Moral economics. Definition of morality in the economic sphere The influence of morality on the country's economy
Economics and Morality: Antagonism or Harmony?
Introduction
1. Ethics, philosophy of science and philosophy of economics: points of contact
Evolution of views on the relationship between economics and morality in philosophy
1 Economics and Ethics in Ancient and Medieval Philosophy.
2 Ethical and economic in the works of philosophers of the New Time and the Age of Enlightenment (XVII - XVIII centuries)
3 Ethics and economic philosophy of the XIX century.
4 Ethics, sociology and philosophy of economics in the XX - early. XXI centuries.
Professional activity: between economics and morality.
Conclusion
Literature
Introduction
The relationship between economics and morality has occupied the minds of philosophers and other representatives of the social sciences, starting with the emergence of theoretical ideas about the structure of the state and about the ideal model of the state. Therefore, the problem of economics and morality is directly related not only to the philosophy of economics, but also to the theory of the state, the doctrine of a just society, etc.
Although in modern philosophy of economics, ethical and moral issues per se remain practically "behind the scenes", in other areas of philosophy, issues related to economics can become a reason for reflection on moral and ethical topics. The structure of the economy, the attitude in a particular society to money, material goods, etc. turn out to be a source for building cultural, sociological and other paradigms.
Economics and morality regulate the structure of society equally, but in different ways. In addition, aspects of legal life are associated with economics and morality.
The purpose of this work is to consider various views on the relationship between economics and morality in the works of philosophers and economists from antiquity to the present, and based on the analysis of these texts (both sources and their interpretations in scientific and educational literature), draw the necessary conclusions.
1. Ethics, philosophy of science and philosophy of economics: points of contact
The key to understanding the methodological controversies in the philosophy of economics is that since the 1930s. shifts in the methodology of economic analysis took place in close connection with changes in the direction of research in modern philosophy of science. The perception of the ideas of logical positivism and critical rationalism determined the rethinking of the basic premises of neoclassical economic theory, such as the idea of equilibrium, the principle of maximization, the premise of perfect competition, the hypothesis of the rationality of the behavior of subjects (Homo economicus), etc. on the "correct" principles of building a "true" theory, representatives of various areas of modern philosophy of economics, allow us to distinguish in them two main trends.
The first trend represents the so-called main stream, or orthodox direction (neoclassicism, neoclassical synthesis, orthodox Keynesianism, monetarism). Representatives of this trend - T. Hutchison, F. Mahlup, P. Samuelson, M. Friedman and others - experienced the influence of the philosophical and methodological attitudes of the logical positivism of the Vienna Circle, behaviorism, operationalism, a hypothetical-deductive model of science (K. Popper, K. G. Gempel). The basic principle of constructing a theory within this area, in general terms, boils down to the following: a theory is constructed in a deductive way on the basis of self-evident or empirically confirmed initial propositions (hypotheses, or general laws), and particular importance is attached to the possibility of a clear distinction between true and false, scientific and unscientific propositions. ...
The positivist tradition in the philosophy of economics received its utmost expression in the works of T. Hutchison, whose position is often called "ultra-empiricism." His main thesis was that economic research should be limited to empirically verifiable propositions. Moreover, all (from the initial to the final) theories of the theory must pass a direct empirical test. Introducing Popper's principle of falsificationism into the economic discussion, Hutchison criticized the representatives of a priori in the philosophy of economics (L. Robbins, L. von Mises). Hutchison saw the task of economics in the empirical analysis of observed facts. Such an analysis, in his opinion, is the only source that allows to form correct, realistic preconditions for any economic theory.
Criticism and replacement of logical positivism by logical empiricism (refusal from direct verification of theoretical propositions in favor of indirect verification) influenced the formation of the concepts of Machlup and Friedman. A somewhat different interpretation was given to the question of assessing the truth of a theory. If for Hutchison a characteristic feature was the desire to evaluate all the provisions of the theory, then Machlup's system of views presupposes testing the theory as a whole. According to Friedman's concept, which he himself called "positive economics," the final verdict on economics should be based on their ability to predict the phenomena they are designed to explain. Friedman's instrumentalist concept (“theory as a forecasting tool”) is considered to be the methodological basis of neoclassical economic theory.
The post-positivist discussion on the problem of falsification had a great influence on the formation of methodological disputes in the philosophy of economics. According to Popper, a fact that contradicts a scientific theory falsifies it and forces scientists to abandon it. Popper's students and critics (Kuhn, Lakatos, Feyerabend and others) found out during the discussions that the process of falsification is not so simple. Within the framework of the philosophy of science, such an approach, which put an alternative theory in place of Popper's fact as a criterion of falsification, already took place in the 70s-80s, and is associated with the names of L. Feyerabend, T. Kuhn, I Lakatos and others. philosophers who criticized logical empiricism and tried to develop a different approach to the philosophy of science, based on a non-cumulative concept of the growth of knowledge. According to Feyerabend, the growth of knowledge occurs as a result of the proliferation (multiplication) of theories that are incommensurable (that is, deductively not connected, using different methods and concepts). Such theories, being compatible, are not rationally comparable and the choice between them is carried out only on worldview and socio-psychological grounds. Acceptance of the thesis about the incommensurability of alternative theories meant a break with Popperism, since Popper himself insisted on maintaining the principle of incompatibility, and the principle of unlimited proliferation opened the way for methodological pluralism, which found many adherents in economics.
The second direction in the methodology of economics, the so-called "new" or unorthodox methodology, is usually associated with the ideas of methodological pluralism expressed at the post-positivist stage of the philosophy of science (60-90s).
Representatives of methodological pluralism in the philosophy of economics (B. Caldwell, L. Bolend, D. McCloskey and others) oppose the unified methodology of economic science for "freedom of choice of research method." Within the framework of the new methodology, any universal criterion for evaluating a theory is denied. According to Caldwell, the initial assessment of methodological pluralism is the recognition that "there is no universal, logically perfect method for evaluating a theory." The growth of knowledge cannot be described as a straight line, the evolution of science appears as a dynamic process, allowing "both constancy and variability, both unanimity and sharp criticism." Within the framework of methodological pluralism, the possibility and inevitability of the existence of several, incomparable paradigms, reflecting different aspects of the subject of research, the choice of which, although reflecting reality, allows and even presupposes a significant amount of subjectivity, is recognized.
In their criticism of "positive economics", representatives of unorthodox methodology denied the strict distinction between scientific and non-scientific knowledge and emphasized the illusory nature of the objectivity of any criteria for evaluating a theory and the inevitability of normative elements and ideological content. Accusing orthodox economics of the unrealism of its main theoretical positions, as well as adherence to abstract schemes, representatives of methodological pluralism recognized as permissible an appeal to historical analogies, introspection and common sense.
According to Caldwell, any research from the standpoint of methodological pluralism should begin with "rational reconstruction of both works on the methodology of economics and various research programs within the framework of economics." The subject of methodology is conceived in identifying, studying and comparing the principles on which different schools are based, in identifying the strengths and weaknesses of the respective theories, and not simply in finding ways to improve the existing theory. The next step is a critical analysis of the reconstructed model, and the criticism of the theory within the research program to which it belongs, carried out in terms of this program, is considered the most fruitful and preferable.
It is believed that the "new methodology" had a strong impact on unorthodox Keynesianism, as well as on the neo-Austrian school, within which the idea of the subjectivity of knowledge received the most consistent expression. And although, according to Caldwell, methodological pluralism can carry the seeds of dogmatism and lead to methodological anarchism, today it is one of the latest achievements in economic methodology, replacing the methodology of falsificationism that has dominated for a long time. In general, it should be noted that the spread of the ideas of methodological pluralism largely determines the picture of modern Western philosophy of economics, for this approach in methodology (although it is controversial) largely reflects the style of modern scientific thinking.
Modern philosophy of science rarely touches on ethical issues (this is the field of social philosophy, etc.). At the same time, moral issues have long been directly related to economics as one of the sciences about the structure of society, including models of an ideal society, an ideal structure. Economic issues before the emergence of economics as a separate discipline concerned philosophy directly (as well as moral issues).
2. Evolution of views on the relationship between economics and morality in philosophy
1 Economics and Ethics in Ancient and Medieval Philosophy
economics ethical moral philosophy
Although the word "economics" is of ancient Greek origin (literally - the science of housekeeping, at home), in antiquity there was no such discipline as economics. The problems that we can now call economic, concerned the life of society as a whole (mainly - the life of the ancient polis, city-state).
Certain elements of economic philosophy and its connection with ethics and morality can be seen in Plato's treatise "The State". The state, according to Plato, exists to serve the needs of the people. People do not live independently of each other, they need the help of others and together produce the products necessary for life. Therefore, people settle in cities (policies). The state needs specialists in various branches of science and technology; Plato is already talking practically about the division of labor, stating that a person will do things of better quality and in greater quantities if he will only do a specific job for which he has the ability (for example, a farmer does not need to make plows and hoes himself, there are blacksmiths for this ). At the same time, the state exists not only to meet the economic needs of people, but to create, in accordance with the principle of justice, conditions for a happy and dignified life. The education and the diligence of the rulers of the state (also educated and wise people) serve to educate citizens of the necessary moral qualities. Justice according to Plato is when everyone does their own thing, without interfering with others: an individual is just when the elements of his soul are in harmony, and the state is fair when all of its classes and individuals perform their functions as they should. Thus. According to Plato, both economics and morality are the guarantee of the existence of the state, and therefore, there is no antagonism in them. At the same time, excessive wealth for the state is, from Plato's point of view, evil.
In the treatise of Aristotle "Politics" (written at a later time) is already talking about ways to generate income. There are 3 such ways: "natural" - the accumulation of funds through farming, cattle breeding and hunting; "Unnatural" - the accumulation of money that can be exchanged for goods; medium - natural exchange. Aristotle has a negative attitude to "usury", to the ability of money to make a profit, because it is immoral. (The same attitude towards usury is found in the works of the medieval philosopher Thomas Aquinas, who borrows and interprets from a Christian point of view many elements of Aristotle's teachings). Just like Plato, Aristotle's problems of economics and morality are closely related: a state can only be prosperous when all its citizens are moral people. Aristotle's personality and state are also not opposed, but are in a harmonious connection.
In medieval philosophy, economic problems are practically not considered, although the problems of the ideal state in it are stated very clearly and are the development of the ideas of either Plato ("On the City of God" by Augustine) or Aristotle (Thomas Aquinas, Marsil of Padua). The focus now is not on the relationship between man and state, but between man and God.
2.2 Ethical and economic in the works of philosophers of the New Time and the Age of Enlightenment (XVII - XVIII centuries)
The new era and the era of the Enlightenment were marked in philosophy and other disciplines by a change in the scientific paradigm. Sciences are beginning to acquire a tendency towards narrower specialization (which will be even more pronounced in our time), to develop their own terminology and specific methods. Empirical and rational became the main scientific methods. Social sciences also began to emerge as separate disciplines, and the principle of rationalism is also noted in them. So, it was in the era of the Enlightenment, at the end of the 18th century, that a doctrine arose that would later be called the classical theory of economics (D. Riccardo, A. Smith). At the same time, many representatives of science continued to remain largely universal scientists, engaged in a number of disciplines, and in the works of philosophers of this time one can find reflections simultaneously on the state, law, pedagogy and the origin of language, or on philosophy, mathematics and anatomy.
As in antiquity, one of the main problems that occupied philosophers was the problem of the ideal state structure. In connection with the emergence and development of new (capitalist) relations in society, the structure of an ideal state and an ideal society is now considered in connection with the issues of property, distribution of material wealth, division of labor, etc. The idea of the "unnatural" structure of modern society also arises.
Thus, D. Locke proceeds from the fact that the natural state in which people lived at the dawn of their history does not at all represent a "war of all against all," as T. Hobbes wrote about it. From his point of view, initially benevolence and mutual support reigned in human society, for there were few people and each owned a piece of land that he and his loved ones were able to cultivate. The individual owned property that he himself created and did not encroach on the property of his own kind. In other words, Locke believes that private property exists initially, and does not arise at a certain stage in the development of human society. Thus, the starting point for Locke is one of the basic provisions of the philosophy of history, formulated by the ideologists of the English bourgeois revolution in the middle of the 17th century. For Locke, society in its natural state looks like a society organized on the basis of the principles of equality, justice, and people's independence from each other. In this society, relations between individuals are governed by the norms of morality and religion, but not by law, about which people who are in a state of nature know nothing. But, as individual members of society accumulate property, they have a desire to subjugate their own kind, who, naturally, oppose this. The second prerequisite for discord in society and the destruction of the harmony of relations is the rapid increase in population. With a shortage of land, everyone sees in the other not a friend, but an enemy, dreaming of taking possession of a share of property that does not belong to him. This is how a state of "war of all against all" arises, which lasts until people realize the abnormalities of the current state of affairs. In the process of looking for a way out of this situation, they ultimately come to the idea of the need to establish a state, which is delegated the authority to establish peace by force, to protect property and the life of owners. This agreement is the "social contract" on which the entire pyramid of power, economic and legal relations of modern society rests.
Locke's name is often associated with the creation of an economic theory that was bold enough for its time - the so-called. labor theory of value. The labor theory of value has two sides - ethical and economic. In other words, it can be argued that the value of a product should be proportional to the amount of labor expended on it, or that labor actually regulates the price. The latter theory, as Locke admits, is only approximately true. Nine-tenths of value, he argues, is determined by labor, and he says nothing about a tenth. It is labor, he notes, that creates the differences of all values. However, sometimes Locke expresses erroneous judgments: for example, he cites as an example the American lands settled by the Indians, which had almost no price, since the Indians did not cultivate them - while the land, as we see it now, can have a very high price, even if they are not going to process it (but, for example, build something on it).
J.J. Rousseau in his essay "Discourse on the origin of inequality" contrasted the natural state and the civilized state. It is enough for a natural person to have what he has and what he can get in a simple way; a civilized person needs all kinds of "excesses" in life. According to Rousseau, the force that turned a natural man into a civilized one is also natural - namely, reproduction, the increase in the human race gradually makes the available resources insufficient. The answer to this challenge of nature is the appearance of the first inventions - the fish hook, which makes a person a fisher; bow and arrows, allowing him to become a hunter. But these inventions are superimposed on the natural inequality of people. The decisive step towards the formation of culture, in Rousseau's opinion, was the formation of property. The first property is personal possession - the living space, that which is directly related to the personality of the owner. This is ownership by de facto ownership - that, an encroachment on which leads to a natural rebuff to the invader. Living together, sex and age division of occupations weaken the strength of an individual - each becomes weaker, because he ceases to do everything himself and becomes dependent on others. But by doing so, it becomes easier for everyone to defend themselves in the event of a threat. So, gradually, under the guise of benefits, mutual dependence sets in, opening the way to slavery as it becomes stronger. Natural inequality in the conditions of a growing culture is becoming more and more significant, its impact is more and more noticeable and in its consequences it turns into civil inequality.
