agriculture. Finally, the third upward wave (late 19th - early 20th centuries) was prepared, according to N.D. Kondratyev, inventions in the field of electrical engineering and was based on the massive introduction of electricity, radio, telephone and other innovations.
Other empirical patterns accompanying long-term market fluctuations, N.D. Kondratyev considered the following:
a) the periods of the upward wave of each large cycle account for the greatest number of social upheavals (wars and revolutions);
b) periods of a downward wave of each large cycle are accompanied by a prolonged and especially sharply revealed depression in agriculture;
c) during an upward wave of large cycles, average capitalist cycles are characterized by the brevity of depressions and the intensity of ups; the opposite picture is observed during the downward wave of large cycles.
Kondratyev economic cycle economic
Conclusion
The name of N. Kondratyev, who is little known in Russia, except for specialists, among foreign scientists dealing with the problems of the cyclical development of the world economy, speaks volumes. He developed the theory of dynamic economic development back in the 1920s. His works remain popular and are still being published.
The greatest scientific merit of Kondratyev is that he made an attempt to build a closed socio-economic system that generates these long-term fluctuations within himself.
Abroad, the name of N.D. Kondratyev was never forgotten, and the "Kondratieff waves" became the impetus for the birth of a whole trend in modern economic science. It is developing rapidly today, as the dramatically accelerated scientific and technological progress has begun, it seems, to squeeze "long waves", and mankind apparently needs to prepare for serious fluctuations in economic development.
The theory of large cycles N.D. Kondratyev had a profound impact on world economic thought, becoming one of the most important prerequisites for the theories of economic development and technological progress.
Theoretical concepts of long waves are important in that they provide the necessary basis for assessing the state of the economy and predicting its future state.
Bibliography
1. Kondrat'ev ND, Oparin DI Big cycles of a conjuncture. M., 1928.
2. AASadovsky Let's complete the defeat of the Kondratyevshchina M. Selkolkhozgiz. 1931.
3. Kondratyev N.D. "Problems of Economic Dynamics", M., 1989.
4. Kondratyev N.D. Special opinion. Selected works: In 2 vols. Series "Monuments of Economic Thought". Moscow: Nauka, 1993.
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Lecture 8 Economic theories of ND Kondrat'ev and AV Chayanov 1. Big cycles of conjuncture and the theory of foresight. 2. The concept of national economic planning as interpreted by Kondratyev. 3. Views of Kondratyev on agrarian issues. 4. The concept of a family-labor peasant economy. 5. The theory of peasant cooperation.
Literature: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. Kondratyev ND The bread market and its regulation during the war and revolution. - M.: Nauka, 1991 .-- 487 p. Kondratyev ND Selected Works. - M.: Economics, 1993 .-- 396 p. Kondrat'ev ND Big cycles of conjuncture and the theory of foresight. - M.: ZAO Publishing House "Economics", 2002 www. inet-lib. com (electronic library) A short course of cooperation: Reprint reproduction of the 1925 edition / Chayanov A.V. - M.: Cooperative publishing house, 1989. - 74 p. Chayanov A.V. Selected Works / Ed. count ser. : Adamov V.E. et al. - M.: Finance and statistics, 1991. - 432 p. In Search of Its Way: Russia Between Europe and Asia: A Reader on the History of Russian Social Thought of the 19th and 20th Centuries. in. : For higher educational institutions/ In 2 parts. Compiled by Fedorovsky N.G. - M.: Nauka, 1994 .-- 248 p. Nikulin A.M. Agrarian transformations in the research of Chayanov A.V. // Sociological research. - 2005. - № 10. Muravyova LA Overcoming the oblivion of time // Finance and credit. - 2003. No. 13
Nikolai Dmitrievich Kondratyev (1892 -1938) ND Kondratyev was born in the village of Galuevsky, Kineshmsky district, Ivanovo. Voznesenskaya province in a large peasant family. He studied at a parish school, in 1905 he entered the church-teacher's gymnasium, from where he was expelled in 1906 for being unreliable. In 1911 -1914. studied at Petrograd University, where he was engaged in socio-economic sciences, after which he was left at the Department of Political Economy to prepare for professorship.
He created and headed the Market Institute until 1928. Arrested in 1930 and convicted on charges of creating a non-existent "Labor Peasant Party" that allegedly fought against collectivization in the USSR. 1930 -1932 - in Butyrka prison. 1932 -1938 in the Suzdal political isolator. On September 17, 1938 he was shot.
The main works of ND Kondratyev on the agrarian question: "The Agrarian Question" (1917) "The World Economy and its Conjuncture during and After the War" (1922) "The World Bread Market and the Prospects of Our Bread Exports" (1923) .) "Agriculture of Russia in the XX century" (1923) "The relative fall in grain prices" "The bread market and its regulation during the war and revolution", etc.
In the economic theory of the 1930s. only cycles lasting 7-11 years were considered. Kondratyev ND proved that there are also cycles of economic dynamics with a duration of 48 -55 years - large cycles.
He studied the statistics of England, Germany, France and the United States for 140 years: production of iron and steel, coal consumption, interest on capital, wages of textile and agricultural workers, sown areas of oats, cotton, deposits in savings banks, etc.
Most of the data taken shows the presence of cyclical waves. The periods of fluctuation of individual data coincide very closely (the divergence of the breakpoints for individual curves exceeds 5 years only in isolated cases). At the same time, the data on the consumption of wheat, coffee, sugar, and cotton do not confirm the presence of large cycles.
Four important empirical patterns: 1. Before and at the beginning of the upward wave of each large cycle, profound changes are observed in the conditions of the economic life of society: significant changes in technology, the involvement of new countries in world economic ties, changes in gold production and money circulation.
3. Periods of a downward wave of each large cycle are accompanied by a prolonged and especially sharply revealed depression in agriculture. 4. During a period of an upward wave of large cycles, average capitalist cycles are characterized by the brevity of depressions and the intensity of upswings; In the period of a downward wave of large cycles, the opposite picture is observed
The onset of the upswing coincides with the moment when the accumulation and accumulation of capital reaches such a tension at which it becomes possible to profitably invest capital in order to create the basic productive forces and radically re-equip technology.
The incipient increase in the rate of economic life, complicated by medium-term industrial-capitalist cycles, causes an exacerbation of the social struggle, the struggle for the market and external conflicts.
In this process, the rate of capital accumulation weakens and the process of dispersal of free capital intensifies. Strengthening the effect of these factors causes a break in the rate of economic development and its slowdown. The effect of these factors is stronger in industry, and the turning point usually coincides with the onset of a prolonged agricultural depression.
The decrease in the rate of economic life determines, on the one hand, an intensification of searches in the field of improving technology, on the other hand, the restoration of the process of capital accumulation in the hands of industrial-financial and other groups, largely at the expense of agriculture. All this creates the preconditions for a new upsurge of the large cycle, and it repeats again, albeit at a new stage in the development of the productive forces. Thus, it is possible to assert the existence of large cycles of the economic conjuncture rather than talk about their absence.
2. Most of the decade of the 1920s. Kondratyev worked on the problems of national economic planning, drew up the first plans, set the task of creating a macroeconomic theory of planning and forecasting. The scientist saw the significance of the plan in ensuring a faster, with spontaneous development, the rate of growth of productive forces, as well as a balanced growth of production.
Scientific basis of foresight 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. The present and the future grows out of the past, the laws of the development of society must be studied for foresight. meaning, for “. ... ... Whether a project of social reform is being put forward, whether a particular measure of economic policy is proposed, whether a particular plan for regulating the national economy is being built. ... ... Everywhere the question of active interference in the course of events of the environment and the question of foreseeing the course of subsequent events are raised. ”The reliability of a forecast depends on the depth of scientific knowledge of reality Forecasting is the lot of scientists and any administrative intervention is detrimental to the reliability of forecasts.
Cyclic - genetic basis of foresight Kondratyev ND distinguishes three sections of the theory of economics: statics, dynamics and genetics Statics is a necessary, but initial stage of cognition. It identifies and describes the structure, internal and external relationships and proportions of the studied object in a state of rest or equilibrium without jumps in motion. Dynamics - allows you to identify changes in economic elements, that is, to think about economic life in the process of changes. Socio-economic genetics is the highest stage of knowledge, revealing the laws of heredity, variability and selection in the development of society, helps to understand their mechanisms when changing cycles.
The scientific basis for long-term and strategic forecasting was Kondratyev's doctrine of cyclical dynamics "The Problem of Foresight" (1926), "Plan and Forecast" (1927) ND Kondratyev reveals the criteria for the reliability and reliability of the forecast: regular character; 2. Anticipation of events that reveal the regular recurrence of cycles and crises; 3. Foreseeing general trends in socio-economic dynamics. For the last two types, the cyclical genetic approach is of decisive importance.
