Economic system of society

Basic concepts included in the training testing system:

economic system; functions of economic systems; properties of economic systems; productive forces; economic relations; industrial relations; the driving forces of the economic system; economic interest; branch economic sciences; shift economy; subjects of the economic system; the main types of economic systems.

Development of economic systems and its historical trends

Change and development occur both in nature and in society. Any economic system once arises, forms and fades, i.e. has its own history. With this approach, the real factor is included in the system-historical analysis of the economy – time. The study of the economic system is carried out from the standpoint of the influence of time on the state of the economic system, its change.

The historical movement of economic systems manifests itself as their self-movement, as a self-unfolding change over time. This is the peculiarity of economic systems.

Common to different economic systems, without distinction of their types, is that they all go through the same basic stages over time: emergence; Approval heyday; withering; dying. But the history of different systems is nevertheless different, since different systems in different ways, in their own way, specifically go through these general stages of their existence.

The history of the economic system begins with the stage of its emergence and approval. Moreover, most often the new system does not arise on an economic “wasteland”, but draws its “building material” from the previous system, or from other systems coexisting with it. By assembling, integrating these components and the forms of their manifestation, the new system subordinates them to its main function. The new system, breaking the unnecessary, forms its own components, which gives it the opportunity to expand the range of its functions. Over time, strengthening, the new system turns into a whole, acquiring its own “face” and the corresponding name, name.

At the next stage, the system is improved, goes through certain stages of its development. At the same time, the components themselves and the connections between them develop, one or another function is actualized, and the system’s connections with the external environment, with other systems, also develop.

But not all variants of emerging new elements of the system have the same viability: the weak fade, and others, more consistent with the new, more resilient ones grow, strengthen and develop. Gaining strength, the economic system reproduces itself, constantly repeating, renewing and flourishing, i.e. revealing all its advantages. In this, it is assisted by special mechanisms of functioning, coordination and development. Any system has them, but the specificity is that each has its own.

However, everything has its beginning and end. The economic system will also someday begin to age. And if the forces of self-renewal begin to “surrender”, this system weakens and collapses.

Progress consists in the fact that the “obsolete” system is being replaced and a new one, usually more resilient, more consistent with new objective conditions and tasks, is being established.

The new economic system has the property of continuity with the old one. This means that there is and remains something that connects them, unites them and continues. Moreover, it is this that something becomes more progressive in the new system, making it more resilient.

This “something” should most likely be considered social production. It is production that gives society the goods necessary for life, without them it will perish. Production develops, improves a person. On the other hand, through the efficiency of production, the intellectual and creative power of a person of this era is tested. Therefore, the progressiveness of the new economic system in relation to the old one will be expressed, first of all, in the progress of production, in its greater efficiency. Higher economic efficiency of the new system compared to the previous one is the key to its progressiveness and sustainability. And on this basis, there will be other important effects that express economic and social progress.

The general basis of changing economic systems – developing production – is not yet the final criterion for the development, progressiveness of the economic system. Since the central element of these systems is man, the degree to which the economic system provides the conditions for human perfection is the main final criterion for  the progressiveness of economic systems.

From this it follows that the fundamental progressive tendency of the development of economic systems, their long historical movement is associated precisely with this criterion, i.e. with the ability of the system to provide conditions for the ever greater development and perfection of people.

However, on the issue of trends in change and development, the views of scientists differ. In the economic literature, there are several approaches to this problem when considering it in historical terms.

A well-known, in the recent past, the dominant approach to the development of the economy and society was the so-called formational approach. He relied on the teachings of K. Marx, who identified three main social formations as degrees of progressive development of society.

The first of them – archaic – includes primitive communal and the so-called Asian modes of production, their basis is agricultural communities with their self-sufficiency. Secondary formation, according to Karl Marx, is the one that is based on private property. And the third historical stage is the formation – the communist one, which is characterized by the absence of the domination of private property. In the next era, the free development of each and every one, according to Marx, should become a manifestation of general humanism.