A peculiar concept was developed by I. Bentham. Even in his first works, Bentham rejected the theory of natural law. He wrote that the content of natural law is indefinite and is interpreted by everyone in different ways. The concept of "social contract" is also senseless and chimerical, since states were created by violence and were established by habit. Legislation, according to Bentham, must find an unshakable foundation in feelings and experience. In search of this basis, Bentham develops a theory of utilitarianism (from the Latin utilitas - benefit, benefit).
Bentham considers the interests of individuals to be the only real interests. He discusses much and in detail about pleasures and pains, classifying them on different grounds; he even developed the rules of "moral account", where good is "arrival", evil is "expense." At the same time, Bentham considers the existence of private property and competition as necessary condition implementation of the main provision of his concept. "The greatest happiness is for the largest possible number of members of society: this is the only goal that the government should have." The law itself is evil because it is associated with the application of punishment. In addition, errors are possible in its implementation. Nevertheless, the law is an inevitable evil, for without it it is impossible to ensure security. Bentham names private property as the main concern of legislation. “Property and law were born together and will die together. Before the law there was no property; remove the law and property will cease to exist. "
The provision of security, Bentham continued, is to a certain extent contrary to equality and freedom; what, in this regard, should be the limits of legislative regulation ”, which he divides into two groups.
Moral obligations towards oneself constitute the rules of prudence. Since one can only harm oneself by mistake, fear of the possible consequences of this mistake is sufficient and the only incentive to prevent such harm; that is why the legislator should not regulate those actions and relationships where people can only harm themselves. For example, Bentham argued, an attempt to legally eradicate drunkenness, debauchery, and wastefulness will do more harm than good, because it will lead to the complication of legislation, petty regulation of private life, the introduction of excessively harsh punishments, the development of espionage and general suspicion. Otherwise, the question of responsibilities towards the common good where the legislation defines taxes and some other duties of individuals. This inevitably leads to the conclusion that legislation should not interfere with the activities of entrepreneurs and their relations with workers; according to the theory of utilitarianism, the parties themselves, guided by "moral arithmetic", determine the terms of the contract, proceeding from "their own benefit." The theory of utilitarianism justified any terms of the contract dictated by the capitalist to the wage worker, and rejected the attempts of the legislator to take the latter under his protection in conditions when the working class did not yet have their own organizations to protect against the arbitrariness of private entrepreneurs, and society did not have systems of social protection of the individual. T. Malthus was the creator of the theory of population, from which certain analytical conclusions follow, which turned it into an integral part of the legacy of classical economic thought. This theory has become a kind of standard in the classics' judgments about economic policy, reducing the cause of poverty to a simple ratio of the rate of population growth to the rate of increase in living goods, which determine the subsistence minimum. According to Malthus, any conscious attempt to improve human society with the help of social legislation will be swept away by an irresistible mass of people, and therefore each person needs to take care of himself and be fully responsible for his own lack of foresight. The biological ability of a person to continue the genus T. Malthus characterizes his natural instincts as well as in animals. Moreover, this ability, he believes, in spite of the constant compulsory and preventive restrictions, surpasses the physical ability of a person to increase food resources. Such simple ideas that do not require additional arguments and facts have become the true reason for numerous and ambiguous responses to T. Malthus's theory. 3 Ethics and economic philosophy of the XIX century. 3.1 G.-V.-F. Hegel on the role and importance of economics in the life of society Hegel is one of the few philosophers of the post-Kantian period who originally approached the problems of his era and tried to understand the economic structure of modern society. Hegel did not leave an outline of economic theory as an independent section of the philosophical system. His analyzes of economic problems are an integral part of his philosophy of society. The main task of Hegel is not independent, proper economic research, but a correct assessment of the results obtained by the most advanced economic theory in assessing the importance that these conclusions have for the knowledge of society. It is especially important for the general philosophical problem that Hegel was solving, that he approached the discovery and theoretical illumination in a philosophically generalized form of dialectical categories deeply hidden in economics. For Hegel, economics is the most direct, elementary, visual way of manifesting human social activity. In the study of economics, the main categories of this activity can therefore be developed in the easiest and most obvious way. For the first time, Hegel outlined his economic views in the "System of Morality". Hegel's article on natural law and sections of his lectures 1803-1804 and especially 1805-1806 belong to a higher stage of maturity and originality. The latter represent the most mature form of Hegel's economic work in Jena up to the Phenomenology of Spirit - a dialectical and systematic attempt to rise from the simplest categories of labor to the problems of religion and philosophy. Already in the first attempts of Hegel to systematize economic categories, it is revealed that not only their grouping takes the form of a dialectical triad, but also the interconnection of categories combined into one group takes the Hegelian form of inference. So, for example, he begins his presentation in the "System of Morality" with the triad: need, labor and consumption, in order to move from it to the other, higher side of the same connection, to the triad: mastery of an object, labor as such in action, product ownership. Satisfied need is the surrendered labor of the I; it is an item that does work in its place. Labor, work, is this-worldly making-oneself-thing. The bifurcation of the self in need is precisely its making-itself-an object. (The impulse is forced to start over every time, it does not come to isolate labor from itself.) Need is the unity of the I, as embodied in a thing. Activity itself is pure movement, pure mediation. The gratification of desire is itself the pure destruction of the object. In work, man alienates himself from himself, he "becomes a thing for himself," as Hegel says. And this expresses the objective regularity of labor itself, independent of the desires and inclinations of the individual and opposing them as something alien and objective. In the process of labor, something universal arises in a person. At the same time, labor means a detachment from immediacy, a break with the purely natural, instinctive life of man. Hegel expresses the decisive importance of labor in the process of human development in a particularly plastic manner in his "Robinsonade", that is, where he writes about the transition to a civilized, in the proper sense of the word, society. The natural state, according to Hegel, is not unjust, but that is why it is necessary to get out of it. According to the Phenomenology of Spirit, the starting point in the formation of society is the Hobbesian “war of all against all,” the mutual extermination of people in a state of nature; it is, as Hegel puts it, "withdrawal without preservation." The submission of some people to the power of others leads to a state of domination and slavery. In Phenomenology, Hegel shows that human labor is dependent, subordinate labor, with all the harmful consequences that submission has for the development of consciousness. But in spite of this, the main path of development of consciousness is laid in "Phenomenology" precisely through the consciousness of the worker, and not through the consciousness of the master. In this dialectic of labor, according to Hegel, real self-consciousness, a phenomenological form of the decomposition of antiquity, arises. All "images of consciousness" in which this decomposition is personified: stoicism, skepticism and "unhappy consciousness" (nascent Christianity) - arise in Hegel's presentation of history exclusively from the phenomenological dialectic of the consciousness of the worker. Labor not only makes, according to Hegel, a person a person, and it not only creates a society in its boundless diversity and uniform systematics, but at the same time makes the human world a “detached” from him, an “alienated” world. 3.2 Ethical issues in the economic doctrine of K. Marx The philosophical and economic doctrine of K. Marx, postulated in many of his works (in particular, in the most basic - "Capital"), became one of those that had the most powerful influence on the development of economic and philosophical thought in subsequent years (in particular, on many philosophical schools of the XX century). The teachings of Marx and the teachings of his followers (Marxism), on the one hand, developed many aspects of Hegel's philosophical teachings, on the other hand, it polemicized with them. In the same way, many philosophical trends of later times developed the ideas of Marx, sometimes transforming them strongly enough or in principle polemicizing with them. According to Karl Marx, society is a self-developing system, the dynamics of which is determined by the state and development of the “mode of production”. The mode of production is a combination of the currently available quantity and quality of labor and means of production ("productive forces") and "production relations" (slave owner and slave, capitalist and hired worker, etc.). There are three types of modes of production or socio-economic formations that successively replace each other: the pre-capitalist system (including such varieties as primitive society, Eastern and ancient types of slave-owning society, feudalism), the capitalist system and the post-capitalist system. The replacement of one social structure with another always occurs by force and is conditioned by the growing contradictions inherent in each of these devices, except for socialism. It is impossible to speak about the ethics of Karl Marx in the same sense in which they speak about the ethics of Epicurus or Kant. Marx did not create a theory of morality at all. Marx offers not a theory, but a criticism of morality. He believes that morality is a transformed form of social consciousness; it does not reflect, does not express, but distorts and covers up the actual state of affairs. It, more specifically, gives a false outlet to the social indignation of the masses, replaces the real solution of problems with the illusion of solving them, is embodied powerlessness. Moral deformation of public consciousness, according to Karl Marx, is designed to serve the interests of the ruling, privileged strata of society, to help them impose their will on the entire society. Therefore, people need not a theory of morality, but in order to free themselves from its intoxication. The essence of Marx's position is that morality is unworthy of theory. After all, the theory of any object is at the same time the sanction of this object, the recognition of its necessity, legitimate existence - precisely in this, in the legality, existential legitimacy, K. Marx denies morality. The problem of morality was interpreted by Marx as a problem of the moral, or, which for him was the same thing, the communist, transformation of the world through the revolutionary struggle of the proletariat. In philosophy and before Marx, morality was identified with a certain kind of activity (it could not be otherwise, because morality is a practical consciousness, it does not speak about what virtue is, but about how to become virtuous). Only there it was always a spiritual activity, its subject sphere was limited to the zone of personal presence (for Aristotle, for example, the highest virtue and the highest bliss coincided with contemplative-theoretical activity, for Kant - with the harsh self-discipline of duty). Marx, however, identified morality with practical, objective activity, namely, with the socio-political struggle of the proletariat. 3.3 Protestant ethics of M. Weber Weber distinguishes two ideally typical organizations of economic behavior: traditional and goal-rational. The first has existed since antiquity, the second has been developing in modern times. Overcoming traditionalism is associated with the development of a modern rational capitalist economy, which presupposes the presence of certain types of social relations and certain forms of social order. Analyzing these forms, Weber comes to two conclusions: he describes the ideal type of capitalism as the triumph of rationality in all spheres of economic life, and such a development cannot be explained solely by economic reasons. In the latter case, Weber argues with Marxism. Weber tries to explain the origin of modern capitalism by linking this problem with the sociology of religion, in particular Protestantism. He sees a connection between the code of ethics of Protestant denominations and the spirit of the capitalist economy, based on the ideal of the rationalist entrepreneur. In Protestantism, in contrast to Catholicism, the emphasis is not on the study of dogma, but on moral practice, expressed in the worldly service of a person, in the fulfillment of his worldly duty. This is what Weber called "worldly asceticism." The parallels between the Protestant emphasis on worldly service and the ideal of capitalist rationality allowed Weber to link the Reformation and the emergence of capitalism: Protestantism stimulated the emergence of capitalist-specific forms of behavior in everyday life and economic life. The minimalization of dogma and ritual, the rationalization of life in Protestantism, according to Weber, became part of the process of "disenchanting the world", begun by the Hebrew prophets and ancient Greek scientists and culminating in the modern capitalist world. This process is associated with the liberation of a person from magical superstitions, the autonomy of the individual, belief in scientific progress and rational knowledge. The interpenetration of morality and economics according to Weber can be imagined as follows. At first, showing respect or disrespect in accordance with moral criteria, on the one hand, and the distribution of profits or losses in accordance with the laws of economics, on the other, oppose each other as two independent, analytically distinguished systems, each of which obeys its own logic. In a primitive tribal society, both logics coincide. A person who has a significant amount of material wealth that he can bestow on other people provides himself with high respect, thanks to which he can use the services of these people to acquire even greater wealth. The quantitative growth of the population and the developing division of labor lead to the elimination of parallelism in the generic hierarchy of wealth and respect. Instead, a hierarchy of estates is formed, which differentiates the levels of moral respect in parallel with the functions of estates in the system of social division of labor. The clergy, aristocracy, burghers and peasants form a hierarchical structure, where the place in the moral hierarchy corresponds to the place in the system of social division of labor. This also applies to differentiation within the estates, for example, within the burghers there is a differentiation into crafts, trades and trade, and within each division into workshops or guilds. The development of industrial capitalism and the reorientation of the distribution of respect from origin and property to individual results of labor activity in conditions of equal chances, as well as in the context of the transformation of moral support from privilege and alms to equal right for all, destroyed the parallelism between the class hierarchy and the social division of labor. In this sense, further differentiation of the economic division of labor and economic exchange was freed from the bonds of the class moral hierarchy. Eliminated the parallelism between the class hierarchy and functional differentiation (division of labor). However, it would be completely wrong to conclude from this that economic exchange and the division of labor have lost all connection with the distribution of moral respect. Rather, there is an evolution of the moral criteria themselves and an evolution of their application to the division of labor and economic exchange. Wealth is considered righteous and morally respected only when it is based on the results of personal work in an environment of equal chances. At the same time, it is believed that at the same time wealth requires prudence, as well as reinvestment, which should increase not only the welfare of the entrepreneur, but also his employees and society as a whole. The transfer of religious art to the sphere of professional activity and the increase in the moral value of work in comparison with property and way of life led to the fact that the profession was the only source for gaining moral respect. Idleness began to be considered a vice, and hard work - a virtue. In class society, the fulfillment of religious duty and the accompanying moral respect were differentiated in accordance with the division into estates. Thus, fewer requirements of a religious nature were imposed on the merchant class, therefore it enjoyed correspondingly less moral respect. Luther's Reformation shifted the highest fulfillment of religious duty from monastic asceticism to personal labor in any secular profession. All work became a divine calling after Luther included any worldly work in the concept of “calling”. Calvin was even more radical. His teaching on predestination had an extremely strong influence on believers, forcing them to make sure of their own chosenness. Calvin's followers reinterpreted his teaching about divine predestination, which cannot be changed or comprehended, so that the chosen one can be recognized by an impeccable lifestyle. Professional activity serves as a material that must be given a certain form in accordance with moral precepts. On the other hand, the burgher strata of adherents of Calvinist ideals introduced the concept of moral norms and criteria for successful management. Decency, prudence, thriftiness, thrift, hard work and selfless devotion, i.e. the qualities that serve as prerequisites for economic success have taken on the character of moral commandments that determine godly behavior. Caring for your own family, for the employees of your enterprise, supporting the active life of your community and increasing the well-being of the whole society as a whole are also included in this circle of moral commandments. They also became an integral part of the new professional ethics. The Enlightenment, the bourgeois revolution, the labor movement and secularization processes did not separate professional activities from moral obligations. It has become even more definitely the only legitimate source of income and respect, and the moral requirements for professional activity have increased even more. If the high requirements of puritanical ethics were mainly related to the entrepreneur as the head of the family and the employer, then the listed historical events led to the fact that the idea of equality in receiving income and the distribution of respect in proportion to the results of personal labor in conditions of equal chances involves all members of society in the sphere of professional activity and presents their corresponding requirements. Those who were previously under the care of the head of the family or the owner of the enterprise are now involved in a system of economic and moral competition for material income and social status, commensurate with the results of personal activities. In XX - early. XXI centuries. the sharp and frequent change in scientific paradigms in various disciplines (including economics) is explained by the sharp and frequent changes in the surrounding life, dictated, in turn, by scientific and social revolutions. The economic, political and social situation in the modern world is radically different from that which was in the era of the formation of classical philosophy and economic theory (and the reason for these changes is not least the teachings themselves and their interpretations). 