Forecast and plan Foresight is necessary for the purposeful influence of the state on the course of socio-economic development on the basis of long-term (strategic) plans. “The plan is not only foresight, it is. ... ... and program of action; but a plan without any foresight is nothing. " The starting point of the plan is the analysis of the objective economic reality and trends of its development and "building a system of measures and means of state influence on the course of this spontaneous development in order to direct it along the most desirable channel."
Plan perspectives are not only a directive, but also a foresight based on knowledge of connections and patterns in the course of reality, which were noticed when studying the past, and above all, dynamic patterns, since only dynamic patterns can indicate the path and forms of transition of events from stages of the present to one or another stage of the future, only dynamic patterns seem to link the present and the future. Scientifically based plans imply a decisive refusal to introduce arbitrary parameters into them. Let them become "poorer and more modest", but more real.
The long-term plan should consist of two main parts: 1. A substantiated and, if possible, quantitatively expressed idea of the probable and desirable prospects for the development of the economy. 2. The system of measures coordinated with these principles of the state, which are aimed at the implementation of these prospects. Criticizes the USSR State Planning Committee for building detailed balances of the entire national economy for the five-year period. He warns against the hypnosis of numbers and the arithmetic of detailed calculations that replace in-depth analysis of possible conflicting trends in future development.
General rule of planning constructions Only those phenomena and processes whose dynamics can be assessed by quantitative indicators are subject to planning, that is, to exact expression for a certain perspective; otherwise, one should confine oneself to an indication of the main trends. Relativity of planning directives “The plans that are drawn up cannot be understood as strictly accurate, so to speak,“ official ”directive. They should be understood as the main guiding directive, requiring the maximum creative flexibility from the practice in the sense of taking into account specific working conditions and obtaining the greatest results. "
3. The agrarian question in the work of ND Kondratyev An effective agrarian sector is able to ensure the growth of the entire economy, to become a guarantee of the stability of the entire national economy. He considered necessary priority assistance to farms approaching the farm type, capable of ensuring a rapid increase in the production of marketable grain. His program focused on supporting strong family labor farms that could become the backbone of economic recovery in the country. The scientist identified three acceptable forms of land use: - personal, - community, - artisanal. The choice of form should be done locally.
He sees the solution to the agrarian question in the socialization of the land. In the countryside there should be an equalizing family-labor use of the land, and every worker should be provided with land free of charge. Thanks to this, the unemployed part of the working class will be able to go into agriculture and will cease to undermine the position of the rest of the workers by their competition. Socialization will strengthen agricultural production and industry. It will make the people more well-fed, healthier and therefore more productive.
At the same time, N.D. Kondratyev is a supporter of the farming-capitalist way of developing agriculture, considering the social differentiation of the peasantry to be a natural and even positive process. The wealthiest peasant (farm) households achieve higher labor productivity, marketability and the degree of capital accumulation. Financial resources are intensively formed in them, which are used by their owners to intensify production. Within certain limits, resources can be drawn from large farms both for material assistance the poorest strata of the countryside, and for the development of industry. As for the poor, they create a reliable basis for replenishing the ranks of agricultural and industrial workers, which is also necessary for the development of the national economy.
ND Kondratyev sees the basis of land orders in a combination of three forms of land tenure: 1. State 2. Cooperative 3. Individual peasant. Kondratyev ND proved the futility of both large capitalist and small labor peasant farms as such. He saw the overcoming of the economic limitations of these forms of economic management on the path of cooperation. It is cooperation that can and should combine the advantages of small things (lack of emphasis on surplus value as main goal production) and large (ensuring significant labor productivity with lower unit labor costs and capital intensity, the introduction of the achievements of scientific and technological progress, etc.) methods of management.
Cooperatives should be formed on the basis of strict voluntariness, if necessary, follow the sequence in changing types of cooperation, in which the production cooperative is the final, most developed form of joint farming; its widespread introduction into the economic life of the countryside must be preceded by the cooperation of peasants in the sphere of circulation.
“The grain market and its regulation during the war and revolution” The creation of the army and the disruption of the grain market - set the task of regulating the supply of the army and the population with grain. The focus of this monograph was on the supply and regulation of the grain market under conditions of war and revolutionary transformations of society (the impossibility of its natural functioning).
Tasks of the state to regulate the supply: -Procurement of grain; -Pricing regulation; -Regulation of traffic; -Regulation of distribution and consumption; -Create a network of food organs.
The task of price regulation It was in the direct interests of the state to delay the further rapid rise in prices. Price regulation during the war is manifested in two main forms: 1. Influencing the market relationship between demand and supply of grain by throwing state or municipal grain reserves onto the market; 2. The establishment of specified prices instead of free prices. The quoted prices are, by their economic nature, divided into fixed prices and taxes.
Fixed prices - set in areas where grain is procured. Taxes are set in areas where grain is consumed. Considers a model of a fixed price for bread, in which the degree of administrative intervention is the highest; an indirect impact model, the essence of which was to guess the “free price”; and a mixed pricing method based on a combination of a firm price base with forecasts of its possible changes.
The ratio of industrial and agricultural prices "We want the policy of prices of agricultural products to be based on the principle that the price should ensure an expanded reproduction of agricultural products." public policy in subsequent decades, it proceeded from opposite principles and prevented not only expanded, but also simple reproduction in agriculture, as well as modernization.
The task of regulating the transportation, distribution and consumption of products. The regulation of transportation is explained by the "increased disorder of transport." The creation of a network of food agencies, the fulfillment of all previous tasks required the state to create an appropriate food organization in Russia.
Methods of state influence on the course of supply: Direct - the state itself, as an economic entity, acquires products and supplies them to the consumer: unification and unification of the procurement apparatus, distribution of procurements by provinces. Indirect - a system of measures, the purpose of which is to influence the grain market as a condition that determines the direct course of supply. These include: the establishment of fixed prices, export bans, the introduction of scheduled transportation. Complicated measures to regulate procurement - compulsory appropriation, state monopoly of grain.
Between the first and second groups of methods, Kondratyev notes a close connection, leading to the fact that in practice they are difficult to distinguish. ND Kondratyev is the first to approach the concept of mixed forms of influence on the economy - from the state, trade and business structures, local authorities (cities and zemstvos), as well as from individual peasant farms. The problem of the grain market is presented as a synthetic problem - many actors are involved in its solution, various, often contradictory methods of regulation are used.
He actively opposes the indiscriminate inclusion of all the "strong strata of the countryside" into the kulaks, an indefinitely broad approach to the kulaks engenders a struggle against the "strong, developing strata of the countryside." ... ... Which alone can be the basis of marketable products. "
"Kondratyev's Agricultural Five-Year Plan" Analysis of past and probable future trends in the development of agriculture, indications of the desirable directions of its development and measures, the implementation of which would contribute to the approximation of the probable direction to the desired one. Proceeding from the general orientation of the party and the state to accelerate the development of productive forces and create an industrial-agrarian type of economy, the most desirable direction for the development of agriculture was defined as the one that “firstly, perhaps fully and soon will bring the raw material base for the development of industry; secondly, it will accelerate the process of accumulating funds within the country and increase the purchasing power of the population; third, it will increase its tax-payment power. But all this is conceivable only with the expansion of agricultural products, with an increase in their value, with the acceleration of export opportunities. "
4. A. V. Chayanov (1888 -1937) was born in Moscow, graduated from the Petrovskaya (Timiryazevskaya) Agricultural Academy, where he worked for a long time. In 1908 he published his first scientific work about agricultural cooperation in Italy. In 1918 - Doctor of Science, Professor. In 1919 A. Chayanov created the country's first scientific research institute of agricultural economy. Until 1928, the director of this institute. Then he takes an active part in the organization of agricultural cooperation in the country, and also works in the highest economic bodies involved in agriculture. 1930 arrested in connection with the case of a laboring peasant party and exiled to Kazakhstan. 1937 was repressed and shot again.
"One of the profound and most important phenomena of the era we are living through in the history of Russia is the powerful revival of the Russian countryside, full of youthful energy." the masses of peasant farms are 90% pure family farms, while in Western Europe and America there are negligible numbers of them); 2) Cooperation in the agricultural sector. "Organization of the peasant economy" (1925); "A short course in cooperation" (1925); "Basic ideas and forms of organizing agricultural cooperation" (1927). 3) Organization of agricultural production
Family-labor peasant economy (stkh) 1. Aims at meeting the needs of the family members themselves. 2. Natural economy... He is drawn into the process of the market economy through the sale of surplus and better satisfaction of his own needs. 3. Advantages of stkkh: attachment of the peasant to the land, accurate accounting of soil, climatic, weather conditions, detailed knowledge of the peculiarities of agricultural labor, etc. 4. Organizational plan and labor consumption balance - the basis of the organization of stkkh
Organizational plan (the peasant's subjective display of the system of goals and means of economic activity), the choice of the direction of the economy, the combination of its various industries, the linking of labor resources and the main volume of work, the division of products consumed in their own economy and products sent to the market, balance cash receipts and costs.
