An economic system does not exist outside of human society, so there are many subjects operating in it.
The subjects of the economic system are the participants who function in this system, whose needs, interests and goals are realized in it.
Since there are many subjects, but certain of them have close or unambiguous functions in the economic system or have coinciding interests and goals, all the set of subjects is divided into large groups. These are producers and consumers, sellers and buyers, employers and employees, creditors and debtors , etc. But the main subject groups in modern theory are considered to be three: enterprises (firms), households, the state.
The enterprise is the link in the economy where the connection of labor power with the means of production is carried out, and products or goods are created on this basis.
Households in the economic system are seen as producers and sellers of labor.
The state performs important functions for the production of certain goods and services, as well as complex functions for regulating the economy. All groups of subjects are in the economic system in a state of constant influence.
In this lecture, it is important to note that the main and common to all these groups subject of the economic system is a person. For the sake of ensuring the viability of a person, an economic system is created, for this it exists and develops. Moreover, it is the person who is the central acting person of the economic system.
No matter what group of subjects we consider – whether it is an enterprise, a household, a state – everywhere the main figure is a person. This is an important feature of the economic system.
So, without a person there are no productive forces. The means of production are also directly related to man: he creates, reproduces and improves them. And such a component of productive forces as science without a person does not exist at all.
Man occupies a central place in all structural parts of this system, he is its connecting link, the main subject. This can be clearly seen in other subsystems. So, without a person, there is and cannot be an economic relationship. Without a person, the driving forces of the development of the economic system do not function.
Of course, the economic, productive role of man is extremely important. It is he who creates and revives the means of production with his work, and thereby turns them from dead metal, plastic, etc. into useful and valuable goods, without which people simply can not do. However, emphasizing this most important productive role, it is impossible not to see that such an approach to a person is narrow, one dimensional and essentially wrong. There is a need to treat the idea of man as a labor force, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, of a person whose main goal and dream is to maximize profits, in a different way.
Man is not only and not so much a means, but he himself is the result of economic development, moreover, the goal of the economic system. Not a man for the economy, but an economy for a person. Then the economy will be not only the sphere of production of things, goods and profits, but also the sphere of production and development, the improvement of the person himself. Then the economy will be evaluated not only by an increase in labor productivity or sales, but also by how much it contributes to the improvement of a person or, on the contrary, condemns him only to obtain means of subsistence and degradation. But that’s a very different view.
It is impossible not to take into account that, despite all the vicissitudes of history, the essential feature of man as a unique biosocial being is that the main and specific type of his activity, unlike other beings, is creativity. It is creativity that determines the development of both the person himself and the whole society, including his economic system. Without creativity, there is no progress, but only a repetition of what is already existing. And man himself as a transformer of this world, socio-economic relations and himself, as a source of their improvement, self-realization is realized only in creative activity.
The only creative factor of the productive forces and the economic system as a whole is man. |
The recognition of a person as the goal and the main result of reproductive processes in the economy, moreover, the recognition of a person as the main wealth of society – this is the essence of the new approach. It has not yet been realized, it is still timidly written about, but on this path is the future of society, the structure of which is based on the common values of reason, humanism, justice. Such a new approach requires a new consideration of the subjects of the economic system. They cannot be seen only as a personification of a certain economic role. Such a view misses, ignores the fact that the economic subject is a person, moreover, a person in all its diversity.
The new approach requires a three-dimensional, filled, multifaceted, rather than abstract-schematic representation of a person as the main subject of the economy. This means that one should avoid reducing a person only to the labor force or factor of production. It is necessary to assert the view of him as a person in whom the labor force is one of many abilities and properties. Such a view will make it possible to see not a primitive, one-dimensional, but a complex, multi-element motivation of subjects in the economy, to predict and effectively regulate its development.
Naturally, the new approach is fraught with many problems both in scientific and implementation terms, but it is known that the new is always created “in the sweat of one’s brow”.