4.1 The main currents of modern economic thought The neoclassical school is a leading trend in modern Western, primarily, Anglo-American economic science. Neoclassicists are engaged in a multifaceted analysis of a regulated market economy, using economic models as one of the main tools. First of all, they are interested in the problems of pricing, the interaction of supply and demand in various markets. This approach takes its origin from the work of Alfred Marshall, who is considered the founder of the neoclassical school. At present, the neoclassical direction includes economists working on various problems and representing various schools. The neoclassicists include, for example, P. Samuelson, M. Feldstein. The unifying point is not so much the subject of research or conceptual conclusions, but the generality of methodological foundations, the development of various aspects of "pure" economic theory, which, as a rule, has an applied value, and the way out to practice. Keynesianism and its modern varieties. A concept put forward and developed in the 1930s. John Maynard Keynes is called effective demand theory. The main idea is to influence the production and supply of goods by stimulating demand and reduce unemployment. Unlike the classics, who believed that the market mechanism is capable of self-regulation and equalization of imbalances between supply and demand, Keynes substantiated the need for government intervention in the economy. Modern Keynesianism is not one, but several macroeconomic theories, to a certain extent differing in the choice of goals and means of macroeconomic policy. Modern Keynesians believe that the main instrument for regulating demand is not fiscal, but monetary policy; the use of means of regulating income is recognized as expedient. Monetarism is a theory of macro-regulation of the economy, to a certain extent alternative to Keynesianism, one of the directions of neoliberalism. Monetarists prioritize monetary methods to stabilize the economy and provide employment. They believe that money is the main instrument that determines the movement and all development of the economy. State regulation is reduced to a minimum; it should be limited to control over the monetary sphere. The change in the money supply is designed to directly correspond to the movement of prices and the national product. One of the main proponents of the monetarist concept, Milton Friedman, argues that imprudent state intervention leads to inflation, a violation of the level of "natural" unemployment. Monetarist recipes for long-term regulation are proposed. Supply-side economics is a modern concept of macroeconomic regulation of the economy by stimulating investment and production, curbing inflation. A revision of the taxation system and a reduction in budget expenditures for social needs are proposed as incentive tools. This theoretical concept believes that supply-side policies will help overcome stagflation. The recommendations of the supporters of the supply theory are used in the formation of economic policy in the USA, Great Britain, and a number of other countries. The theory of rational expectations is one of the currently popular concepts, according to which the economic policy of the government turns out to be ineffective, since firms and households quickly respond to the actions of the "top", in accordance with their own benefit. Using the available information, “rational” economic agents act contrary to the government's calculations. Social democratic economic theories are rather heterogeneous in their content. They are designed to reflect (and to a certain extent reflect) the interests of workers, employees, and the middle strata of the population. Systemic concepts of their own are usually lacking; the approaches of traditional directions, primarily Keynesianism, are used. Special attention paid to social problems: ensuring high employment, preserving the natural environment, a more even distribution of income. Social Democrats are in favor of more Active participation the state in the regulation of the mixed economy, ensuring public needs. Marginalism (English marginal - marginal) is a direction in economic science, whose representatives analyze economic processes from the standpoint of individual preferences of participants. On the basis of individual assessments of benefits and costs, a system of values is built and the essence of the main categories (prices, demand, costs, etc.) is substantiated. The development of this direction was initiated by the founders of the Austrian school. A distinctive feature of marginalism is the combination of theoretical analysis with applied developments. Marginalism makes extensive use of the mathematical apparatus, methodology and conclusions of applied branches of science. However, all these theories deal almost exclusively with economic problems, only occasionally touching on related disciplines (for example, psychology). Problems of morality and many other philosophical questions are not considered in them. 4.2 Criticism of the modern world and the search for economic and social alternatives in modern Western philosophy At the same time, in the science of the 20th century, along with the tendency towards ever narrower specialization of its individual branches, there is a directly opposite tendency - towards an interdisciplinary approach (that is, almost a return to the universalism of the past, but in a qualitatively different form). Many schools of Western philosophy combine the achievements of other related disciplines - political science, sociology, economics, psychology, etc. Reflections on the state of modern society, which is influenced by the current political and economic situation, become one of the central topics. An example of such a critical attitude can be called representatives of the Frankfurt philosophical school (T. Adorno, G. Marcuse, M. Horkheimer, E. Fromm.). Thus, M. Horkheimer traces the stages of development of capitalism from classical liberism (based on market competition) to monopoly capitalism, destroying the market economy and enforcing totalitarianism. "Fascism," asserted Horkheimer in 1939, "is the truth of modern society." And then he added: "Whoever does not want to talk about capitalism should keep quiet about fascism." The laws of capitalism presuppose fascism. "Purely economic law" - the law of the market and profit - the pure law of power. “Fascist ideology, in the manner of the old ideology of harmony, masks the true essence: the power of the minority that owns the means of production. The desire for profit is poured into what has always been - in the desire for social power. " Like Weber, Horkheimer speaks of rationality, but gives the term a completely different interpretation. The rationality underlying industrial civilization is fundamentally unhealthy. “If we want to talk about a disease of the mind,” writes Horkheimer, “it’s not in the sense of a disease that struck the mind at a certain historical stage, but as something inseparable from the nature of civilized mind, as we still know it. The disease of the mind gave rise to the thirst of man to dominate nature. " This will of the conqueror demanded knowledge of the "laws", the establishment of a bureaucratic anonymous organization, and in the name of triumph over nature it was required to make man an instrument as well. The progress of technical capabilities accompanies the process of dehumanization, so progress threatens to destroy the goal - the idea of a person of Humanity, emancipation, creative activity, critical ability is threatened by the "system" of industrial society, replacing the goals with means According to E. Fromm, practically every action or state of a person (love, power, knowledge, etc.) can be directed either by being or by possession. These two concepts are opposite to each other. However. Fromm distinguishes 2 types of possession: existential and characterological. Existential possession is innate and vital, it is rooted in the very conditions of human existence: in order to survive, it is necessary "that we have and preserve certain things, take care of them and use them." This applies to food, housing, clothing, tools of production necessary to meet needs. Characterological possession is a passionate desire to retain and preserve, it is not innate, but arose as a result of the impact of social conditions on a person. Existential possession does not come into conflict with being, characterological possession does. “Even those who are called“ just ”and“ righteous ”should desire to possess in the existential sense, since they are people, while the average person wants to possess in both the existential and characterological sense” (ibid.). Possession refers to things, things are stable and descriptive. Being, on the other hand, does not refer to things, but to experience, and human experience, in principle, cannot be described. “It is only our persona that can be fully described — the mask that each of us wears, the“ I ”that we represent, for this persona is a thing. On the contrary, a living human being is not some dead, frozen image and therefore cannot be described as a thing. In fact, a living human being cannot be described at all. " Fromm introduces the concepts of “mode of possession” and “mode of being”. As a prerequisite, the mode of being has independence, freedom and the presence of critical reason. The main characteristic feature of the mode of being is activity. However, activity is understood by Fromm as “internal activity,” the productive use of the abilities inherent in him by a person. “To be active means to give manifestation of one's abilities, talent, and all the wealth of human gifts with which - albeit in varying degrees - each person is endowed. It means renewing, growing, pouring out, loving, breaking free from the walls of your isolated self, experiencing deep interest, passionately striving for something, giving. " Being as a way of existence can arise only to the extent that a person begins to abandon possession (non-being) - he ceases to associate his security and sense of identity with what he has. So being implies activity; the opposite of activity - passivity - excludes being. Fromm gives a detailed analysis of the content of these two antonymic concepts (activity and passivity), using the data of modern language (in which activity is equated with simple employment; in this regard, the concept of alienation arises, which is key for Fromm and especially for his interpretation of Marxism) and the works of philosophers of various historical eras. Fromm distinguishes between the concept of alienated activity (when a person does not feel himself to be the subject of his own activity, acting under duress from the outside) and non-alienated or productive activity (feeling himself as the subject of his activity, the process of creating something and maintaining the connection between the creator and the created). In the sense of productivity (in Fromm's understanding), alienated activity turns out to be very real passivity, and what seems to the average person to be passivity is in fact inalienable activity. As Fromm notes, in the philosophical tradition of pre-industrial society, the concepts of "activity" and "passivity" had a completely different content than now (to prove this point, he analyzes the content of these concepts in Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, Meister Eckhart, Spinoza). It is precisely in the understanding of “activity” and “passivity” by B. Spinoza (activity is what is associated with the natural undistorted conditions of human existence, passivity (from Latin “passion” - “suffering”) is what arises as a result of distortion of the conditions of existence, including a passion for profit, ambition, etc.) Fromm sees the first example of criticism of industrial society. As Fromm notes, Marx comes to similar conclusions (several centuries after Spinoza) in his Economic-Philosophical Manuscripts. According to Fromm, Marx's criticism of capitalism and his dream of socialism are based on the fact that the capitalist system paralyzes human activity, and the goal is the revival of all mankind through the restoration of activity in all spheres. According to Fromm, the model of a new society should be built in accordance with the needs of an inalienable and being-oriented individual. It is assumed that poverty in this society will disappear, however, members of this society will not be able to turn into soulless consumers. Production must be reoriented towards healthy consumption. Consumption patterns, Fromm suggests, can be changed by concerted action to stimulate healthy consumers. Healthy consumption is only possible if the right of shareholders and managers of large enterprises to determine the nature of their products based on profitability and the interests of expanding production alone is resolutely curbed. According to Fromm, this can be done through legislation. Of course, large corporations will not immediately want to follow these laws. Only the desire of all citizens for healthy consumption can break the resistance of corporations. As one of the means, Fromm calls consumer strikes (refusal to purchase a particular product - for example, personal cars, which, according to Fromm, are the most striking symbol of a society of alienation and possession). However, Fromm clearly understands that the refusal of consumers to purchase one or another product can affect several areas of the economy at once (for example, the refusal to purchase personal cars - in mechanical engineering, the oil refining industry and in a number of other industries). Realizing the potential danger of this measure, Fromm still does not refuse it, considering it, however, only as an auxiliary means. To create a society based on the principle of being, people must take an active part in the economic activities of the society and become active citizens. The liberation of people from the orientation toward possession, according to Fromm, is possible only as a result of the full realization of industrial and political participatory democracy. By industrial democracy Fromm means a society in which each member of a large industrial or any other organization plays an active role in the life of this organization, receives complete information about the work of the enterprise. The enterprise becomes a social institution. Genuine political democracy, according to Fromm, is one in which life becomes interesting, that is, active, filled with spiritual meaning. However, Fromm himself was aware of the utopianism of his ideas. Moreover, the closer to the present time, the more pessimistic are the views of philosophers and sociologists on the state of society and the relationship between economics and morality. Thus, the American philosopher F. Fukuyama, on the basis of an analysis of the facts of the surrounding political and economic reality (in which he uses the philosophy of Hegel and Marx, in his own way) constructs his concept of the “end of history” - a dead end for the further progress of mankind, which, however, became a consequence of a positive phenomenon - economic and political liberalism, which prioritized the welfare of man, the sanctity of his freedom, etc. “The end of the story is sad. The struggle for recognition, the willingness to risk life for a purely abstract goal, an ideological struggle that requires courage, imagination and idealism - instead of all this, economic calculation, endless technical problems, taking care of the environment and satisfying the sophisticated needs of the consumer. In the post-historical period there is neither art nor philosophy; there is only a carefully guarded museum of human history. I feel in myself and notice in those around me nostalgia for the time when history existed. For a time, this nostalgia will still fuel rivalry and conflict. Recognizing the inevitability of a post-historical world, I have the most contradictory feelings about the civilization created in Europe after 1945, with its North Atlantic and Asian branches. Perhaps this very prospect of centuries-old boredom will force history to take another, new start? " Finally, we should also mention the extremist, marginal view of the problems of the modern world (and in particular, the connection between economics and morality), which was expressed by the modern French philosopher and public figure, the creator of "Situationism" Guy Debord in his now cult book "The Society of the Spectacle" ... In this work (in a style more reminiscent of a publicistic pamphlet), Debord fiercely criticizes modern industrial and post-industrial society, calling it "the society of the spectacle." The term "society of the spectacle" owes its origin to Debord's further understanding of the teachings of Hegel and Marx about "alienation": in this society, a person is alienated not only from the results of his labor, but even from reality itself, which the powerful of this world deliberately fill with fictitious images, creating in a person (worker) the illusion of social security, contentment, etc. At the same time, Debord criticizes both Marx himself (who is too bourgeois for him) and modern communist regimes (which, in his opinion, are such, in his opinion, only in words, but in deeds - modifications of all that the society of the performance). Debord's ideal society is reminiscent of a Renaissance utopia, in which there are no signs of an economy at all (there is no commodity-money exchange, market, etc.). 4.3 Russian philosophy and economics Russian philosophy of economics, like Russian philosophy in general, has always had its own special character. On the one hand, in Russia in the XIX - XX centuries. there were many economists of the classical Western model. On the other hand, Russian idealist philosophers also dealt with the problems of economics as a social phenomenon, a manifestation of the spiritual life of a person. Therefore, they often use the expression not “economy”, but “economy”. If economics in their view is a scientific materialistic discipline, then “economy” is something spiritual, connected with the relationship between man and nature, man and the world (and, moreover, man and God). This is not "economics", but the Church Slavonic translation of this word - "Domostroy" (as you know, the book "Domostroy" dealt with most of the relationship between man and God, life according to Divine laws, and only then - purely utilitarian problems). Thus, the Christian thinker S.N. Bulgakov created his original economic religious philosophy, proclaiming in it the “sophianism” of the economy (the sophianism ”can be understood as the emanation of the deity into the world). ON. Berdyaev, in his polemical work, continues and develops these ideas in his own way. The controversy is already evident in the title of the work, "The Philosophy of Inequality": while in classical social philosophy inequality was viewed as something negative, Berdyaev sees inequality as a guarantee of the development of the creative forces of man and society. According to Berdyaev, economic life is not the opposite of spiritual life: any manifestation of material life is a derivative of spiritual life. Manufacturing is also spiritual life. At the same time, the consumerist attitude to life (which, according to Berdyaev, the Marxists also sin) is destructive for the creative spirit, this is the path to slavery, not to prosperity. In the same way, blind submission to the forces of the economy (which, not being controlled, turn out to be as strong as natural ones) leads to slavery. One of the manifestations of this slavery, according to Berdyaev, is the socialism that was built in the USSR, although capitalism is also viewed as "the black magic of money"). Economy is not an end in itself, but a means of victory of spirit over matter. It is precisely as a means that Berdyaev considers both progress and machines (he does not demonize them, as, for example, such modern representatives of philosophy as J. Ellul do). 