The family composition determines the limits of the volume of the family's economic activity “The labor force of the labor economy is entirely determined by the availability of able-bodied family members. Therefore, the possible highest limit of the volume of the economy depends on the size of the work that these labor forces can provide with their greatest use and stress. To the same extent, the lowest volume of the economy is determined by the amount of material benefits that are absolutely necessary for the very fact of the existence of a family. "
Labor-consumption balance The peasant using his own labor and the labor of his family members in his farm does not strive for the maximum net profit, but for the growth of the total, gross income, the balance of production and natural factors, the correspondence of production and consumption, the even distribution of labor and income throughout the year. Consequently, market criteria for STKs are not always applicable. Land rent in stkkh it loses its unearned character, and takes the form of surplus income received by a peasant family due to the benefits of location, increased land fertility, and other factors.
The concept of the organizational plan and labor-consumption balance allowed Chayanov A.V. to explain a number of paradoxes in the development of the peasant economy in Russia: - Flax growing and potato growing - labor-intensive crops gave little net profit and were not widespread in the farms of the entrepreneurial type, while the land-poor peasants bred them very widely; - Low level distribution of high-performance threshers in stkkh; - In the years of poor harvests, stkkhs - an increase in the supply of labor, in the years of improving market conditions, it reduced the fund of working hours.
Fundamentals of the structure and turnover of capital in a family economy: 1. For each this level technology and the conditions of a given market situation, any agricultural holding that has the ability to regulate the area of its land use, can increase the productivity of its economy to a certain level that is optimal for this family. 2. Not all stkkhs operate at optimal capital intensity. Many of them run a farm with a low capital supply and receive low wages. 3. The processes of capital formation and capital restoration are tied in some balance with other processes of the family economy (labor intensity, satisfaction of personal needs, etc.) and in their strength depend on the development of the latter.
Demographic factors differentiation of stkx: - children grow up to become semi-workers, and then workers - disintegration of the "big family" into a number of small young families Thus, firstly, the dynamics of stkx is wave-like, obeying the process of its growth and decay; secondly, property differentiation is not social in nature.
Criticism of the three-term scheme "kulak - middle peasant - poor peasant" He singled out six types of farms: 1. capitalist; 2. semi-labor; 3. prosperous family and labor farms; 4. poor family and labor; 5.semi-proletarian; 6. proletarian.
Cooperation is a massive way to increase the efficiency of the agricultural sector. A cooperative is a union of farms, and farms that are part of such a union are not destroyed by this, but still remain small labor farms. An agricultural cooperative is an addition to an independent stkh, it serves it and without such a farm it makes no sense. Operations for processing, storage, sale of peasant products, purchase and maintenance of equipment, procurement of mineral fertilizers, seeds, pedigree, selection work, credit business, that is, all those operations where large-scale production has an advantage over the small one.
Approach to cooperation from two sides: 1. The organizational form of the economy. The concept of an organizational plan and differential optima of the size of enterprises. 2. Social movement - anti-capitalist and anti-bureaucratic orientation. Cooperation gives the peasants knowledge about the work of agricultural machinery, etc., therefore, in addition to commercial work, it conducts cultural and educational work in the villages. In cooperation, capital is a servant, not a master.
From the point of view of organization: Only those types of activity should go to cooperatives, the technical optimum of which exceeds the capabilities of an individual peasant farm. The “splitting off” of operations usually occurs “from market to field”: first, the cooperative form extends to 1) operations that link the economy with the market - purchasing, sales, credit cooperatives, 2) to the processes of primary processing of raw materials (dairy, vegetable drying, potato-making partnerships) and 3) production biotechnological (breeding societies for pedigree livestock, machine, land reclamation partnerships).
The theory of differential optima of agricultural enterprises The optimum takes place where, other things being equal, the cost of the products obtained will be the lowest. In the agricultural sector of the economy, the optimal size of farms is highly dependent on the climatic, geographical conditions, the biological nature of the processes, and other features, therefore, it is especially necessary to take into account the regional factor.
Differences between a cooperative and private trade and industrial enterprises: Cooperative production and trade 1. The interests of farms that have united in a union and created a cooperative for themselves are in the first place. Private entrepreneur and trader 1. The interests of capital invested in production and servicing are in the first place.
2. The management and management of the affairs of the cooperative is in the hands of the labor farms that are part of the cooperative. 3. The interests of the peasant are determined not only by obtaining benefits for themselves, but also by the demands of spiritual life, 2. Management and management of affairs is carried out by representatives of capital who have spent a lot of money. 3. Private interests are conditioned only by obtaining greater benefits, profits for themselves.
He protested against the tendency to nationalize cooperatives. The cooperative apparatus is recognized as being more perfect in servicing the countryside than state enterprises, because “. ... ... cooperation managed in the smallest of its bodies by the elected representatives of the working people, under the control of the members of the cooperative who elected it, not bound by the administrative orders of the center, flexible in economic work, allowing the most rapid and free manifestation of profitable local initiative - is the best apparatus where organized local initiative is required, where in each case, it is necessary to flexibly adapt to local conditions and take into account the smallest features of each place and each month of work. "
He defends the independence of cooperative organizations - "the coordination of the interests of the cooperatives and the state through a general agreement between state bodies and cooperative centers." Cooperatives support and develop peasants' craving for forms of economic self-government (meetings, elections of government and democratic control over its work, etc.) .Cooperatives are rebuilding disunited individual peasant farms into higher forms of social economy, and this is the main task of building a new village.
The concept of differential optima up to the mid-1920s. was used by Chayanov in order to substantiate "vertical cooperation" (for independent and relatively small peasant farms). From 1928 to 1930 A. In Chayanov's attention is already focused on the organization of large and largest agricultural enterprises of state farms (a break with the previous concept of individual family-labor economy as the basis of the agricultural sector). Under the new political realities, the individual peasant economy cannot be preserved, therefore, it substantiates the state farm form as the most acceptable from the point of view of the introduction of mechanization, advanced methods of agrarian science.
Organization of the agrarian sector “Agriculture remained somehow aloof from the conquests of human culture and was conducted almost everywhere in the old fashioned way in thousands and millions of individual small farms, scattered, unconnected by anything, and in the majority of workers with very little perfect technology. ... ... Is it possible in general to organize agriculture like industry on new principles of modern technology and scientific organization? How can these methods and paths be introduced into the depths of the countryside, how can the peasantry be organized so that the conquests of science and practice become accessible to them? This question is the most important question for the agricultural sector! "
In 1917, he put forward a plan for the reconstruction of the agrarian sector (rather radical): - transfer of land to the ownership of the working peasantry and the introduction of labor ownership of land (without the right to buy and sell plots); - transfer to the state of landlord farms and exemplary estates; - introduction of a unified agricultural tax for partial withdrawal of differential rent. Negative attitude to the Socialist-Revolutionary demand for an equalizing allotment of land to peasants, believing that such a regime of land use does not correspond to the flexible nature of the stkkh and will require unbearable costs with multiple boundary redistributions.
Two promising types possible development agriculture: 1. The American farming path of capitalism in agriculture with the introduction of all kinds of capitalist auxiliary enterprises into the strata of farms 2. "Cooperative collectivization" and the transformation of cooperation into ". ... ... one of the components of the socialist economic system ”. AV Chayanov recommended the second path as the only possible one in the Soviet countryside to prevent "farmer degeneration" and for the gradual involvement of each of the peasant farms in the general channel of the planned economy.
Topic: Economic views of A.V. Chayanova, N.D. Kondratieva
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University: VZFEI
Year and city: Omsk 2009
Introduction 3
1. A.V. Chayanov as a leading representative of the organizational and production direction 4
2. Introduction to the doctrine of the working peasant economy A.V. Chayanov 6
3. Economic views of ND Kondratyev 21
4. The theory of long waves 26
Conclusion 33
References 35
Introduction.
The material development and state of society, the mentality and social "well-being" of the population in all countries to a large extent is determined by scientists-economists, their system of views and, most importantly, the impact on real economy... It is the culture, innovation and professionalism of economists that ultimately tell us more about a country than current figures. Indeed, economic indicators and statistics can (and do) change in a short time - due to the rational application of innovative economic theory.
In addition, the economic success of any country depends on the absence of contradictions between the national traditions of the country and its social and economic practice, since national traditions can either contribute to the economic success of a nation, or, if they are not taken into account, lead to its stagnation.
Russian economic thought is an organic component of the entire history of economic science, including consideration of both the general logic and methodology of the approach to the history of the formation and development of domestic economic thought, and the analysis of specific historical stages in its development, and the works of the most prominent Russian scientists.