On the basis of this formational approach, five modes of production were then distinguished in the literature: primitive communal, slave-owning, feudal, capitalist, and communist. They differed, first of all, in the ways of connecting the means of production with labor.

In modern conditions, the popularity and importance of the formational approach have decreased, in particular, due to the fact that not all regions and countries have gone through all these stages.

Another approach in Western literature is called “stadial”. It is associated with the works of the American economist W. Rostow, who, on the basis of different levels of productive forces, distinguishes the following types of economic systems:

traditional society (with low labor productivity); transitional society (with the development of crafts and the emergence of science, there is a transition to an industrial economy of the XVII-XVIII centuries); economy of the “shift” type (a significant increase in labor productivity, the development of communications, transport); type of “economic maturity” (rapid development of all sectors of the economy, growth of its economic efficiency); economics of mass consumption (leading position of marketing and consumer industries).

Of interest is also such a periodization of development, which directly connects it with science and technology, the stages of  their improvement. This is a trend of development according to the “SINIC” system.

Such an approach (J. Galbraith and others), which is associated with the criterion “the degree of industrialization of society”, has also become widespread. In accordance with it, the following are distinguished: pre-industrial society, industrial, post-industrial and neo-industrial (informational).

Another approach to the classification of societies and their trends is called civilizational. It is associated with the concept of “civilization”, meaning the level of development of material and spiritual achievements of society.

Although civilizations as stages of society are understood by many authors in different ways, the multidimensionality of this concept, consistent with the multidimensionality of social and economic life itself, attracts many. According to one of the civilizational approaches, the following civilizations can be distinguished: Neolithic, Eastern slave-owning (Bronze Age), early feudal, pre-industrial, industrial, post-industrial (Fig. 2.1).

However, since the very content of the concept of “civilization” is still ambiguous, this approach does not have sufficient clarity. Therefore

further research is needed. And maybe the search for new approaches. After all, the new century is likely to highlight the problems of ecological survival.

By the end of the twentieth century, many of the real problems of the economy had become universal. They became independent of the country, its economic system, and went beyond the region, i.e. became global. These include:

economic and environmental problem associated with the threat of destruction, death of nature; the problem of increasing limitation, and even exhaustion of traditional production resources; insufficient material support for many millions of disadvantaged people in their livelihoods; the inconsistency of scientific, technological and economic progress with the level of culture and spiritual and intellectual development of a significant part of the population of our planet; the overloading of the Earth with military production and potential at the expense of social progress; uneven economic development with periodic and increasingly global crises that exacerbate social problems and tensions, provoking trade and currency wars as a feature of modern relations between countries and even regions.

A lasting, sustainable future for humankind without a solution to these global problems is simply impossible. Many scientists and even politicians now agree that the choice of the optimal socio-economic system, its orientation is dictated in our time primarily by the ability to withstand a global environmental catastrophe. To the transition associated with the economic development of a particular country, another one is added – a global transition.

A clear understanding of such a new situation, in which humanity found itself at the end of the XX century, caused many different projects. One of them is the noospheric model of sustainable development. This model has been discussed and adopted at un-led scientific conferences by representatives of more than 170 countries.

The noospheric model of sustainable development is a model of reasonably controlled interactions of Society – Nature – Man for the purpose of more sustainable and harmonious development. This model is based on the understanding that nature conservation and its restoration are becoming a planetary value, a common goal and the main condition for the survival of mankind in the XXI century.

Naturally, such a need and development trend must certainly affect the development of economic systems. After all, under the new model of sustainable development of mankind, changes in many parameters of the economic system are inevitable, especially social production, which should ensure environmental protection and, consequently, will need special regulation. This will make its own changes in the mechanism of regulation of the economic system. The driving forces of the system will also undergo changes, in particular, their axiological and motivational component. And this means that the core element of the economic system will change significantly – the person himself, understood not just as a factor of production, but as a multilateral personality, as the beginning and end of the economic system – its means and goal.