3. Professional activity: between economics and morality The models of modern rationality are by no means characterized by one-sided autonomy, which is subject exclusively to its own laws. Rather, each sample examined is a specific combination of opposing patterns. Thus, the modern economy is by no means limited to an unbridled desire for profit and absolute utilitarianism, but is a kind of combination that combines a methodically rational way of life with religious roots with economic livelihood activities. The modern state is not guided by a primitive logic of power, but combines the use of political power with the rule of law. Modern science is not limited to experimentation, but is a methodological activity in the course of which rational experiment closely links the accumulation of empirical experience with the systematic work of creating a scientific theory. This is not the place to go into details. It is important, however, to emphasize that it is wrong to imagine modern society as consisting of autonomous spheres, living according to their own laws and having no interconnections. As a result of the interpenetration of two different systems, a special zone of this interpenetration arises, which is a new system and at the same time a connecting link between the two original opposite systems. Thus, Luther initiated, and Calvinism, with even greater radicalism, continued to rethink secular professional work as a religious asceticism. This led to the fact that economic behavior began to be perceived as the fulfillment of religious duty, which, accordingly, should be guided by the laws of religious morality, however, on the other hand, the fulfillment of religious duty was placed in the economic sphere and, therefore, had to obey the laws of this sphere. Labor professional asceticism of the Puritans is a typical product of the interpenetration of religion and economics, which was formed step by step from Luther's Reformation through Calvinism to Puritan morality itself. When Max Weber says that the Puritan wanted to be a professional, and we are forced to become such, he by no means meant that today's professional work is driven exclusively by utilitarian motives and does not have an ethic of professional duty. Of course, in our professional activities we obey economic imperatives, however, how we relate to them and how we cope with them is determined today to a large extent by professional ethics, the requirements for maintaining the prestige of this profession and maintaining the respect of others for the person engaged in this profession. ... In a finally secularized society, it is professional activity that gives a person a personal identity, social status, respect or disrespect for others. The more equality develops, the more this applies to all members of society. He who has no profession has no respect; those in a less respected profession are less respected. So, economic activity is always also a professional activity, which is influenced by the norms of professional ethics. The profession is the intersection of ethics and economics. In this zone of interpenetration, a special system of professional activity arises, which simultaneously obeys economic laws and ethical norms, and also serves as a link between both systems - ethics and economics. An entrepreneur, naturally, is not able to change the laws of the economy; he must know the language of prices in order for his company to successfully compete in the market with other competitors. No one has the right to expect an entrepreneur to pay his employee more than he economically can afford, or to implement environmental protection measures, abstracting from the market and the threat of bankruptcy. On the contrary, he will be reproached for non-fulfillment of professional duty if his company turns out to be economically insolvent. However, an entrepreneur is guided by far more than economic imperatives. Society makes certain moral demands on him. The degree of respect or disrespect on the part of society in relation to a given entrepreneur depends, for example, on how much he takes into account the issues of social security of his employees in his own business activities, how much he contributes to their professional development, how energetically he supports the work of public organizations and how actively he participates in public life himself, to what extent he is interested in the introduction of advanced and environmentally friendly technologies, to what extent he supports political measures aimed at protecting the environment. Moral factors of this kind, taking the form of applicable law, determine economic behavior already without fail. The more importance society attaches to these aspects of entrepreneurial activity, the more depends the measure of public respect for the entrepreneur, for the management of his firm, for the firm itself, on these aspects, which in fact set the framework conditions in which only profit can be maximized. Institutionalized forms of professional and economic ethics put forward certain requirements for the results of entrepreneurial activities. It is true that an enterprise cannot spend funds on staff development, on their social security, on the social integration of those who have lost their jobs or on environmental programs, if the necessary capital has not been accumulated. Since the existence of an enterprise depends on its solvency, which, in turn, can only be ensured by profitable activities, and not by fraud or other economic crimes, the enterprise is forced to perform business operations or declare itself bankrupt. 4. Conclusion So, reflections on the relationship between economics, state and morality have occupied an essential place in the works of philosophers since ancient times. Philosophy does not give an unequivocal answer whether morality and economics are antagonistic or complementary phenomena. Some philosophers believe that economics is hostile to morality, others that it is not. That said, there are opportunities for reconciliation and the complementary existence of morality and economics. With the collapse of the estate society, there is a simultaneous expansion of morality and economics, the expansion of morality - under the influence of intellectual discourse, the expansion of the economy - under the influence of free market competition. Without connecting links, they come into collision and constant conflict, without mutually penetrating each other. Only the creation of connecting links in the form of professional activity, which at the stage of professional training develops a two-way orientation, as well as in the form of various mixed commissions, ensures the interpenetration of economics and morality. The conflict between morality and economics is exacerbated if vocational training is divorced from moral issues, and moral issues themselves remain the prerogative of philosophical discourses and public debate. Universities do not cope with their task if they do not make their own contribution to overcoming the conflict between economics and morality with the help of interdisciplinary projects, with the help of the orientation of the cultural sciences towards the problems of morality, the social sciences towards conflict problems, and the economic, natural and technical sciences towards solution of technical and economic problems. The system of professional activity, labor, social and environmental law are parts of the economic and parts of the moral system, they form zones of interpenetration and connecting links for the mutual transportation of economic and moral requirements in the areas of economic and moral behavior. The systems of economic and moral behavior, payments and the distribution of moral respect, although they are developed functional systems, are open to each other. Literature Blaug M. Economic thought in retrospect. - M, 1994 Berdyaev N.A. Philosophy of Inequality // Russian Abroad. Power and law. - L .: Lenizdat, 1991 Bulgakov S.N. Economy philosophy. - M., 1990. Weber M. Protestant ethics and the spirit of capitalism. - M., 2003 Debord G. The Society of the Spectacle. - M .: Gnosis, 1992 E. Durkheim. On the division of social labor; Sociology method. - M .: Nauka, 1991 History of ethical doctrines (edited by A.A.Gusseinov). - M .: Gardariki, 2003. Coppleston F.C. History of Philosophy: Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome. - M., 2003 Coppleston F.C. History of Philosophy: The Middle Ages. - M., 2003 Lukach G. Young Hegel and the problems of capitalist society. - M., 1987 Osipov Yu.M. Essays on the philosophy of economy - M., 2000. Reale J., Antiseri D. Western philosophy from its origins to the present day. T.4. SPb, 1994 Rikh A. Economic ethics - M., 1996. Rawls J. Theory of justice. - Novosibirsk, 1995 Feyerabend P. Against methodological coercion // Feyerabend P. Selected works on the methodology of science, M., 1986 Fromm E. To have or to be? - M .: Progress, 1990 Fukuyama F. The End of History and the Last Man. - M., 2004 Balogh T. The Irrelevance of Conventional Economics. - New York, 1982, p 23.B.J. Beyond Positivism: Economic Methodology in the twentieth century. - London, 1982 D.N. The Rhetoric of Economic Science .: Essays on Methodology. - Boston, 1983 T.N. The Significance and Basic Postulates of Economic Theory. - New York, 1960
Unlike monetarists, rational expectation theorists believe that policy miscalculations are not due to the mistakes of policymakers and policymakers, but to the unforeseen responses of firms and consumers to decisions. The practical significance of this concept lies in the fact that it aims at a thorough study of the psychology and behavior of people, at achieving a more organic connection between macro-management and microeconomics.
Institutionalism emerged as a specific trend in political economy, first in the United States and then in Western European countries. In contrast to the "orthodox" - neoclassicists, institutionalists strive to develop a theory that explains the processes of development of human society in the form of a single whole. The analysis of economic processes is closely associated with the analysis of social, legal, political, organizational, psychological and other social relations.
John Galbraith, Ian Tinbergen and other representatives of institutionalism see society not as a well-oiled and fixed system, but as constantly renewing and developing. They seek to understand the process of social evolution and present some of the features of the coming post-industrial society.
Neoliberalism is a trend in economic science and practice of managing economic activities, whose supporters defend the principle of self-regulation of the economy, free from excessive regulation. Representatives of economic neoliberalism usually follow two traditional positions. First, they proceed from the fact that the market, as the most effective economic system, creates best conditions for economic growth. Secondly, they defend the priority importance of freedom of subjects of economic activity. The state must provide conditions for competition and exercise control where these conditions are absent. Neoliberalism usually includes three schools: Chicago (M. Friedman), London (F. Hayek) and Freiburg (V. Euken). Modern neoliberals are united by a common methodology, not conceptual provisions. Neoliberals, for example N. Barry, A. Lerner, speak out not only against Keynesianism, but also against monetarism, accusing these schools of being carried away by macroeconomic problems to the detriment of the analysis of microeconomic processes.
In this sense, indeed, we can say that the economy is governed by its own code, which implies a constant need to choose between "payment" or "non-payment", i.e. cost or not cost of resources. However, a prerequisite for this is the exclusion of the transfer of resources into ownership by illegal means, which is based on an institutionalized property right, which is effective to the extent that a moral consensus has been established in society regarding the inviolability of private property, and in the measure in which this consensus is enshrined by existing legal regulations, as well as to the extent that these regulations can be protected, if necessary, by appropriate sanctions. Thus, the development of the economy is associated with a moral act, and its stability is based on a stable moral consensus.
The institutionalization of property rights forces us to use our resources carefully, because it is only through the transfer of our resources to another owner that other resources can be acquired. How exactly this is done, in what directions our resources are spent, is determined by a specific program, which, on the one hand, is subject to the rules of economic expediency, and, on the other hand, is determined in more or less significant volumes by the rules of social solidarity and environmental care, which fixed by moral consensus and specified in the form of legal norms, which creates a certain imperative framework for making decisions about the expenditure of resources.
One who, from the point of view of society, does a good deed deserves moral respect; doing a bad deed deserves disrespect. The one who wisely manages the household makes a profit; the housekeeper is unreasonable, doomed to losses. The one who does a good deed does not necessarily become rich, and the one who does a bad deed does not necessarily go broke. An entrepreneur who makes a high profit will not necessarily be respected more than someone who has suffered a loss. In this sense, a measure of respect or disrespect, on the one hand, and economic gain or loss, on the other, exist independently of each other. However, this fact does not mean at all that there are no interconnections at all. To the extent that economic activity must be considered with respect for property rights, and also to the extent that economic activity is a professional activity - for which it is necessary to have a certain social status, take care of public respect and avoid nuisance, - the orientation of economic activity towards profit maximization will always be simultaneously regulated by moral standards. The behavior of entrepreneurs, entire firms and consumers is determined by these norms to the extent that corresponds to the level of moral consensus in society and the development of social institutions designed to monitor the plausibility and unseemly actions of individual citizens, the legality or illegality of their actions. Only where economic success requires nothing else, the person who has achieved success automatically gains respect, regardless of how resources are spent. However, the more society regulates and controls the expenditure of resources, the more the achievement of economic success depends on the simultaneous fulfillment of moral requirements that bring corresponding moral respect. That said, managing scarce resources economically can become a moral value in itself. Between the system of economic “payments” (use of resources) and the system of rendering moral respect, there is a system of professional activity, where respect is acquired through “payments”, and profit is achieved within the framework of the morally acceptable. The more moral pressure is put on by society, the more respect must be earned and reaffirmed in order to be generally recognized as a business partner. In times of growing moral requirements for the preservation of the environment, this or that company, increasing its social status at the expense of environmental programs, gets the opportunity to arouse more interest from consumers than its competitors. With the growth of moral requirements, morality grows ever more firmly into the economy.
The system of professional activity forms a zone of interpenetration of economics and morality. As a nexus, this system brings moral norms to economics and economic imperatives to morality. This means that every economically calculated action is increasingly governed by moral norms. Conversely, economic calculation becomes an integral part of morality. Professional morality presupposes the ability to make correct calculations and carefully manage available resources. On the one hand, economic behavior serves as a material for moral design, on the other hand, moral behavior is a material that takes a certain form, thanks to economic calculation. Cooperation of a modern enterprise with activists of the environmental movement takes the interpenetration of economics and morality to a new level.
the sphere of economic life that ensures the survival of the weakest in the face of the threat of hunger, disability, economic risk and disasters. In the traditional economy, every 10 years there was a famine year, and every 25 years there were large hunger strikes, which led to the extinction of entire regions.
The main problem of the family is a safe existence. The principle of “safety-first” is at the heart of the moral code of survival ethics: “subsistence ethics”. Therefore, any family strives to ensure a minimum income.
Everyone is in danger of falling below the lower limit of consumption. Hence the desire to minimize risk, caution in innovations, the manifestation of safety net. For those in need, economic assistance is provided by relatives and friends, neighbors, you can count on help from wealthy people, monasteries, and the state.
In the peasant economy, the minimum content of the requirement for the "right to exist" was that the possessing classes should not take from the peasant what is vital to his family; in its maximum sounding, this requirement presupposed certain moral obligations of the landlords and the state in relation to the poor during the famine.
When concluding a lease agreement, the peasants preferred to be reinsured in case of crop failure at the expense of the landowner. In addition to the contractual support, other support is expected from the patron in the event of a disaster. In situations close to hunger, landowners reduced their share in the harvest, and, if necessary, helped the hungry with grain. Power must justify its existence by maintaining a certain level of collective security and prosperity. This is the price of power. In the old days, kings were killed in lean years; emperors were deprived of "God's anointing" if the country was gripped by famine; Russian priests were beaten when there was no rain for a long time. Ensuring the right to existence is the main duty of the haves, their minimum obligation in relation to those who give them their grain and their labor. The minimum human needs for rest, food, etc. constitute an almost universal limit to which the peasant considered the exploitation of his labor and the withdrawal of his products justified.
In family-clan, territorial-neighborhood, religious and national communities, all families are guaranteed a minimum subsistence level to the extent that the resources at the disposal of the community allow it to do so. The "moral economy" of the village had its limits. The fact that one cannot do badly towards a relative or fellow villager did not yet mean that one cannot do bad things towards others who do not live in the same village. Morality was limited to the framework of the village world, the world was reluctant to allocate land to illegitimate children, since it was not known who the father was. The newcomers were also given land with great difficulties. Several generations of them could live here without receiving land.