1. AV Chayanov as a leading representative of the organizational and production direction.
The views of such a prominent Russian economist as Alexander Vasilyevich Chayanov (1888-1937) are also of interest. The main circle of his scientific interests is the study of the processes taking place in the Russian economy, the specifics of socio-economic relations in domestic agriculture. The main subject of the scientist's research was the family-labor peasant economy. Chayanov proved the inapplicability of the conclusions of classical economic theory to peasant farming, which was characterized by non-capitalist motivation. Extensive research allowed Chayanov to conclude that the peasant economy differs from the farm by the very motive of production: the farmer is guided by the criterion of profitability, and the peasant economy is guided by the organizational and production plan, which represents the totality of the monetary budget, labor balance in time and for various industries and types of activity. turnover Money and products. He noted that the peasant family is not interested in the profitability of production, but in the growth of gross income, ensuring equal employment for all family members.
Chayanov formulated a provision on the exceptional viability of agriculture, which for a long time can withstand such a drop in prices and increase in costs that completely destroys profits and part of wages, which is disastrous for entrepreneurs using hired labor. And precisely because the peasant economy is not chasing profit, but is concerned about maintaining the existence of the farmer himself and his family. Concretizing the thesis about the consumer nature of peasant farms, Chayanov used the theory of marginal utility. He argued that in the peasant economy there is a certain "natural limit" to the increase in production, which occurs at the moment when the burden of the marginal cost of labor will be equal to the subjective assessment of the marginal utility of the amount received. With certain reservations, we can say that the expenditure of their own forces goes to the limit at which the peasant economy receives everything necessary for the existence of his family. Chayanov's theory of peasant economy is also connected with the theory of cooperation. In his opinion, there are no prerequisites for the development of American-type farms in Russia, despite the fact that large-scale agricultural production has a relative advantage over small-scale ones. Therefore, a combination of individual peasant farms with large cooperative farms would be optimal for our country. Chayanov believed that cooperation is capable of combining various types and forms of activity, formed vertically "from field to market." At the same time, the process of growing plants and animals remains behind the family production. All other operations, including product processing, transportation, sale, lending, scientific services, will be carried out by cooperative organizations. The development of cooperatives, which enter into direct contact, bypassing capitalistically organized enterprises, weakens the latter. Thus, each new form cooperation (consumer, industrial, credit - through the organization of the savings bank cooperatives) undermines some type of capitalist exploitation, replacing it with a "comradely" method of meeting needs.
2. Introduction to the teaching of peasant labor economy of AV Chayanov.
The work of the outstanding Russian agrarian economist A.V. Chayanov is distinguished by exceptional richness and diversity. There is not a single branch of agricultural and economic science where a scientist would not leave his mark.
In the logical development of A.V. Chayanov's theory of a labor peasant economy, one can single out 3 stages:
- Family farming
- The agricultural sector as a whole.
A.V. Chayanov worked on these problems all his life, leading them through all his works.
The origins of family labor theory.
The most important role in the emergence of a new agrarian thinking was played by a radical change in the economic development of agriculture at the beginning of the century, which was expressed in the crisis of the landlord economy and in the rapid development of peasant farms. Both noted tendencies developed quite contradictory. They caused the deepening of the agrarian crisis in Russia at the beginning of the twentieth century. The Stolypin agrarian reform did not resolve this crisis, but accelerated its maturation. Ultimately, it was the unresolved problems of the peasant economy in the first two decades of the 20th century that gave impetus to the emergence of the theory of family labor economy.
AV Chayanov considered the idea of a family economy, a family economy to be a fundamental feature of Russian agrarian-economic thought, dating back to Sylvester's Domostroi (16th century). It is in this work that the family is viewed as an integral economic organism, in all the richness of its economic, demographic and sociocultural manifestations.
The traditions of the Petrovsk Agricultural Academy had a huge influence on A.V. Chayanov. A favorite student of the famous statistician and agronomist A.F. Fortunatov, he continues the work of his teacher to study the special motivation of the peasant economy, search for factors in the growth of yields and profitability of peasant allotments, the principles of regionalization of agricultural Russia.
A.V. Chayanov was not a Marxist, but his theory in a peculiar way echoes the statements of Karl Marx about the non-capitalist nature of the peasant economy, about the dual nature of the peasant as an owner and a worker.
Based on the work of his predecessors and contemporaries, A.V. Chayanov consistently developed the basic principles of labor management, found methods for its optimization, substantiated the theory of the organization of peasant farms, and outlined ways to study their differentiation.
Organization of the peasant economy.
The current of Russian economic thought "organizational - production direction", to which A.V. Chayanov belonged, took shape shortly before the First World War of 1914-1918. and the theme was caused by profound socio - economic changes that, after the revolution of 1905, were outlined in the life of the Russian countryside.
Changes in the global market environment towards favorable for agriculture, education in Russia due to the development of industry domestic market for agricultural products, the rapid development of market relations and marketability of the peasant economy, the rapid growth of commercial capitalism, the irrepressible growth of the cooperative movement, etc. - all this, appearing imperceptibly in the form of all kinds of "attempts", "undertakings" every year grew more and more quantitatively, turned into a mass phenomenon, and by the beginning of the First World War the Russian village was qualitatively different from the village of the last century.
It goes without saying that in the future, in the Soviet period of our history, all these processes deepened even more, and the gap between the new and
the old has become much larger.
For some reason, it was generally accepted that the research work of the "organizational and production" direction was reduced to the construction of a special theory of peasant farming. This is one of the deepest delusions. This group, responding to the practical requests of agronomists and cooperators, brought into its assets a wide range of topics developed by it: methods of agricultural zoning, the use of railway traffic statistics for the commodity characteristics of regions, accounting analysis of peasant farms, budget and questionnaire research methods, painstaking study of special crops and handicrafts, methods of technical accounting of agricultural production, the theory of agricultural cooperation, methods of agronomic assistance to the population.
The doctrine of the organization of the peasant economy developed from two channels of research work:
- The gradual accumulation of a huge empirical material on the organization of peasant farming, obtained partly by processing the data of zemstvo and state statistics, partly through independent, but mainly budgetary research. A simple generalization of this material led to a number of indisputable empirical conclusions.
- Establishment, also empirically, of a number of facts and dependencies that did not fit into the framework of the usual understanding of the foundations of the organization of a private enterprise and required any special interpretation. These special explanations and interpretations, given at first in each specific case separately, introduced into the usual theory such a number of complicating elements that in the end it turned out to be more convenient to generalize them and build a special theory of the family labor economy, somewhat different in its motivation nature from the enterprise organized on hired labor.
At the forefront of A.V. Chayanov put the personal labor of the peasant and his family members. Already in 1911. in his work, district agronomy and the organizational plan of a peasant economy ", he gives a classic definition of the goal of a peasant economy:" The task of a peasant labor economy is to provide the means of subsistence to an economic family through the fullest use of the means of production and labor at its disposal. "
Analyzing the works of A.V. Chayanov, it should be noted two theoretical achievements of his:
- Organizational plan idea
- The concept of the labor consumption balance.
They formed the core of the theory of the non-capitalist enterprise planning its operations to meet the material and spiritual needs of its members.
The basic principles of the organization of the peasant economy:
The size of the territory of the economy, as well as the ratio of the production factors deployed on it, are not the only possible ones in only one optimal size and ratio. There are many deviations from these optimal feeds. However, the optimal ratio gives the highest income, and any deviation from it brings the owner a lower rate of profit. This decline occurs gradually, which explains the economic possibility of the existence of farms that greatly deviate from the optimal norms in terms of size and ratio of factors.
If the organizer does not have enough land, or capital, or labor to develop the economy in optimal sizes, the enterprise is built in smaller sizes, in accordance with the factor that is at a minimum. However, in whatever size the economy is built, it always has a proportionality of parts and a certain regularity of their correlation, inherent in every economic system, due to technical expediency and necessity. Any violation of this harmony leads to an inevitable and perceptible decrease in the productivity of labor and capital costs, as it removes the economy from the optimal combination of production factors.
When starting to organize an enterprise on the basis of a family labor economy, we are faced with the fact that one of the factors - the labor force - turns out to be fixed by its cash in the family. It follows from this that the size of the family determines both the size of the household and the composition of all its components. In addition, it should be noted that very often, due to constant or random reasons, the availability of land or means of production turns out to be below the optimum required and is insufficient for the full realization of the labor of an economic family. It is then natural that the production element, the availability of which is below the norm, becomes the determining factor of the agricultural enterprise.
Organizational plan of the peasant economy.
An economic peasant family, starting to organize production, ultimately seeks to fully satisfy its needs and ensure the further stability of its economy with the process of capital restoration with the lowest energy consumption for itself and with the highest possible payment for each of its units.