That is why the peasant's desire to become an owner was so great and the fear of being a worker was so great. The difference in income is often small (in any case, disproportionate to the desire to become the owner). But a decline along this social ladder meant a sharp decrease in the guarantees of existence, an increase in risk. The main advantage of the owner over the tenant is that his means of production are in his hands, and the safety of his existence does not depend on the will of another person. The tenant also avoids complete dependence on the vagaries of the market. In addition, he is associated with a patron who will help in a crisis. Therefore, the peasants had a hard time going through such milestone situations as the loss of their piece of land or the rupture of the usual social ties that insured against risk. Self-sufficiency and autarchy were the desired and unattainable goals of moral economics.
More on the topic Moral Economics:
- 3.1. Market economy: conceptual design and reality.
- 5.1. Conceptual Approaches to Mixed Economies in Developing Countries
- State regulation of the financial sector of the economy of East Asian countries
- 1 PLANS OF FASCIST GERMANY FOR USING THE ECONOMY OF THE OCCUPIED REGIONS OF THE USSR
- Organization of an enterprise in an associated economy Production association and production community
O business should not be thought of as the lowest level of human activities versus writing novels and power struggle. Business is a creative process. Studying it as worthy of effort as history, law, medicine, social organization and art.
G. L. S. Shackle 2
It should be noted that there are different points of view in ethics on the issues raised. There are two alternative approaches to the problem of the relationship between morality and economics, and many others, which are their various combinations.
The first point of view is “pragmatic”. It is argued that the main goal of a business is profit. It is the valuation of production results that makes the economy serve the needs of society and a specific consumer.
The supporters of the pragmatic point of view on the problem of the relationship between morality and the economy include all economists who consistently adhere to the principles of a free market, the elimination of trade barriers and limited government intervention in the economy. M. Friedman declares that in "a free economic system there is one - the only type of responsibility, according to which all available funds should be used with maximum efficiency and any activity should be checked with the maximum possible profit" 3 ... The market gives each of us a chance to realize ourselves based on how effectively we will use the opportunities provided to them. The market is not only not bypassed, but must also be uncontrollable. The role of the state should be reduced only to creating favorable conditions necessary for the effective functioning of the market system, and ensuring equality before the law of all economic entities. It is the market that is able to bring together the knowledge, skills and abilities that are scattered throughout society. A remarkable milestone not only in the history of economic theory, but also in ethics is the work of the Scottish thinker of the 18th century Adam Smith. In his economic work "Investigation of the Nature and Cause of the Wealth of Nations", the Scottish thinker defended the idea of a market economy, based on a certain concept of man. Man is economic a being who seeks to derive the greatest benefit and maximum profit for itself. Self-interest is the fundamental incentive for effective business management. "Give me what I need, and you will get what you need ... This is how we get from each other the majority of the services we need." 4 .
However, in a market economy, in addition to personal egoistic interest, there is also an “invisible hand” that directs many personal interests, regardless of the subjects themselves, to the common good. An entrepreneur guided by an "invisible hand" serves the interests of society more effectively than when he consciously seeks to serve him.
A. Smith believed that a society can exist without mutual love or affection, but when the members of the society are aware of its benefits and build their relationships on responsibilities and duties. Society can also be supported "by facilitating the selfish exchange of mutual services, for which everyone has a recognized value." 5 .
JS Mill admits the idea that the "transformation of society" towards the spontaneous transformation of accumulated capital into the property of "those who use them for production" could provide "a combination most suitable for the organization of industry." At the same time, his main conclusion is unambiguous: although the solution of practical problems requires "the spread of the social worldview", "the general principle should be laisser faire, and every deviation from it, not dictated by considerations of some higher good, is a clear evil."
The market has such an advantage that it is able to effectively distribute those resources that were not previously and could not be accounted for, for economic purposes that were not previously and could not be identified. The spontaneous nature of the market order means that any intervention in it can only undermine the market mechanism and paralyze the economic system as a whole. Moreover, any conscious control over economic life, any economic policy aimed at obtaining certain results, be it a policy of full employment, economic growth, combating inflation or economic downturns, balancing supply and demand of the money supply, etc., in the opinion of Hayek, in principle, is impossible, since she is not able to take into account and use the body of knowledge that is necessary for its successful implementation, and can only have devastating consequences for the economy.
The second point of view recognizes the dialectical connection between morality and economics. It emphasizes not only the personal and ethical aspect of the economy, but also its structural and moral aspect of the impact on the economy. The principle is defended that if morality declares something in the business economy unjust, then this means that the economic prerequisites for a different, more equitable solution to the problem are ripe, and that the subject must submit to this decision.
Proponents of this point of view believe that a morally positive economy ensures long-term, strategic efficiency and profitability. Representatives of this trend create concepts of social responsibility of business based on their own subjective vision of this responsibility, opening up opportunities for lobbying the interests of individual non-governmental organizations and government groups.
In the XX century, M. Weber's ideas about the connection between market capitalism and religious Christian morality became widespread. In his book "Protestant Ethics and the Spirit of Capitalism" M. Weber analyzed the importance of the ethical factor in the genesis of a rational, market economy. According to M. Weber, the spirit of capitalism is "a system of thinking, which is characterized by a systematic striving for legitimate profit within the framework of its profession." 6 ... The scientist showed that rational, or market, capitalism is opposed by a competitor - "traditionalism" or "stagnant society" Traditionalism is guided by the principle of "maximum pleasure and minimum stress".
Market capitalism emerges on a different basis. Its main principles are: "professional work as a duty, an end in itself." Profit and capital are assessed as economic and moral values that characterize the dignity of a person, his intrinsic value, his “God's chosenness”. Capital is a means for self-realization, self-affirmation as an affirmation of one's “I” in one's own eyes and in the opinion of loved ones and society.
M. Weber critically assessed, from the point of view of the ethics of success, the possibilities of Eastern religions, Catholicism and Orthodoxy. Weber saw the main drawback of these religions in the widespread mysticism among them. Mysticism is primarily turned inward and treats the world as a temptation. Such mysticism is distinguished by contemplation, disregard for the role of reason and, in fact, is a denial of the world. “Broken by the world” the mystic is the opposite of an ascetic who takes an active life position. “A special submissive“ brokenness ”characterizes the worldly activity of the mystic, - wrote M. Weber, - he always strives to go into the shadows and solitude, where he feels his closeness to God. The ascetic is confident that he serves as an instrument of God " 7 .
A relatively positive assessment of wealth and success can be found among the apostles. Thus, Chief Apostle Paul says: “work ... so that there is something to give to the needy” 8 ... St. John Chrysostom also drew attention to the fact that "let us not envy the rich and despise the poor, for both are from God and not from God." 9 ... “I do not condemn those,” he asserts in another Beseda, “who have houses, fields, money, servants; but I just want them to own it all carefully and properly. "
Thus, in Christianity, success, wealth, and high social status are not metaphysically denied. But unlike the pagan idolatry of the golden calf, mammon, outstanding people, in Christianity all this is not considered as an intrinsic value, as the meaning of a person's life: social success should not enslave an immortal soul, a person should be free from avarice, vanity, pride, and he can to be such, for it is free by nature, since it was created in the image and likeness of God. Social success in the broadest sense of the word is only a means that should not be neglected as "unrighteous wealth", a means that, like "talent", cannot be buried in the ground, since it is also from God.
"And I tell you again: it is more convenient for a camel to pass through the ears of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God." 10 ... This condemnation of wealth and civil success is found in the epistle of the apostles and in patristics. The Apostle Paul wrote to his spiritual son Timothy that "the love of money is the root of all evil."
Some thinkers argue that success and well-being can only be achieved by immoral methods. This means that a person is faced with a choice between success and virtue. And the question involuntarily arises: is there really no other payment for success, except for violence, intrigue and deception? Or are there other, moral methods? These thinkers offered their own ways to achieve harmony between economics and morality, between economics and politics, between the private or group interests of a minority and the national interests or even the interests of all mankind.
Economic thought received significant development in ancient Greece. The largest representatives in this area were the famous ancient Greek thinkers Plato and Aristotle. Plato had a negative attitude to the function of money as a treasure and demanded to prohibit the sale and purchase on credit, i.e. opposed the use of money as a means of payment. Plato believed that the townspeople should be given land plots, but their property should not be excessive. If the value of the property exceeds the value of the allotment by 4 times, then the surplus is subject to transfer to the state. Loans with interest and purchase of goods on credit are also prohibited. The law should set limits for price fluctuations. It is in such a state where these rules are followed that there will be neither rich nor poor. In the dialogue “Laws” Plato wrote: “I see the imminent death of that state where the law has no force and is under someone’s authority. Where the law is the lord over the rulers, and they are its slaves, I see the salvation of the state and all the benefits that the gods can bestow on states. "
Trade is necessary only because it serves the division of labor within and between cities. Philosophers and warriors do not have any private property and are mercilessly punished for keeping gold and silver. Property is the privilege of peasants and artisans, since it does not in itself interfere with work, but is destructive for those who are devoted to high thoughts.
Aristotle was one of the first thinkers who tried to study economic laws in contemporary Greece. A special place in his works is occupied by the explanation of the concepts of money, trade. He investigated the historical process of the origin and development of exchange trade, its transformation into large-scale trade. Trade turned out to be a force conducive to the formation of the state. Need, i.e. economic necessity, "binds people into one" and leads to exchange, which is based on the fact of the social division of labor.
Aristotle approved of the type of management that pursued the goal of acquiring benefits for the home and the state, calling it "economy". The economy is associated with the production of products necessary for life. He characterized the activity of commercial and usurious capital aimed at enrichment as unnatural, calling it "chrematism." Chrematistics is aimed at making a profit and its main goal is the accumulation of wealth. Aristotle believed that true wealth consists of basic necessities in an economy with an average income, that it cannot be infinite by nature, but must be limited to a certain framework sufficient to ensure a “good life”.
The Italian monk of Dominican origin - Thomas Aquinas - is the most authoritative figure of the canonist school at a later stage of its development. Aquinas, taking into account the realities of his time, is looking for new explanations of social inequality in the conditions of the class division of society. So in the work “Summa Theology” he shows the massive introduction of commodity-money relations in the life of cities. Unlike the canonists of the early period, Thomas Aquinas no longer considers usury to be an exclusively sinful phenomenon, he actively uses the principle of duality of assessments, which allows using sophistry to radically change the essence of the initial interpretation of an economic phenomenon or economic category. Therefore, The Summa of Theology is replete with dual characteristics and scholastic judgments to which the author resorts in search of ways of reconciliation and compromise on many seemingly mutually exclusive theoretical positions. The term "fair price" was put forward by the early canonists, in particular by "St. Augustine." At that time, it included the following content: The value of a product should be established in accordance with labor and material costs in the process of its production according to the principle of “Fair price”. Continuing the beginnings of the canonists and at the same time resorting to the principle of duality of assessments, Thomas Aquinas departs from the costly principle of establishing a "Fair price", considering it not entirely accurate, since he may not deliver the amount of money to the seller corresponding to his position in society and cause damage. Thomas Aquinas substantiated two types of “fair prices”. First, he considered a price “fair” if it reflects all costs, that is, the cost of raw materials, tools, transportation. Second, the “fair price” should provide food for the seller in accordance with his estate position. The price of one and the same product is one for a craftsman, but for a knight and a clergyman it is different. In the first type of prices, the basis of exchange is equality, and in the second it is a privilege for the upper classes.
In the conditions of tyrannical and serfdom, wealth was achieved through violence, the well-being of some was built on the plight of others. A worthy means of achieving the goal was the “heroic”, forceful form of acquiring wealth. Under the same conditions, although not on a large scale, there was another way of satisfying personal interests - free exchange: small-scale, handicraft production, small-scale or even large-scale trade based on sober calculation. Oppressed and despised by the authorities and public opinion, such activities were considered "base", unworthy of a decent person. From the standpoint of tyrannical and serfdom morality, such activity did not inspire confidence, and therefore was criticized from various points of view: aristocratic, religious, and later proletarian, revolutionary, etc. Achievement of material well-being, that is, satisfaction of vital needs through free exchange in all traditional societies was condemned as a desire for profit. A new value orientation began to form with the development of commodity production. In the era of the Renaissance and modern times, free exchange becomes a priority, while authoritarian forms of exchange go into the shadows and are outlawed. Nevertheless, in the public opinion, the activities of an entrepreneur and a trader continue to be perceived with derision and contempt. To a large extent, such a negative attitude is due to the position of moralists, and not only to the archaic, traditionalist or communal-communitarian concept of morality. All these supporters of disinterestedness united in a united front against liberal moral values, which do not correspond to their subjective ideas about morality.
However, on the other hand, there was an understanding that a person who reasonably and successfully realizes his own interest contributes to the common good of other people. In an effort to satisfy his private interest, each person enters into free exchange with other persons who also satisfy their private interest. The merchant goes to the buyer, and the customer goes to the merchant, the doctor goes to the patient, and the patient goes to the doctor. As a result, self-organization is replacing the authoritarian, forceful organization of society. Therefore, individuals as bearers of private interest are not only not alienated from each other, but, on the contrary, they rally, despite the fact that personal interest acts as the driving force of their activity.
One of those who questioned the viability of liberal relations and the underlying theory of “reasonable egoism” and proposed a different approach to the market economy was John Maynard Keynes, thanks to whose efforts modern economics, as well as the socio-economic reality of the West, became as we see them today.
Annotation. The article substantiates the idea that morality and economics are two opposite poles of social practice - freedom and necessity. In the course of historical development, the priority of morality over economics, characteristic of class societies, was replaced by the priority of economics over morality, characteristic of capitalism. Both types of interaction are one-sided: they do not take into account that morality and economics are interconnected by mutual negation, as two independent factors that can neither be reduced to each other, nor built hierarchically.
Keywords: morality, economics, social practice, deed, moral prohibitions, market, egoism, individualistic ethics. One of the central and difficult issues in the study of applied ethics is the relationship between the functional responsibilities of the individual and his moral convictions. After all, each person acts freely, on his own, on his own and at the same time forcedly, representing on behalf of someone and something. The most illustrative case of the relationship between these two aspects of activity is the interaction of morality and economics.
1. Morality and economics are the essence of the category of practice as a conscious (purposeful) human activity. They represent its two opposite poles. If, in general, practice as a specific human way of being in the world is a unity of freedom and necessity, then morality is the ultimate point of the pole of freedom, and economics is of necessity. The fundamental unit of practice, the first brick of all its complex patterns and long causal chains, is an act (action), which, if we use the figurative expression of M.M. Bakhtin, like the ancient god of inputs and outputs Janus, is deployed in two opposite directions - in the acting subject and in external world.
The deed owes its origin, the fact that it generally took place as a fact, to the subject, and in this sense it is fundamentally subjective. And by its content it is included in the world and is as objective, rigidly determined as the world itself. An act is committed by virtue of the individual's decision to commit it. This is the point that the acting individual puts in the chain of causal links that goes from infinity and goes to infinity. Here, at this point, when it is necessary to make a decision about whether or not there will be an act (it does not matter whether it is about the routine actions of daily life or about great deeds), as a result of which it turns out to be named and becomes his act, the act of the given Ivan , Peter, etc., it is here, at this point that the focus of the freedom of the individual and his morality is located.
It is precisely because of his special, exclusively individual responsibility for the fact of an act that an individual acts freely (from himself) and has the opportunity to realize his desire for good. Released, included in the external (objective) world, an act becomes a part, a moment of this world. Its content is strictly determined and does not depend on who committed this act, or rather, it depends only in the sense that the content of the act is mediated by knowledge, skills and other subjective qualities of the acting individual borrowed from the same objective world in advance.
The stone released from the hand does not belong to the one who released it. Among the objective factors that generate actions, which determine their nature and content, the very matter of actions, the very first and most severe is the need to maintain life, which is embodied in the type of management and economy. And if morality is the culmination, the limit of the subjective aspect of an act, and through it the practice as a whole, then economics is the culmination and fundamental principle of their objective aspect. We are talking about a completely obvious and banal fact of life and its social organization, which consists in the fact that a person must eat, drink, dress before he mentally engages in philosophy, science, art. 2. Man is a rational and social being at the same time.
He is intelligent precisely as a social being. Practice is always a form of joint, collective activity of people. It is such both in its subjective and objective aspects. The nature of these collective bonds is as different (opposite) as the aspects themselves. The individual becomes a moral subject, uniting with other individuals in a free union. Acting freely, of himself, he acts as if everything, the very structure of the world depended on his decision, as if he were creating an ideally complete, best world for himself. Moral practice as causality from freedom is not limited, since nothing can limit the will of the individual when he decides to be one or another action or not.
In this sense, it acts as the truth of being, differing from the epistemological truth only in that it, the moral truth, is introduced by a person into the world, while that, the epistemological truth, is derived from it. Moral practice is always individualized, personal, unique, because its organizing center is a specific (this one) incoming subject. Otherwise, collectivity is found in the economy. The individual objectifies himself, reduces himself to the level of an economic unit, uniting with other individuals by force, due to external forced connection. He connects with them and needs them to supplement himself and his efforts, which are not enough to sustain life. He needs others to exchange activities and results with them.
He cooperates with them involuntarily, on the basis of calculation, for the sake of benefit, to meet needs and achieve goals that he himself cannot achieve due to his functional limitations, weakness, partialness, incompleteness. And these relations will be all the more adequate, the more there is a need for them: scientific expediency, rational regulated orderliness, inevitability of correctly calculated consequences, heartlessness, etc. And on the contrary, the introduction of a proper moral principle into material, functionally and objectively defined relations has a destructive effect on them. Whitehead was right when he said that civilization would collapse if people began to live according to the canons of the Sermon on the Mount. 3. Morality expresses the initially set respectful attitude of people towards each other, the unconditional recognition of their human dignity as autonomous subjects. In the world of goals and values, it claims to be the last point of reference, a kind of the highest court of appeal. Economics, on the other hand, denotes the other pole - the pole of dependence on others; it gives the relations of people a material character. This understanding is quite consistent with the well-established notions, according to which morality is associated with selflessness, and the economy - with self-interest (benefit).
The most difficult is the problem of their connection (interaction, collision, addition) in the real experience of individual and social life. The question that interests us in these notes is the following: how does morality connect with the economy, affect it, and what, in turn, is itself influenced by it? To consider it, it is necessary to make one more clarification of a general nature, which concerns the effectiveness of morality.
In the direct, strict and immediate sense, the question of the effectiveness of morality is the question of actions that are committed by virtue of only moral grounds, for their own sake and, possessing an intrinsic value, in principle, cannot lose their moral quality, forever retain their moral purity. What are these actions and, most importantly, how are they possible, given that morality, in its unrestrained sovereignty, is responsible only for making a decision about an action, but not for its content? Morality cannot do anything with the matter of an act, its content, but in its "hands" are the keys to the existence of this act; after all, the question of whether to be a given act or not depends on who commits it. The acting subject can realize his moral autonomy, independent of any previous and subsequent external influences, the freedom of decision-making only in the form of refusal to perform any specific actions. Clean in the moral sense, i.e. pure of all other motives, except for the moral motive, which, in fact, consists in the fact that he ignores, takes out all other motives, only actions that are performed (prohibited, rejected) due to the moral unacceptability of their content. Both logical considerations and real historical experience testify that proper moral actions are associated with prohibitions, with restrictions imposed through them through activity, both in general and in its individual spheres.
Man reveals his absoluteness as a moral subject in what he does not do. In this case, we can talk about negative actions. When a person follows moral prohibitions - general, such as the prohibitions of the Decalogue “Thou shalt not kill,” “do not bear false witness,” or more specific ones, such as the food prohibitions of certain cultures - he commits negative actions. These are actions, since we are talking about the active state of the subject, the consciously carried out by him influence on his behavior. And they are negative, negative in two senses: in fact, because they do not exist (they are canceled at the level of design, are blocked in the subjective sphere), and in the value sense, because they are canceled, blocked because of their moral unacceptability.
Moral prohibitions, like prohibitions in general, can, of course, be selective, concern only a narrow range of actions. Their purpose is to outline certain protective zones, to substantively designate some boundaries of activity, in our case - the boundary that separates the sphere of the moral from the immoral. As for actions in their positive expression, which constitute the bulk of human activity, then moral motives and assessments are involved in them only insofar as they, these actions, did not fall under moral prohibitions.
They receive moral approval by the very fact that they took place as a result of the actor's own decision. And as the actions of a given subject, they are also included in the sphere of his moral responsibility. Only in this case, moral motives and assessments pass, give way to meaningful motives, each time specific in accordance with the matter of the act, their impact on the activity is mediated by special criteria that are associated with its specific content and are as diverse and changeable as the activities themselves.
Moral motives and assessments in relation to all other motives that determine the content and architectonics of practical activity turn out to be secondary, "superstructure", due to which they are often considered even redundant. With a certain coarseness, we can say this: the virtue (morality) of what a person does coincides with the goodness of what he does.
The question of the impact of morality on the economy and the reverse influence it experiences on the part of the latter can be concretized and divided into three aspects: the restrictions that morality imposes on economic and economic activity; the place of the economy in the system of value priorities; correspondence of relations between people, developing in the process of economic and economic activity, moral criteria. 4. Morality, representing the opposite pole of social practice in comparison with economic and economic activity, has a limiting effect on it.
The most obvious evidence of this is the morally motivated prohibitions imposed on this area. These, first of all, include food prohibitions that go back centuries and were especially widely practiced among primitive tribes, which have survived to this day. For example, the prohibition on the consumption of pork prescribed to the Jews and Muslims, or the exclusion from food by some peoples of products readily consumed by other peoples, for example, horse meat or dog meat. In food prohibitions, experts do not exclude the role of pragmatic considerations themselves, such as the economical distribution of resources, the danger of diseases, etc., but, nevertheless, everyone recognizes the decisive importance of spiritual factors, among which moral considerations, along with sacred ones, are one of the basic. In the jungles of Brazil (research by ethnologist K. Milton), two neighboring tribes of Parakana and Aravete, speaking the same language, have clearly separated hunting boundaries. One of them catches tapirs and categorically does not hunt large birds, the other, on the contrary, does not eat tapirs and willingly eats large birds.
These tribes are at war with each other. Their self-names, which were widespread in the history of culture, coincide with the words "people" or "real people." Each of them considers the other tribe not quite human and sees evidence of this in the eating of that (in one case tapirs, in the other - large birds), which for them is a categorical taboo. Food prohibition acts as a sign and expression of group identity. We know from the history of philosophy that the cementing foundation of the Pythagorean union was the ban on the consumption of beans. There seems to be no intelligible answer to the question of the reasons for such a ban; The most rational explanation can be recognized as the absence of such explanations: the very fact of the prohibition, coming from the founder of the union and cementing loyalty to him, is important here.
The moral meaning of food prohibitions is symbolic: refusal of food (albeit selective, as in the above cases, albeit short-term, as, for example, during fasting) as the most utilitarian and necessary of all utilitarian and necessary things emphasizes the fundamental non-utilitarianism and the fundamental primordiality of the moral motive, in whose name this refusal is carried out. Figuratively speaking, we can say that food prohibitions are a discharge point where the poles of morality and economic need come into contact with each other and prove their incompatibility. Another typical form of the limiting impact of morality on economic and economic activity is the value labeling of different types of labor activity within it according to the criterion of which of them are more worthy, which are less worthy, which are completely unworthy. This is due to the caste limited outlook, due to which the upper class also recognized itself as the only noble and imposed this idea on the whole society, which was most fully embodied in the aristocratic ethos.
The aristocratic ethos has changed historically, had different kind among different peoples. Nevertheless, in relation to our topic, in general, he is characterized by a threefold kind of negative attitude towards work. First, a negative attitude towards work in general, towards the very need to do something in order to maintain life. Idleness is not only a virtue of an aristocrat, it is his natural state⃰. The only thing he is ready for and what constitutes his essence is the protection of his self-sufficiency from any encroachments, the ease with which he puts his life on the line in order not to do anything for it. Secondly, the refusal from professional occupations, in general from any socially useful activity carried out for the sake of payment for it.
A few centuries ago, professional poetry and theatrical art were considered unworthy of an aristocrat. Third, the treatment of physical labor as degrading moral dignity, which, for example, Maria Ossovskaya writes about in her studies "Knight's Ethos" and "Bourgeois Morality", which contains a lot of historical and literary evidence illustrating morally motivated restrictions on labor activity. So, for example, back in the 19th century in England, high society, where doctors had already opened access, had not yet accepted surgeons and dentists because they worked with their hands. In a modern democratic society, there are no obvious morally motivated restrictions on the types of labor activity. Nevertheless, there are implicit restrictions, which can be seen, for example, in the fate of foreign workers in different countries. Even such a universal and impersonal criterion as money could not completely emancipate the economic and economic sphere from the limiting influence of morality. 5. During a long historical era, when the economy was pre-market, and society was class-based, economic activity was considered an unworthy occupation, the lot of the lower strata of the population. In its extreme, it was seen as a punishment and a sin. In the peasant and craft environment, of course, self-awareness of the value of their work was developed.
A special ethos was cultivated there, which was based on the virtues of hard work, frugality, a fair trial and was already described and sung by Hesiod. Ethos, however, remained marginal to the dominant aristocratic ideal. The latter became the basis for understanding morality. The fundamental difference between these two ethos consisted in the fact that in one case the qualities demanded by forced occupations were cultivated, and in the other - the qualities demanded by free occupations. In this respect, the position of Aristotle is indicative, who considered leisure as a space of happiness and virtue. Economic and economic activity in the proper sense of the word remained outside morality, in relation to it, as well as to the field of criminal behavior, only equalizing justice based on arithmetic proportion could be applied, which is generally abstracted from the dignity of the inner world and the mental structure of acting individuals.
The situation changed radically in an era when the economy became a market economy, society became democratic, and the merits of people began to be assessed not by their noble origins, but by personal successes. Economic and economic activity burst into the public space as its defining basis. Society itself has acquired the form of an economic formation. The economy not only came into contact with morality, it itself made moral claims and over time (in particular, in the so-called consumer society) became almost the main moral authority. The concrete design of the capitalist economy as a norm-setting moral authority was different. The triumph of Protestant ethics, described by M. Weber, was perhaps the most typical form for this, but not the only one. This function is quite successfully performed, for example, by utilitarian ethics. Not only her. It is important for us to record the general trend. It consists in the fact that the highest place in the system of value priorities was taken by economics, morality and ethics. different ways sanction it in this capacity.
Sometimes this was done too bluntly, for example, in the case of B. Franklin, who reduced virtue to utility. Sometimes the justification was more sophisticated, for example, in A. Smith, who raised calculating selfishness for the reason that in a market economy he is satisfied through the provision of services to others, to those who need them. Differences of this kind, no matter how important they are, do not negate the main thing: the capitalist market economy has and realizes the need to think of itself as a moral reality. The point is that those norms and the type of behavior that is set by the market economy, firstly, receives moral approval and is elevated to virtue, and secondly, is considered as the universal basis of a morally worthy existence. This is how the liberal-individualistic ethic of personal success arises, which is achieved by one's own efforts in the process of concrete and freely formed contractual relations. A person's virtue turns out to be a direct function of his goodness as a participant in the market economy.
The magic that elevates the definitions of the subject of the market economy to the prescriptions of individualistic ethics is that they are seen as the basis of the common good. The essence of this transformation is not simply a statement that, as Mandeville wrote in The Fable of the Bees, the common good consists of private vices, but that for this reason, "vices" and "selfishness", since they lead to good societies as a whole, within the framework of individualistic ethics, cease to be considered evil and acquire moral legitimacy. The German researcher R. Münch emphasizes that individualistic professional ethics constitutes the moral foundation of the capitalist economy at its first stage. As the capitalist economy developed, its moral foundation also changed. The next stage is the welfare economy, which presupposed a morality that substantiates material rights on strictly moral (in the traditional sense) motives - for less competitive or completely uncompetitive people (children, old people, disabled people, unemployed, etc.); it took into account a wide social context and the importance of actions that are directly motivated by concern for others, for the public good.
Currently, there is a new shift in the economy, and at the same time in the moral criteria of economic and economic activity. This shift is associated with the need to conserve the environment. Environmental management is becoming a condition and the main direction of economic growth and development in the post-industrial era, due to which environmental ethics becomes economically relevant. Thus, the capitalist market economy, which had broken free from the clutches of traditional estate ethics, according to R. Münch, not only freed itself from morality, it acquired a new moral foundation in the form of individualistic professional ethics, which was then concretized in accordance with the qualitative stages of ecological development and transformed into the direction of the morality of the welfare economy, and then the morality of the ecological economy.
The picture reproduced here, which is sociologically correct and well reasoned, provides rich food for understanding the issue of interest to us. The author himself interprets the general logic and nature of this process as the interpenetration of morality and economics, as if they, morality and economics, were systems independent of each other, thanks to this difference, needing each other and interacting with each other in the real experience of our multilateral social existence.
In reality, of course, this is not the case. The impact of morality on the economy is, in general, mediated by the economy itself. It takes place and turns out to be effective within the framework of a general value structure, in which the economy itself occupies the highest pedestal and in this sense initially has a moral status. Simplifying and coarsening the question a little, we can say that the economy submits itself to the criteria of the morality that it has ordered in advance, just as in democratic countries people obey the leaders they choose in order to obey them. 6. The market as a mechanism for the exchange of activities between people is one of the greatest civilizational achievements.