Each farm is part of the general national economic system and is determined by those static and dynamic factors that are characteristic of the current phase of its development. In different regions, the combination of natural and market conditions is extremely diverse, therefore there are many types and types of structure of peasant farms, since the natural and national economic differences in the region are complicated for many farms by differences in family composition, land ownership and capital availability. Among these differences, the main one, which determines the entire nature of the structure of the economy, is the degree of connection of this economy with the market, the development of commodity production in it.
An economic family uses all the possibilities available to its forces of its natural-historical position and the market conditions in which it exists.
After thoroughly familiarizing himself with the Russian and German special literature, A.V. Chayanov came to the conclusion that the core of the peasant economy is its organizational plan. The organizational plan revealed the internal structure of the economy, the relationship of various sectors of the economy, the combination of agriculture and crafts, the monetary budget, the turnover of cash and products, the distribution of the labor costs of a peasant family in time and across various industries and types of activity. It reflected the changes that took place in the peasant economy under the influence of the local market, the general economic situation.
The most important points of this plan were:
- Labor balance (agriculture - trades)
- Balance of means of production (livestock - inventory)
- Monetary budget (income - expenses).
Thanks to its contact with the market, the economy is able to throw out from its organizational plan all those low-income branches of production in which the product is obtained with greater efforts than those required to obtain its market equivalent in other, more profitable branches of economic activity.
Organizationally, there remains only that which either gives high wages, or is, for technical reasons, an indispensable element of production.
The classic method of drawing up an organizational plan is to establish such a sequence of organizational considerations and calculations, in which each subsequent stage of the organization could be built with sufficient completeness on the data and numbers that are obtained as a result of work on the previous stages of the organization.
A.V. Chayanov, however, believed that the peculiarity of the organization of the peasant economy lies not in the sequence of the course of reasoning, but in those criteria with the help of which these arguments are made.
Organizational considerations:
Accounting for the labor force of the family and its consumer needs.
An economic family is the initial, initial size for building an economy, that customer, to whose requests the farm must respond, and that working apparatus, by whose forces it is built. It should be noted that the forms of economy and production created by the family are largely predetermined by those objective national economic and natural conditions in which the peasant economy exists, but the very volume of economic work and the mechanism of adding up the economy mainly come from the family, which takes into account all other elements of the economic situation.
Accounting for land tenure and possible land use.
The organizational plan of an agricultural economy based on hired labor accepts the organization of the territory as a defining moment in the organization of the economy. In a family economy, where the given value is not land, but the labor and consumer elements of the family, the issues of organizing the territory cannot be of such importance.
When starting to organize a farm, it is necessary to take into account the availability of land at the disposal of the farm and its location, the quality of soils, relief, the availability of absolutely meadow and absolutely pasture areas, i.e. those that, due to the condition of humidity or relief, cannot be otherwise exploited. In addition, it is necessary to find out the rental possibilities that are at the disposal of the farm.
Organization of the territory.
When organizing peasant farms almost always had to reckon with the extremely poor location of their territory. The reason for this was the communal-leveling methods of land redistribution with their division of land into single-quality wedges and the allocation of a strip from each wedge to almost every member of the community.
Labour Organization.
Having outlined the organization of the branches of agriculture and the needs of on-farm transport, one can summarize all labor costs in the peasant economy and consider its organization.
The peasant family is far from making full use of what it has at its disposal. work time- partly because of the seasonality of agricultural work and the forced absence of them during the dead periods of the year, and partly because, having covered their needs with a certain share of labor efforts and having achieved internal economic equilibrium, the peasant family no longer has any incentives to work in the future. Only ¼ part of the working days is spent on farming, including all hay and field work.
Conclusion: In the work of A.V. Chayanov, the structure of the organizational plan acquired a clear form: from the choice of the direction of the economy - to the planning of its individual branches, to the preparation of labor and cash balances. For the first time, the author was able to connect all aspects of on-farm planning of small agricultural enterprises.
Labor and consumer balance.
AV Chayanov developed a model of the labor-consumption balance of a peasant economy: "... any labor economy has a natural limit of its output, which is determined by the proportionality of the stresses of annual labor with the degree of satisfaction of the needs of an economic family."
In 1922 - 1925. A.V. Chayanov succeeded in constructing a holistic theory of the organization of the peasant economy. A.V. Chayanov presents the presentation of the new theory of the study of the peasant economy in a debatable form as a response to critics who used the argument about the rapid disappearance of family-labor farms and the uselessness of the theory associated with them. But this argument was not valid: in 1927 - 1928. peasant labor farms occupied 97.3% of the sown area, had 90% of the means of production, and only every fifth farm used hired power
The family-labor economy was considered by A.V. Chayanov not in isolation, but with the help of national economic categories - prices, rent, interest, income, etc. The author was very far from depicting the bright prospects of an isolated peasant economy. On the contrary, in his works he showed the need for cooperation and its inclusion in the national economy.
A.V. Chayanov dwells in detail on factors of profitability peasant farms, which he divides into two groups:
- On-farm
- National economic
The main on-farm factors according to A.V. Chayanov: family labor resources and labor intensity.
A.V. Chayanov substantiated a very important conclusion about the absence of a category of wages in a non-capitalist economy and about its transformation into net income (personal budget) of family members. In its embryonic form, the idea of self-supporting income, distributed among the members of the labor collective, is expressed here, and the stability and "survival" of such a collective is shown.
The specifics of the peasant economy, devoid of the category of wages, posed the task of “immersing” it in the system of national economic categories. A.V. Chayanov successfully coped with this task, pointing out the transformation of the forms of prices, interest and rent in the peasant economy and their impact on the internal structure of the non-capitalist form of production.
Especially interesting analysis of rental relations: rent, according to the author, lost its exploitative essence in the peasant economy, being expressed there in the form of excess income received by the peasant due to more fertile lands, a favorable location in relation to the market, population density, the structure of his income, market prices. A.V. Chayanov develops here classical theory rent, highlighting the nature of demand and the level of market prices as rent-forming factors.
It should be noted that A.V. Chayanov's colleagues were not unanimous on the issue of rent: A.N. Chelintsev denied its existence in the peasant economy, and G.A.Studensky identified it with capitalist rent.
A.V. Chayanov gropes for the dynamics of involving peasant farms in the general turnover. This, according to the author, is a mechanism of "cooperative collectivization" carried out on a strictly voluntary basis and strictly stimulated by the state.
Differentiation of peasant farms.
The last period of A.V. Chayanov's creativity covers 1927 - 1930. At this time, the scientist, along with other problems, studied the processes of differentiation of the peasantry.
A.V. Chayanov managed to develop his own approach. Based on the achievements of dynamic censuses and the production-demographic analysis of differentiation made by zemstvo statisticians and the organization-production school, he showed that the differentiation of the peasantry in the 1920s was radically different from the pre-revolutionary one. In the conditions when large landlord and capitalist farms disappeared, differentiation, according to A.V. Chayanov, arose as a result of the disharmony of two types of farms: natural, accumulated in the most fertile central black earth regions, and simple commodity, gravitating to the markets of seaports, the largest cities and agricultural regions of Turkestan. Rebuilding from natural to commodity, the Russian peasantry experienced agrarian overpopulation, began to migrate, and therefore differentiated. For A.V. Chayanov, stratification appeared, therefore, not as a social-class process among the peasantry, but as splitting off from the main array of family-labor farms of four types of independent enterprises: farming, credit-growing, industrial, auxiliary.
Here, his concept of the organizational plan of peasant farms and their differential optima was further developed, and most importantly, his view of demographic differentiation, which in 1927 he began to consider only as a background for socio-economic differentiation.
A.V. Chayanov made his farm classification from the point of view of their production organization of different social groups:
- Capitalist farms
- Semi-labor farms
- Wealthy family - labor farms
- Poor family and labor farms
- Semi-proletarian farms
- Proletarian farms
The author also put forward a plan for resolving the contradictions of such differentiation: cooperative collectivization of the second - fifth types of farms, with the subsequent economic displacement of the rural proletariat into family - labor management through the cooperative credit system.
AV Chayanov posed the problem of studying "the process of the transformation of a family peasant economy into farm forms." The author believed that the greatest attention should be paid to the process of direct restructuring of labor family farms into farms based on the use of hired labor in order to obtain surplus value. Despite the fact that the process of the formation of the rural bourgeoisie led to the growth of agricultural production, A.V. Chayanov believed that it "hinders the development of cooperative forms of concentration of agriculture - this is the main channel of our economic policy in agriculture."
A.V. Chayanov put forward a multifactorial scheme of differentiation of the peasantry according to production and social characteristics, substantiated the path of cooperative collectivization, which resolved contradictions in the countryside by peaceful economic methods.
The cost price and prices for the products of peasant farms.
In 1928 - 1929. A.V. Chayanov and his colleagues have published works summarizing the study of the problems of prime cost and pricing in agriculture. In the understanding of A.V. Chayanov, the main problem was to find internal price basis which would satisfy two requirements:
- Would give a cheap product to the industry
- It would ensure the sustainability of the development of peasant farms that supply these raw materials.
A hypothesis was put forward: to oppose a single price with a certain “single modal control cost”, which determines from the normal values of each element of the costs of a set of farms.
Cost elements according to the Italian double-entry bookkeeping method proposed by A.V. Chayanov, they were divided into 3 large groups:
The sum of total and direct costs indicated production cost, and the addition of charges to it gave, respectively, technical, national and private economic costs.
The most difficult was the accounting of labor costs. The traditional method of calculating daily and piecework wages was only partially acceptable: hired labor in the peasant economy was used in very small amounts, moreover, such an account concealed the influence of the rent factor.
A.V. Chayanov took a different path: as an indicator of wages, he took the peasant's family budget minus income from crafts. Thus, labor was evaluated at the cost of reproducing the peasant's labor power, taking into account the rent component of the cost price.
The revealed regularities in the formation of the cost price made it possible to answer the question about the price: what level of the cost price should the price correspond to? A.V. Chayanov believed that the maternity price should be brought to such a level that would pay for the costs and capital recovery of the worst-cost farms within the limits of the volume of production that produces the socially necessary volume of raw materials.
Capital in the labor economy.
In his work, A.V. Chayanov proved that in a peasant economy, capital does not always play the same role as in a capitalist economy, and its disposal can pursue other goals and take place in other forms. The author substantiated that:
- The objects of economic activity and the amount of labor realized in the peasant economy are determined not so much by the size of the capital available to the entrepreneur as by the size of the family and the balance that is established between the measure of satisfying its needs and the measure of the burden of its labor.
- For a peasant economy, the ratio of the elements of production (land and capital) does not correspond to the capitalist optimal, which provides the highest percentage of capital invested in the enterprise.
- With the same capital, a peasant family, by increasing the labor intensity of the farm, can significantly increase both the volume of the farm and its gross income, at the cost of lowering wages per unit of labor and accounting net profit.
Labor and capital in the peasant economy form a combination of production factors, which, as a result of the production process, give gross income. Of this gross income, in order to maintain the economy in the same volume, part of the values should be spent on restoring the advanced capital to its original level and on expanding it with the expansion of the volume of economic activity, everything else is directed to meeting the usual needs of the family, or, in other words, to the reproduction of labor.
In the labor economy, the sum of values that serves to restore the workforce is the entrepreneur's personal budget, determined by the size of the family and the degree of saturation of their needs.
Having studied the empirical data, A.V. Chayanov made a number of very important conclusions for agrarian economic thought:
- In the organizational practice of the peasant economy, there is a certain limit to the rational equipping of the labor force with the means of labor. Any increase in the amount of capital available to the worker up to this limit contributes to an increase in labor productivity. having reached the indicated limit, armament reaches its optimum and enables the labor force to develop its production capabilities. In the future, no new increase in the capital intensity of farms will be able to increase labor productivity and change the basic equilibrium of on-farm factors.
- At each given level of technology and conditions of a given market situation, any working family that has the ability to regulate the area of its land use can increase the productivity of its labor, increasing the capital intensity of its economy to an optimal level.
- Not all family farms operate at optimal capital intensity. Many of them run their households in a low capital supply and receive low wages.
- In general, the processes of capital formation and capital recovery are linked in some balance with other processes of the family economy and depend on their development.
3. Economic views of ND Kondratyev.
The creative path of N.D. Kondratyev is closely intertwined with the activities of A.V. Chayanov.
However, unlike the latter, Kondratyev does not
organizational and production problems of peasant farms and cooperatives, and an analysis of the economic situation in which rural producers have to operate.
N. D. Kondratyev also opposed the concepts of forced industrialization. He suggested that part of the capital investments be directed to the development of agriculture and the local manufacturing industry. The tasks of the development of industry were to be linked to the tasks of the development of the agrarian sector. The lack of such a balance can lead to imbalances in the economy and the disruption of the industrialization program (the concept of equilibrium development). These studies quickly brought Nikolai Kondratyev to the problem of long-term trends in economic development. Having processed with the help of special
mathematical methods, data on changes in a number of important indicators of the state of the economy of England, France, Germany and the United States from the end of the 18th century to the beginning of the 20th century, Kondratyev discovered interesting patterns.
After analyzing them, he formulated the theory of "long waves" of the development of a market economy, which made his name famous.
This theory proved that countries with market economies in their
development regularly go through stages of economic boom and bust, forming standard cycles that repeat every 40 - 60 years. Thus, for the first time in world economic science
Kondratyev was able to prove that time is an independent and important economic category that must be reckoned with when regulating the economy of any country.
In addition, N.D. Kondratyev, the dynamics of the economy is not a change in the "material relation", when today one batch of raw materials is processed, tomorrow another, a third, and so on. Analysis of the dynamics in the economy assumes that it is not the “material nature” of the economy that is investigated, but the volume and organization of production, the nature of consumption and demand, prices, etc.
Wave-like or reversible N.D. Kondratyev names such processes in which a phenomenon, changing its state, after some time can return to its original state. The scientist refers to reversible, for example, the processes of change in commodity prices, interest on capital, the share of the unemployed in the able-bodied population. Generally speaking, N.D. Kondratyev, the process of economic development never happens more than once at the same level, you can only record the transition from one stage of development to another. In this regard, there are no absolutely irreversible processes in the economy, but we can talk about the relative reversibility of some processes.
Reversible changes in the elements of the economic process, their susceptibility to fluctuations are the essence of the laws of cyclical dynamics. Not only economic, but also social and political phenomena are subject to cyclical fluctuations.
It was with N.D. Kondratyev associated statistical identification and theoretical substantiation of long-term cycles - "long waves of the conjuncture", or "big cycles", or "Kondratyev's cycles", as they were called later in the West.
Such large cycles, according to the Russian scientist, are born after or together with serious innovations in the economic life of society (the introduction of major inventions and discoveries of scientists, the appearance of new groups of countries on the world market, etc.). Moreover, the rise of the wave is usually accompanied by a particularly large number of wars and all kinds of political upheavals, including
revolution. The real material basis of "long waves" is a radical renewal by mankind of those types of production facilities and equipment that have a particularly long service life (railways, bridges, canals, dams, etc.).
These findings aroused great interest all over the world: about the works of Nikolai
Dmitrievich Kondratyev was immediately praised by prominent scientists, including Keynes, Schumpeter and others. A different fate awaited the theory of "long waves" and its author in Russia itself.
The conviction, born of long-term research, that the economy develops according to objective laws, played a fatal role in the fate of Nikolai Kondratyev.
His views and arguments contradicted the theory of the "party approach to planning the economy", which, under Stalin's supervision, became dominant in the USSR. Just like A.V. Chayanov, Nikolai Dmitrievich Kondratyev did not fit into the plans for transforming agriculture.
The scientist opposed excessive detailing, poor validity of plans, "fetishism of numbers." Even for state-owned enterprises, target figures should have been advisory rather than mandatory.
N.D. Kondratyev to the idea of channeling material resources to support the poorest peasant farms. He believed that it was necessary to strengthen the marketability of the agricultural sector. Help, however, must be provided to strong farms capable of rapidly increasing the volume of grain production. This was supposed to lead to a massive upsurge in high-value farms.
N. D. Kondratyev advocated free cooperation of peasant farms, warned that the inclusion of all the strong strata of the countryside in the "kulaks" would lead to a struggle against those who alone could be the basis for the production of marketable products. Only when commodity production in the countryside gets stronger can one think of material support for the poorest strata. These ideas of N.D. Kondratyev, like the idea of combining the plan and the market, was at odds with the then course of the Communist Party, and therefore were not in demand in practice.
Kondratyev wrote about the greatest economic justification of a small economy, which is not associated with the production of surplus value, does not depend on the free labor market, does not lead to the mortification of a significant part of fixed capital during the long “dead seasons” from suffering to suffering.
“The program of industrialization requires large-scale agricultural machinery as a prerequisite for its re-construction on the basis of collectivization. - Pardon me, are we against? We are "for" advanced technology, for the most advanced technology in the capitalist countries, although we are still far from them. But ... beware of violating the eternal "law of all laws" - about diminishing soil fertility - it puts a limit to the "profitable" saturation of agriculture with capital, that is, "instruments of production." Here is a very "learned" Law of our "scientists" A.V. Chayanov and N.D. Kondratyev about “optimal sizes”. “Intensive, mechanized farming from 5-6 to 100 dessyatinas of land in the hands of an individual user” would be quite suitable. business. Well, as for collectivization, "you understand yourself;" you can't do anything with a plan, let the peasants decide themselves. But they are unlikely to need large-scale equipment, because the experience of America, Germany, Denmark says ... "and so on. . etc.