As the basis of the economy, it provides the most democratic and efficient distribution of raw materials and materials in conditions of their shortage. It is democratic, since it does not distinguish between market participants in terms of class, confession and any other characteristics, except for their ability to pay; it is the clearest and most accurate case of distributing justice, built on arithmetic equality and neglecting the dignity of persons. The market is efficient because he productively uses such a powerful and universal motive of human activity as egoism, the pursuit of personal gain.
When we talk about the moral aspect of a market economy, it is important to distinguish between two levels: general institutional framework and carried out within the framework of action. The market is, first of all, a certain regulatory system. It is formed by the rules, primarily the legal framework of its functioning, but not only by them, of course. Existing morals, customs, moral views also play an important role. The market is not the place where trade takes place, but the rules by which it takes place, including the rule that it takes place in certain designated places.
The institutional framework of the market is also the framework for the legitimacy of actions that take place within that framework. The market is a space in which an individual can give full scope to his desire for personal gain, moreover, he is obliged to do this if he wants to be successful. Emphasizing the uniqueness of the market as a public institution, Professor K. Homan successfully compares the market with modern sports. Sports (for example, playing football) is also divided into rules that all players must unconditionally and under the strict control of the referee, and individual actions aimed at defeating the opponent, deceiving him, outwitting him, outplaying him. K. Goman concludes that the place of morality in a market economy is, first of all, at the level of rules, and not individual motives and actions. Indeed, the motives of material gain, moreover, of their own material gain, achieved in the process of competitive struggle with others, can in no way be called moral.
It is they, these fundamentally selfishly directed motives, that constitute the driving spring of human actions within the framework of the market economy. In this sense, the market could well be called a real school of selfishness. But he not only gives scope to egoism, he shapes it, educates, disciplines, rationalizes it. Egoism turns out to be perhaps the most constructive, socially cohesive force, and in this capacity it claims to be a completely morally acceptable way of behaving. In any case, as far as economic behavior is concerned, it is perceived in modern society in this way.
It seems that today no one, not even any minister of the church, thinks that a rich young man, having given out his billions to the poor, if he could do it at all (in fact, the market economy as a social institution insured itself against such a morally motivated "madness"), will do a better deed and quickly open the way to paradise than protecting and multiplying them, thereby maintaining and expanding the achieved level of social wealth in his person. The main function of entrepreneurial ethics or business ethics is to morally sanction a rationally ordered, disciplined egoism, inscribed in the general framework of market-regulatory mechanisms, and thereby give the selfishly oriented economic behavior an awareness of its social significance. Its other most important task is to mobilize a person's own moral resources as one of the elements of a utilitarian-oriented attitude. This is expressed in the substantiation of the fact that being honest is beneficial, that solidarity behavior is preferable to narrowly egoistic and preferable precisely according to utilitarian criteria (as, for example, in the prisoners' dilemma), etc.
The general tendency, generalized in entrepreneurial ethics and supported and reinforced by it, is to combine morality and economics in such a way that morality is placed at the service of economics. Such a combination, on the one hand, ennobles the economy and becomes an additional factor in its growth, and on the other hand, lowers morality to the level of a means in relation to economic goals and thereby corrupts it. Today we should speak not about the interaction between them, but about the absorption of morality by the economy, as a result of which it, instead of being the limiting limit of the economy, becomes one of its stimulating elements, is included in a special subsystem called the non-economic facets of the economy.
Thus, morality loses its original, if reasoning within the framework of a multifactorial view of the development of society, or relative, if we mean a monistic understanding of society, independence in relation to the economy. Reducing morality to a means, one of the facets of economic and economic activity, in essence, means its annihilation as a special pole of social practice, opposite to the economy, and the erection of the economy itself into a moral absolute. Evidence of this, in addition to the direct utilization of moral concepts and mechanisms, can also be considered as a direct factor in increasing profits as the rejection of the ideas of moral autonomy and moral absolutism, prevailing in the public consciousness of developed countries and cultivated by ethical theory.
Thus (for the umpteenth time in history!) Morality is called into question as an independent form of social relations with its own canons and criteria. Doesn't this mean that it can regain itself and restore the dangerously destroyed balance of social practice as an individually responsible position, the virtue of which does not seek any other justifications and justifications, except those that are contained in itself ?! And that now, when the general moral norms, which set a certain order of social life, turned out to be fundamentally relativized, and the canons of expediency inherent in each area of activity and life themselves acquire the status of such norms, when a single ethics turned out to be fragmented into an ever multiplying and in no way connected number of applied ethicist, that it is now that morality gets the opportunity to acquire adequate subjectivity in the individually responsible behavior of the individual and to be what it should be - causality from freedom ?! At the same time, it should be emphasized that such an individually rooted and baseless, if you do not consider the basis only the very stoically expressed determination of the acting subject, ethics can turn out to be highly socially significant, capable of saving the ideal (ideally oriented) pole of human social being.
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Russian Economic University named after G.V. Plekhanov
Faculty of Economics of Trade and Commodity Science
Department of Philosophy
abstract
By discipline: "Ethics of business relations"
On the topic: "Morality and economics"
Completed: 1st year student of group 34/17
Malyukova Ya.D.
Checked by: Lychmanov D.B.
Moscow, 2017
Introduction
1. Moral assessment of the economy: basic provisions
2. The problem of the moral factor in economics: history and modernity
3. Influence of bureaucracy on the formation and development of business
4. Profit, wealth and virtue
5. Social responsibility of business
Conclusion
List of used literature
Introduction
Morality exists only where there is a person's free will, refers only to those actions that are open to choice.
Ayn Rand
The attitude to economic activity has always been ambiguous and even directly opposite among representatives of different economic trends. The economy permeates all spheres of human life, accompanies him when making a decision or choosing one or another action. Without a clearly defined philosophy and morality, it is very difficult to realize the dream of a prosperous, prosperous and happy family, city and country. Without investment in ideas, the social and economic costs of reforms cannot be minimized. Without an emphasis on the moral aspects of money, it is impossible to win the struggle for the hearts and souls of not only entrepreneurs, but also ordinary people who just want to go to the market, buy cheap quality goods and services, raise children and be proud of their country.
The definition of general or private interest as good and evil, as a truly ethical problem, depends on the subjective worldview of the thinker, and on the form of social action that individuals use, and on the goals that they pursue. The principle “you - me, I - you”, odious for many, asserts and controls the liberal form of exchange, which differs from authoritarian forms, how the day differs from the night, or how good differs from evil. However, all these subtleties of morality can be grasped not with the help of existing concepts of ethics, but with the help of new conceptual means reflecting the relationship of exchange and the result obtained. Complaints that liberal relations "are built on the type of purely functional, technical relations and, thus, are deprived of humanity" do not stand up to criticism, since the pre-liberal - tyrannical and serfdom relations of exchange were really inhuman. Therefore, the relations of liberal mutual benefit, which have replaced the one-sided tyrannical and serfdom use of people, in the full sense change society for the better, humanize it, make it more perfect and more moral.
The idea of the penetration of morality into the economy is gaining more and more positions in the consciousness of the modern political and business world. There is ample reason to believe that international community attaches ever-increasing importance to the moral norms according to which it not only functions, but also intends to develop further.
1. Moral assessment of the economy: basic provisions
Turning to economics, we thus turn to the social sphere of being as the sphere of life of free and reasonable individuals. Unlike nature, where natural causality reigns, free causation takes place in society. The attitude of a person to public moral values remains contradictory. The objective basic social values of good, from my point of view, are life, personality and mind. The basic systemic values of evil are death, totalitarianism and dependence.
In addition to the structural and moral aspect of the economy, combined with the means of production, forms of management, economic relations, it is possible to single out the personal and ethical aspect of the economy, which is determined by the values of the people themselves working in the field of business. Economic relations affect both public and personal morality.
In the objective social factor from the point of view of moral significance, it is necessary to distinguish economic objective laws and economic circumstances... The influence of a person on objective economic laws can only be indirect, through changes in the conditions for the manifestation of these laws or through a subjective refusal to participate in economic activity under given conditions. Man cannot change the objective laws themselves. Economic circumstances are created by people themselves, and a person can and should influence them. Therefore, for economic circumstances, as well as for the sphere of greater freedom, a person is responsible.
The economy, like politics, and other spheres of society, has a certain autonomy, here people with low moral qualities, but with high professional, "business" abilities can flourish, achieve success.
Human moral values and principles are also valid in the economic sphere. The so-called "business ethics", "economic ethics", "economic ethics", "success ethics" are a specific manifestation of common fundamental and socially-basic moral values in the field of economic activity.
2. The moral factor in ecoNomike: history and modernity
O business should not be thought of as the lowest level of human activities versus writing novels and power struggle. Business is a creative process. Studying it as worthy of effort as history, law, medicine, social organization and art.
G. L. S. Shackle 2
It should be noted that there are different points of view in ethics on the issues raised. There are two alternative approaches to the problem of the relationship between morality and economics, and many others, which are their various combinations.
The first point of view is “pragmatic”. It is argued that the main goal of a business is profit. It is the valuation of production results that makes the economy serve the needs of society and a specific consumer.
The supporters of the pragmatic point of view on the problem of the relationship between morality and the economy include all economists who consistently adhere to the principles of a free market, the elimination of trade barriers and limited government intervention in the economy. M. Friedman declares that in "a free economic system there is one - the only type of responsibility, according to which all available funds should be used with maximum efficiency and any activity should be checked with the maximum possible profit" 3 ... The market gives each of us a chance to realize ourselves based on how effectively we will use the opportunities provided to them. The market is not only not bypassed, but must also be uncontrollable. The role of the state should be reduced only to creating favorable conditions necessary for the effective functioning of the market system and ensuring equality before the law of all economic entities. It is the market that is able to bring together the knowledge, skills and abilities that are scattered throughout society. A remarkable milestone not only in the history of economic theory, but also in ethics is the work of the Scottish thinker of the 18th century Adam Smith. In his economic work "Investigation of the Nature and Cause of the Wealth of Nations", the Scottish thinker defended the ideas of a market economy, based on a certain concept of man. Man is economic a being who seeks to derive the greatest benefit and maximum profit for itself. Self-interest is the fundamental incentive for effective business management. "Give me what I need, and you will get what you need ... This is how we get from each other the majority of the services we need." 4 .
However, in a market economy, in addition to personal egoistic interest, there is also an “invisible hand” that directs many personal interests, regardless of the subjects themselves, to the common good. An entrepreneur guided by an "invisible hand" serves the interests of society more effectively than when he consciously seeks to serve him.
A. Smith believed that a society can exist without mutual love or affection, but when the members of the society are aware of its benefits and build their relationships on responsibilities and duties. Society can also be supported "by facilitating the selfish exchange of mutual services, for which everyone has a recognized value." 5 .
JS Mill admits the idea that the "transformation of society" towards the spontaneous transformation of accumulated capital into the property of "those who use them for production" could provide "a combination most suitable for the organization of industry." At the same time, his main conclusion is unambiguous: although the solution of practical problems requires "the spread of the social worldview", "the general principle should be laisser faire, and every deviation from it, not dictated by considerations of some higher good, is a clear evil."
The market has such an advantage that it is able to effectively distribute those resources that were not previously and could not be accounted for, for economic purposes that were not previously and could not be identified. The spontaneous nature of the market order means that any intervention in it can only undermine the market mechanism and paralyze the economic system as a whole. Moreover, any conscious control over economic life, any economic policy aimed at obtaining certain results, be it a policy of full employment, economic growth, combating inflation or economic downturns, balancing supply and demand of the money supply, etc., in the opinion of Hayek, in principle, is impossible, since she is not able to take into account and use the body of knowledge that is necessary for its successful implementation, and can only have devastating consequences for the economy.
The second point of view recognizes the dialectical connection between morality and economics. It emphasizes not only the personal and ethical aspect of the economy, but also its structural and moral aspect of the impact on the economy. The principle is defended that if morality declares something in the business economy unjust, then this means that the economic prerequisites for a different, more equitable solution to the problem are ripe, and that the subject must submit to this decision.
Proponents of this point of view believe that a morally positive economy ensures long-term, strategic efficiency and profitability. Representatives of this trend create concepts of social responsibility of business based on their own subjective vision of this responsibility, opening up opportunities for lobbying the interests of individual non-governmental organizations and government groups.
In the XX century, M. Weber's ideas about the connection between market capitalism and religious Christian morality became widespread. In his book "Protestant Ethics and the Spirit of Capitalism" M. Weber analyzed the importance of the ethical factor in the genesis of a rational, market economy. According to M. Weber, the spirit of capitalism is "a system of thinking, which is characterized by a systematic striving for legitimate profit within the framework of its profession." 6 ... The scientist showed that rational, or market, capitalism is opposed by a competitor - "traditionalism" or "stagnant society" Traditionalism is guided by the principle of "maximum pleasure and minimum stress".
Market capitalism emerges on a different basis. Its main principles are: "professional work as a duty, an end in itself." Profit and capital are assessed as economic and moral values that characterize the dignity of a person, his intrinsic value, his “God's chosenness”. Capital is a means for self-realization, self-affirmation as an affirmation of one's “I” in one's own eyes and in the opinion of loved ones and society.
M. Weber critically assessed, from the point of view of the ethics of success, the possibilities of Eastern religions, Catholicism and Orthodoxy. Weber saw the main drawback of these religions in the widespread mysticism among them. Mysticism is primarily turned inward and treats the world as a temptation. Such mysticism is distinguished by contemplation, disregard for the role of reason and, in fact, is a denial of the world. “Broken by the world” the mystic is the opposite of an ascetic who takes an active life position. “A special submissive“ brokenness ”characterizes the worldly activity of the mystic, - wrote M. Weber, - he always strives to go into the shadows and solitude, where he feels his closeness to God. The ascetic is confident that he serves as an instrument of God " 7 .
A relatively positive assessment of wealth and success can be found among the apostles. Thus, Chief Apostle Paul says: “work ... so that there is something to give to the needy” 8 ... St. John Chrysostom also drew attention to the fact that "let us not envy the rich and despise the poor, for both are from God and not from God." 9 ... “I do not condemn those,” he asserts in another Beseda, “who have houses, fields, money, servants; but I just want them to own it all carefully and properly. "
Thus, in Christianity, success, wealth, and high social status are not metaphysically denied. But unlike the pagan idolatry of the golden calf, mammon, outstanding people, in Christianity all this is not considered as an intrinsic value, as the meaning of a person's life: social success should not enslave an immortal soul, a person should be free from avarice, vanity, pride, and he can to be such, for it is free by nature, since it was created in the image and likeness of God. Social success in the broadest sense of the word is only a means that should not be neglected as "unrighteous wealth", a means that, like "talent", cannot be buried in the ground, since it is also from God.
"And I tell you again: it is more convenient for a camel to pass through the ears of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God." 10 ... This condemnation of wealth and civil success is found in the epistle of the apostles and in patristics. The Apostle Paul wrote to his spiritual son Timothy that "the love of money is the root of all evil."