So the singers of the kulak economy and the ideologists of capitalist restoration muttered everywhere and everywhere they managed to penetrate - in literature, at meetings, in plans. (Let's complete the defeat of the Kondratyevshchina A.A. Sadovsky M.
Kondratiev's teaching on the role of the state in economic life is very original. He shared Pareto's views on the role of the market in reconciling a multitude of individual interests. But he did not agree with his strictly individualistic approach. For Kondratyev, man is not a passive material for the manifestation of the market element, but an active being capable of changing the future. The state concentrates the will of the people to change. However, not all of his activities are for the good. In this regard, Kondratyev formulates two concepts: probable changes in the economy and desirable changes in the economy. The economic activity of the state is the more favorable, the more desirable changes in the economy coincide with its probable changes.
At first glance, it seems that this approach simply masks the concept
state non-interference. In fact, Kondratyev does not even in his thoughts admit that the state, since it exists, will play a passive role in the economy.
He only insists that in achieving its goals the state chooses the path that is closest to the real trends of economic development.
3. The theory of long waves
In the early 1920s, Kondratyev launched an extensive discussion on the issue of prolonged fluctuations under capitalism.
In those days, there were still very strong hopes for an early revolution.
in the advanced capitalist countries, and therefore the question of the future
capitalism, about the possibility of its new rise, its achievement of a higher stage of development was extremely relevant.
The discussion began with the work The World Economy and Its Situation During and After the War, published in 1922, in which Kondratyev suggested the existence of long waves in the development of capitalism. Despite the negative reaction of the majority of Soviet scientists to this publication, N. D. Kondratyev continued to consistently defend his position in the following works:
"Controversial issues of the world economy and the crisis (answer to our critics)" - 1923.
"Great cycles of the conjuncture" - 1925.
"On the issue of large cycles of the conjuncture" - 1926.
"Big cycles of the conjuncture: Reports and their discussion at the Institute of Economics" (together with DI Oparin) - 1928.
Kondratyev's research and conclusions were based on an empirical analysis of a large number of economic indicators of various countries over fairly long periods of time, covering 100-150 years. These indicators:
price indices,
government debt securities,
nominal wages,
indicators of foreign trade turnover,
mining of coal, gold, production
lead, cast iron, etc.
The mathematical research method used by Kondratyev was not without flaws and was justly criticized by his opponents, but all objections concerned only the exact periodization of cycles, and not their existence. N. D. Kondratyev
understood the need for a probabilistic approach in research
statistical series of economic indicators. In his article "Large
conjuncture cycles "he wrote that it is impossible to consider the existence of such cycles as proven, but the probability of their existence is high. None of the available methods of mathematical statistics can with a sufficient degree of probability confirm the presence of 50-year cycles in the interval of 100-150 years, i.e. . on the basis of information containing a maximum of 2-3 fluctuations. However, objecting to the statements of critics, that one cannot speak of "correctness", that is, the periodicity of large cycles, since their
the duration ranges from 45 to 60 years, Kondratyev rightly objected,
that large cycles are no less "correct" from a probabilistic point of view than
traditional cyclical crises. Since the length of a traditional cyclical crisis varies from 7 to 11 years, its deviation from the average is more than 40%, and such a deviation from the average for a large wave, the duration of which varies from 45 to 60 years, is less than 30%.
Kondratyev also made 4 important observations regarding the nature of these cycles.
Two of them relate to the upward phases, one to the downward phase, and one more pattern appears at each of the cycle phases.
1) At the origins of the upward phase or at the very beginning, there is
a profound change in the entire life of capitalist society. These changes
preceded by significant scientific and technical inventions and innovations.
In the upward phase of the first wave, that is, at the end of the 18th century, these were:
the development of the textile industry and the production of pig iron, which changed the economic and social conditions of society. Growth in the second wave, that is, in the middle of the 19th century, Kondratyev connects with the construction of railways, which made it possible to develop new territories and transform agriculture. The upward stage of the third wave in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, in his opinion, was caused by the widespread introduction of electricity, radio and telephone. Kondratyev saw the prospects for a new rise in the automotive industry.
2) The periods of the upward wave of each large cycle account for the largest number of social upheavals (wars and revolutions).
Here is a list of the most important events.
I upward wave: the Great French Revolution, the Napoleonic Wars, the wars between Russia and Turkey, the war for the independence of the United States.
I Downward Wave: French Revolution of 1830, Movement
Chartists in England.
II upward wave: the revolutions of 1848-1849 in Europe (France,
Hungary, Germany), the Crimean War of 1856, the Sepoy Uprising in India in 1867-1869, the American Civil War in 1861-1865, the wars for the unification of Germany in 1865-1871, the French Revolution of 1871.
II downward wave: the war between Russia and Turkey in 1877-1878
III upward wave: the Anglo-Boer War of 1899-1902, Russian-
Japanese War of 1904, World War I, Revolutions of 1905 and 1917, and
civil war in Russia.
It is clearly seen that the social upheaval of upward waves is much
surpass those of downward waves both in the number of events and (more importantly) in the number of victims and destructions.
3) Downward phases have a particularly depressing effect on
Agriculture. Low commodity prices during a downturn increase the relative value of gold, prompting increased production.
The accumulation of gold is helping the economy to recover from a protracted crisis.
4) Periodic crises (7-11-year cycle) seem to be strung on
corresponding phases of a long wave and change their dynamics depending on it - during periods of a long rise, more time is spent on "prosperity", and during periods of a long decline, crisis years become more frequent.
ND Kondratyev in his work "Long waves of the conjuncture" wrote that
undulating movements represent the process of deviation from the equilibrium states to which the capitalist economy strives. He raises the question of the existence of several equilibrium states, and hence the possibility of several oscillatory movements. Kondratyev proposes to speak not only about crises, but to explore the entire set of wave-like movements under capitalism, that is, to develop a general theory of fluctuations.
According to Kondratyev, there are three types of equilibrium states:
1) Equilibrium "first order" - between normal market demand and
proposal. Deviations from it give rise to short-term fluctuations with a period of 3 - 3.5 years, that is, cycles in inventory.
2) Equilibrium "second order" achieved in the process of formation
production prices by means of cross-sectoral overflow of capital, invested mainly in equipment. Kondratyev associates deviations from this equilibrium and its restoration with cycles of average duration.
3) The balance of the "third order" concerns the "basic material
infrastructural structures, as well as a skilled workforce serving this technical mode of production. The stock of "basic capital goods" must be in equilibrium with all the factors that determine the existing technical mode of production, with the existing sectoral structure of production, the existing raw material base and energy sources, prices, employment and social institutions, the state of the monetary system, etc.
Periodically, this equilibrium is also violated and there is a need to create a new stock of "basic capital goods" that would satisfy the emerging new technical mode of production. According to Kondratyev, such a renewal of "basic capital goods", reflecting the movement of scientific and technological progress, does not occur smoothly, but in impulses and is the material basis of large cycles of the conjuncture.
In foreign literature, there is an opinion that in terms of the forms of development of scientific and technological progress, Kondratyev's concept is close to the innovative theory of long waves, developed by J. Schumpeter.
Kondratyev did not follow the path of Schumpeter, primarily due to his own scientific convictions. Unlike Schumpeter, he sought an explanation for the long waves not in the willingness of entrepreneurs to innovate and not in transient bursts of entrepreneurial activity, but, above all, in the very foundations of the reproductive process.
expanded the material basis of long waves, including in it - through
the need to maintain a third-order equilibrium - the entire amount of capital and labor resources that provide a given technical mode of production on a long-term basis. Thus, he directly approached the concept of the life cycle of a technical mode of production.
The renewal and expansion of "basic capital goods" that occurs during the upward phase of a long cycle radically change and redistribute the productive forces of society. This requires huge resources in kind and money. They can only exist if they were accumulated in the previous phase, when more was saved than invested.
During the upswing phase, the constant rise in prices and wages gave rise to
the population has a tendency to spend more, during a recession, on the contrary, prices and wages fall. The first leads to a desire to save, and the second leads to a decrease in purchasing power. The accumulation of funds also occurs due to a drop in investment during a general recession, when profits become low and the risk of bankruptcy increases.
It can be seen that such phenomena took place in the capitalist
economy in the 80s, when there was an outflow of capital from
the production sphere into the sphere of speculative exchange transactions.
According to the forecasts of most scientists, the highest point of the rise was passed
economy in the early 70s. Since the mid-70s, the economy has been in a state of crisis.
Even in our country, despite the fact that it is premature to talk about the capitalist system and taking into account the specifics of the political situation and the tax system, one can nevertheless note a similar situation.
Thus, the main elements of the Kondratyev long cycle mechanism are as follows:
1. The capitalist economy is a movement around
several levels of balance. The balance of "basic capital goods" (production infrastructure plus skilled labor) with all factors of economic and social life determines this technical mode of production. When this equilibrium is disturbed, it becomes necessary to create a new stock of capital goods.
2. The renewal of "basic capital goods" does not occur smoothly, but
jerks. Scientific and technical inventions and innovations play a decisive role in this.
3. The duration of a long cycle is determined by the average life of industrial infrastructure facilities, which are one of the main elements of the capital goods of society.
4. All social processes - wars, revolutions, population migration -
the result of the transformation of the economic mechanism.
5. Replacing "basic capital goods" and getting out of a long recession
require the accumulation of resources in kind and cash. When this accumulation reaches a sufficient amount, there is an opportunity for radical investment, which brings the economy to a new recovery.
Conclusion
A difficult fate befell the teachings of Alexander Vasilyevich Chayanov. In the 1920s, they were hostile to official economics. At the end of the 1920s, criticism of the theory of the family and labor economy gradually developed into a broad political campaign. And a few months after Stalin accused this theory at the All-Union Conference of Agrarian Marxists in December 1929, A.V. Chayanov's scientific activity ceased.
But the theory continued to live. And in 1988, on the eve of the centenary of the birth of Alexander Vasilyevich Chayanov, new serious publications appeared about his work. Now people have remembered him again, they are returning to the creative heritage of the great scientist, lost for many years.
The greatest scientific merit of Kondratyev is that he carried out
an attempt to build a closed socio-economic system that generates these long-term fluctuations within itself.
Abroad, the name of N. D. Kondratyev was never forgotten, and the "Kondratieff waves" became the impetus for the birth of a whole direction in
modern economic science. It is developing rapidly today, as the dramatically accelerated scientific and technological progress has begun, it seems, to squeeze "long waves", and mankind apparently needs to prepare for serious fluctuations in economic development.
Theoretical concepts of long waves are important in that they provide the necessary basis for assessing the state of the economy and predicting its future state.
The theory of large cycles N.D. Kondratyev had a profound impact on world economic thought, becoming one of the most important prerequisites for the theories of economic development and technological progress.
The theoretical concepts of long waves are important in that they provide the necessary basis for assessing the state of the economy and forecasting it.
If the Abstract, in your opinion, is of poor quality, or you have already met this work, let us know.
The creative path of N.D. Kondratyev is closely intertwined with the activities of A.V. Chayanov.
However, unlike the latter, Kondratyev is concerned not with the organizational and production problems of peasant farms and cooperatives, but with the analysis of the economic situation in which rural producers have to operate.
N. D. Kondratyev also opposed the concepts of forced industrialization. He suggested that part of the capital investments be directed to the development of agriculture and the local manufacturing industry. The tasks of the development of industry were to be linked to the tasks of the development of the agrarian sector. The lack of such a balance can lead to imbalances in the economy and the disruption of the industrialization program (the concept of equilibrium development). These studies quickly brought Nikolai Kondratyev to the problem of long-term trends in economic development. Having processed, using special mathematical methods, data on changes in a number of important indicators of the state of the economy of England, France, Germany and the United States from the end of the 18th century to the beginning of the 20th century, Kondratyev discovered interesting patterns.
After analyzing them, he formulated the theory of "long waves" of the development of a market economy, which made his name famous.
This theory proved that countries with market economies in their development regularly go through stages of economic ups and downs, forming standard cycles that repeat every 40-60 years.
Thus, for the first time in world economic science
Kondratyev was able to prove that time is an independent and important economic category that must be reckoned with when regulating the economy of any country.
In addition, N.D. Kondratyev, the dynamics of the economy is not a change in the "material relation", when today one batch of raw materials is processed, tomorrow another, a third, and so on. Analysis of the dynamics in the economy assumes that it is not the “material nature” of the economy that is investigated, but the volume and organization of production, the nature of consumption and demand, prices, etc.
Wave-like or reversible N.D. Kondratyev names such processes in which a phenomenon, changing its state, after some time can return to its original state. The scientist refers to reversible, for example, the processes of change in commodity prices, interest on capital, the share of the unemployed in the able-bodied population. Generally speaking, N.D. Kondratyev, the process of economic development never happens more than once at the same level, you can only record the transition from one stage of development to another. In this regard, there are no absolutely irreversible processes in the economy, but we can talk about the relative reversibility of some processes.
Reversible changes in the elements of the economic process, their susceptibility to fluctuations are the essence of the laws of cyclical dynamics. Not only economic, but also social and political phenomena are subject to cyclical fluctuations.
It was with N.D. Kondratyev associated statistical identification and theoretical substantiation of long-term cycles - "long waves of the conjuncture", or "big cycles", or "Kondratyev's cycles", as they were called later in the West.
Such large cycles, according to the Russian scientist, are born after or together with serious innovations in the economic life of society (the introduction of major inventions and discoveries of scientists, the appearance of new groups of countries on the world market, etc.). Moreover, the rise of the wave is usually accompanied by a particularly large number of wars and all kinds of political upheavals, including revolutions. The real material basis of "long waves" is a radical renewal by mankind of those types of production facilities and equipment that have a particularly long service life (railways, bridges, canals, dams, etc.).
These conclusions aroused great interest all over the world: the works of Nikolai Dmitrievich Kondratyev were immediately praised by prominent scientists, including Keynes, Schumpeter and others. A different fate awaited the theory of "long waves" and its author in Russia itself.
The conviction, born of long-term research, that the economy develops according to objective laws, played a fatal role in the fate of Nikolai Kondratyev.
His views and arguments contradicted the theory of the "party approach to planning the economy", which, under Stalin's supervision, became dominant in the USSR. Just like A.V. Chayanov, Nikolai Dmitrievich Kondratyev did not fit into the plans for transforming agriculture.
The scientist opposed excessive detailing, poor validity of plans, "fetishism of numbers." Even for state-owned enterprises, target figures should have been advisory rather than mandatory.
N.D. Kondratyev to the idea of channeling material resources to support the poorest peasant farms. He believed that it was necessary to strengthen the marketability of the agricultural sector. Help, however, must be provided to strong farms capable of rapidly increasing the volume of grain production. This was supposed to lead to a massive upsurge in high-value farms.
N. D. Kondratyev advocated free cooperation of peasant farms, warned that the inclusion of all the strong strata of the countryside in the "kulaks" would lead to a struggle against those who alone could be the basis for the production of marketable products. Only when commodity production in the countryside gets stronger can one think of material support for the poorest strata. These ideas of N.D. Kondratyev, like the idea of combining the plan and the market, was at odds with the then course of the Communist Party, and therefore were not in demand in practice.
Kondratyev wrote about the greatest economic justification of a small economy, which is not associated with the production of surplus value, does not depend on the free labor market, does not lead to the mortification of a significant part of fixed capital during the long “dead seasons” from suffering to suffering.
“The industrialization program requires large-scale agricultural machinery as a prerequisite for its re-construction on the basis of collectivization. We are "for" advanced technology, for the most advanced technology in the capitalist countries, although we are still far from them. But ... beware of violating the eternal "law of all laws" - about diminishing soil fertility - it puts a limit to the "profitable" saturation of agriculture with capital, that is, "instruments of production." Here is a very "learned" Law of our "scientists" A.V. Chayanov and N.D. Kondratyev about “optimal sizes”. "Intensive, mechanized farming from 5-6 to 100 dessyatinas of land in the hands of an individual user" - would be quite suitable. business. Well, as for collectivization - "you understand yourself; - you can't do anything with a plan, let the peasants decide themselves. Only they are unlikely to need large-scale equipment, because the experience of America, Germany, Denmark says ..." and so on. Etc., etc.
So the singers of the kulak economy and the ideologues of capitalist restoration muttered everywhere and everywhere they managed to penetrate - in literature, at meetings, in plans. "
Kondratiev's teaching on the role of the state in economic life is very original. He shared Pareto's views on the role of the market in reconciling a multitude of individual interests. But he did not agree with his strictly individualistic approach. For Kondratyev, man is not a passive material for the manifestation of the market element, but an active being capable of changing the future. The state concentrates the will of the people to
changes. However, not all of his activities are for the good. In this regard, Kondratyev formulates two concepts: probable changes in the economy and desirable changes in the economy. The economic activity of the state is the more favorable, the more desirable changes in the economy coincide with its probable changes.
At first glance, it seems that this approach simply masks the concept of state non-intervention. In fact, Kondratyev does not even in his thoughts admit that the state, since it exists, will play a passive role in the economy.
He only insists that in achieving its goals the state chooses the path that is closest to the real trends of economic development.