Some thinkers argue that success and well-being can only be achieved by immoral methods. This means that a person is faced with a choice between success and virtue. And the question involuntarily arises: is there really no other payment for success, except for violence, intrigue and deception? Or are there other, moral methods? These thinkers offered their own ways to achieve harmony between economics and morality, between economics and politics, between the private or group interests of a minority and the national interests or even the interests of all mankind.
Economic thought received significant development in ancient Greece. The largest representatives in this area were the famous ancient Greek thinkers Plato and Aristotle. Plato had a negative attitude to the function of money as a treasure and demanded to prohibit the sale and purchase on credit, i.e. opposed the use of money as a means of payment. Plato believed that the townspeople should be given land plots, but their property should not be excessive. If the value of the property exceeds the value of the allotment by 4 times, then the surplus is subject to transfer to the state. Loans with interest and purchase of goods on credit are also prohibited. The law should set limits for price fluctuations. It is in such a state where these rules are followed that there will be neither rich nor poor. In the dialogue “Laws” Plato wrote: “I see the imminent death of that state where the law has no force and is under someone’s authority. Where the law is the lord over the rulers, and they are its slaves, I see the salvation of the state and all the benefits that the gods can bestow on states. "
Trade is necessary only because it serves the division of labor within and between cities. Philosophers and warriors do not have any private property and are mercilessly punished for keeping gold and silver. Property is the privilege of peasants and artisans, since it does not in itself interfere with work, but is destructive for those who are devoted to high thoughts.
Aristotle was one of the first thinkers who tried to study economic laws in contemporary Greece. A special place in his works is occupied by the explanation of the concepts of money, trade. He investigated the historical process of the origin and development of exchange trade, its transformation into large-scale trade. Trade turned out to be a force conducive to the formation of the state. Need, i.e. economic necessity, "binds people into one" and leads to exchange, which is based on the fact of the social division of labor.
Aristotle approved of the type of management that pursued the goal of acquiring benefits for the home and the state, calling it "economy". The economy is associated with the production of products necessary for life. He characterized the activity of commercial and usurious capital aimed at enrichment as unnatural, calling it "chrematism." Chrematistics is aimed at making a profit and its main goal is the accumulation of wealth. Aristotle believed that true wealth consists of basic necessities in an economy with an average income, that it cannot be infinite by nature, but must be limited to a certain framework sufficient to ensure a “good life”.
The Italian monk of Dominican origin - Thomas Aquinas - is the most authoritative figure of the canonist school at a later stage of its development. Aquinas, taking into account the realities of his time, is looking for new explanations of social inequality in the conditions of the class division of society. So in the work “Summa Theology” he shows the massive introduction of commodity-money relations in the life of cities. Unlike the canonists of the early period, Thomas Aquinas no longer considers usury to be an exclusively sinful phenomenon, he actively uses the principle of duality of assessments, which allows using sophistry to radically change the essence of the initial interpretation of an economic phenomenon or economic category. Therefore, The Summa of Theology is replete with dual characteristics and scholastic judgments to which the author resorts in search of ways of reconciliation and compromise on many seemingly mutually exclusive theoretical positions. The term "fair price" was put forward by the early canonists, in particular by "St. Augustine." At that time, it included the following content: The value of a product should be established in accordance with labor and material costs in the process of its production according to the principle of “Fair price”. Continuing the beginnings of the canonists and at the same time resorting to the principle of duality of assessments, Thomas Aquinas departs from the costly principle of establishing a "Fair price", considering it not entirely accurate, since he may not deliver the amount of money to the seller corresponding to his position in society and cause damage. Thomas Aquinas substantiated two types of “fair prices”. First, he considered a price “fair” if it reflects all costs, that is, the cost of raw materials, tools, transportation. Second, the “fair price” should provide food for the seller in accordance with his estate position. The price of one and the same product is one for a craftsman, but for a knight and a clergyman it is different. In the first type of prices, the basis of exchange is equality, and in the second it is a privilege for the upper classes.
In the conditions of tyrannical and serfdom, wealth was achieved through violence, the well-being of some was built on the plight of others. A worthy means of achieving the goal was the “heroic”, forceful form of acquiring wealth. Under the same conditions, although not on a large scale, there was another way of satisfying personal interests - free exchange: small-scale, handicraft production, small-scale or even large-scale trade based on sober calculation. Oppressed and despised by the authorities and public opinion, such activities were considered "base", unworthy of a decent person. From the standpoint of tyrannical and serfdom morality, such activity did not inspire confidence, and therefore was criticized from various points of view: aristocratic, religious, and later proletarian, revolutionary, etc. Achievement of material well-being, that is, satisfaction of vital needs through free exchange in all traditional societies was condemned as a desire for profit. A new value orientation began to form with the development of commodity production. In the era of the Renaissance and modern times, free exchange becomes a priority, while authoritarian forms of exchange go into the shadows and are outlawed. Nevertheless, in the public opinion, the activities of an entrepreneur and a trader continue to be perceived with derision and contempt. To a large extent, such a negative attitude is due to the position of moralists, and not only to the archaic, traditionalist or communal-communitarian concept of morality. All these supporters of disinterestedness united in a united front against liberal moral values, which do not correspond to their subjective ideas about morality.
However, on the other hand, there was an understanding that a person who reasonably and successfully realizes his own interest contributes to the common good of other people. In an effort to satisfy his private interest, each person enters into free exchange with other persons who also satisfy their private interest. The merchant goes to the buyer, and the customer goes to the merchant, the doctor goes to the patient, and the patient goes to the doctor. As a result, self-organization is replacing the authoritarian, forceful organization of society. Therefore, individuals as bearers of private interest are not only not alienated from each other, but, on the contrary, they rally, despite the fact that personal interest acts as the driving force of their activity.
One of those who questioned the viability of liberal relations and the underlying theory of “reasonable egoism” and proposed a different approach to the market economy was John Maynard Keynes, thanks to whose efforts modern economics, as well as the socio-economic reality of the West, became as we see them today.
3. Influence of bureaucracy on the formation and development of business
Free markets rest on a fragile political foundation. In a competitive free market economy, the decisions of myriad nameless participants set prices, which in turn determine what to produce and who makes a profit. The invisible hand of the market replaces officials and politicians in all these decisions. This gave rise to the misconception that markets do not need states. But markets cannot flourish without a distinct role for government to provide and maintain the infrastructure that enables market participants to trade freely and confidently.
We cannot deny the fact that economic power is being transformed into political power. No matter what campaigns for financial reform are proposed and implemented, there is always some kind of “golden rule” that applies: whoever has the gold dictates the rules. But the link between economic and political power is especially important in two cases. If a small number of influencers wield a lot of economic power, they may rely on their political influence to achieve their commercial goals and may not feel the need to establish transparent rules that make the market available to all, they may actively try to suppress the competitive market in order to maintain their position. This is more likely to be a problem in a country where there is no developed market infrastructure.
In the conditions of uncertain property rights and imperfect legislation, opportunities open up to achieve the desired by any means, without hesitation in the means. The expansion of the functions of the state in various forms is fraught with other consequences: the spread of corruption, tax evasion, the emergence of a shadow economy and the weakening of the state's function to protect property rights.
At the same time, participation in economic activity makes sense only when each of the entrepreneurs has their own chances of success. If for some, “untouchables” this is one hundred percent success, while for others - ordinary market participants, the chances are close to zero, then this indicates a situation of permissiveness and lawlessness. How can an ordinary person act in a situation of moral choice, who, in an unequal struggle with state mafia officials, is trying to preserve at least some of the results of his labor? How can a person act if he is robbed at every step by those who, on duty, must help him conduct his business, must protect his business from injustice? Choosing between virtue and survival, the entrepreneur is forced to give in to violence. Therefore, violations of moral norms by ruling persons are bad not only in themselves, they create an atmosphere conducive to further erosion of moral guidelines. Violation of moral standards on the part of government officials is much more significant than offenses on the part of individual entrepreneurs.
Easy, cheap and simple procedure for registration and liquidation, licensing, strong protection of the rights of investors and shareholders, a professional, impartial court and a developed financial system with a flexible labor market, low taxes and simple export-import procedures for cargo clearance - this is the most best recipe suppression of any opportunities to use shadow business methods. This is the best anti-corruption tool known in economic theory and practice. It is the cheapest, most reliable and proven way to create solid foundations for the country's sustainable development.
Corruption as a multifaceted socially dangerous phenomenon poses a serious threat not only to the economic security of the country, but also undermines the authority of the authorities, contributes to the penetration of organized crime into important spheres of interests of business, the state and society. The main reason for the existence of corruption is the imperfection of economic institutions, the presence of norms of behavior and tax barriers in society that impede the development of business and the growth of its effectiveness, which can only be circumvented by corruption.
4. Profit, wealth and virtue
The main test for determining the social responsibility of a business is the demonstration of its balance sheet and the "profit" column. People vote themselves whether a business is virtuous or not by buying or refusing to buy its goods and services. Profit is not an accurate measure, but an important indicator of how much good a business is doing to people. In this sense, profit is an important information signal of the market economy. In a competitive market economy, profit comes only from diligent service to the consumer. Of course, profit cannot be idealized. It happens that in the pursuit of profit today, a company questions its sustainability.
For a complete analysis, it is important to take into account many components of the business. Collusion of individual market participants is possible. Another popular way is to ask the government for help to restrict entry to the market of competitors who drive down prices. Profits are also influenced by quotas, import tariffs (especially those that discriminate against individual manufacturers), licenses, tax privileges, priority access to cheap resources, etc.
Positive and negative externalities arise in the course of business activities. One of the popular arguments of environmentalists against the profit mechanism is that the price formation does not take into account the costs associated with the intensification of the global warming process. Through the use of corrective mechanisms, proponents of the concept of social responsibility of business propose the internalization of negative externalities. These mechanisms can only be introduced by the state. moral economics profit business
One of the most popular ways to artificially manipulate the amount of profit is the most complex legislation regulating various aspects of business activities. The stronger the regulation, the more difficult it is for a business to fulfill its primary role. Chemical production, biotechnology and much more are subject to total regulation. Moreover, the opinion of scientists is not always taken into account. Here is an example of an assessment of chemicals regulation in the EU. This is the opinion of academics, not lobbyists: “This legislation is impractical and has enormous economic and ethical costs. It involves intensive safety testing of all previously untested chemical elements produced in quantities greater than one tonne regardless of risk, including components such as common salt or sodium bicarbonate. " (Professor Colin Blakemore, President of the British Federation of Biological Sciences). Obviously, such regulation greatly inflates the costs of business and makes many products inaccessible to consumers. Thus, the state should not look for a new "human face" of business, but create conditions in which business operates to fulfill its primary function. It is the responsibility of the state, not business, to propose legislative solutions. A business can act as an advisor but is not responsible for a poor tax system or business registration laws. It is a mistake to treat a business like a robot that knows only two things - profit and loss. In fact, real people work in business, with their own values, views and ideals.
The reason business is so important is that the economy is characterized by constant change and innovation. They, in turn, are the result of the purposeful activities of entrepreneurs. J. Schumpeter wrote about this in his work Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy: forms of industrial organization that a capitalist enterprise creates. "In our world, business is the main driving force, the main factor of change. It increases labor productivity and increases the level of material well-being. The role of business is not reactive, but active. Opponents of this approach believe that economic growth is a consequence of technological progress, which, in turn, follows from research and development. And it, in their opinion, is funded not by business, but by the state. Thus, market opponents argue that the role of business is not to create, to create, but to create everything. only to adapt to the conditions created by the state. business is a source of innovation and scientific discovery. I. Schumpeter writes: “Was the economic success the result of a series of inventions that revolutionized production, and not a hunt for the profit of businessmen? The answer is negative. Implementing technological innovation was the essence of this profit hunt. It is wrong to argue, as many economists do, that capitalist production stands apart from technological progress. They were one factor or we can say that capitalist production was the driving force behind innovation. "
In support of Schumpeter's assertion, the following statements can be cited. The first belongs to Jacob Schmookler from Invention and Economic Growth 12: “an invention is mainly an economic activity, which, like other economic activities, is aimed at making a profit ... People make inventions because they want to solve economic problems and capitalize economic opportunities ”.
“Businessmen are the only category of people that distinguishes capitalism and the American way of life from totalitarian statism, which is gradually crushing the rest of the world. All other strata of society - workers, farmers, professionals, scientists, soldiers - exist even under dictatorships, although they vegetate in fear, in chains, in poverty, in conditions of progressive self-destruction. But under a dictatorship, there is no such category as businessmen. Their place is taken by armed bandits: officials and commissars. Businessmen are a symbol of a free society, a symbol of America. If they die, the moment they die, civilization will die with them. But if you want to fight for freedom, you must start by fighting for its award-winning, unrecognized, unspoken, but best representatives - American businessmen. ”13
Another reason that compels businesses to innovate is to neutralize the threat of loss of competitiveness and or even bankruptcy. William Baumol convincingly writes about this in his book The Free Market Innovation Machine 14. From his point of view, it is the pressure from competitors that is forcing businesses to invest in innovation. The two aspects, positive and protective (seizing opportunities and avoiding bankruptcy) are complementary. In the period 1950-1970, the GDP of the Soviet Union and the countries of the socialist bloc also increased rapidly, but the blocking of the profit-loss mechanism, the exclusion of the entrepreneur from economic activity, along with other factors, led to the collapse of the socialist system. State-owned enterprises, protected from bankruptcy and operating outside the context of competitive pressure, cannot fulfill their social function either.
From the point of view of the economy as a whole, in contrast to the position of an individual company, the primary role of business is to orient its activities towards making a profit. To fulfill its primary role, business needs laws, institutions, and the political stability in which a market economy operates. As Colin Robins writes, "For business and personal life to flourish, rules are necessary, but they do not have to be set by the government." However, passing laws that stimulate economic activity is the primary role of the state, not business. This feature cannot be internal to the business.
It is absurd to say that the rapid economic growth observed over the past 50 years was the result of deliberate actions by enterprises that set themselves precisely such a task. The achievements of capitalism are not the result of decisive actions by entrepreneurs and businesses to achieve this goal. They are the result of a competitive, open marketplace. Business has no doubt a useful social role. The profit function allows him to fulfill it. There is no reason to believe that this role and functions will cease to work in the future, that some additional obligations should be imposed on the business.
Why is the profit motive such a bad name? Many people think that the pursuit of profit is a manifestation of greed. Greed is bad, so profit is bad. In such a rough interpretation, there is no place of profit as an information indicator, as an indicator of diligent service to the consumer. The emphasis is solely on motivation, and presented in a caricatured, perverted form. Business opponents make no distinction between rational selfishness and greed. 250 years ago, A. Smith 15 proves that activities to satisfy one's own interests coincide with virtuous behavior. The habit of being frugal, hardworking, considerate, creative, putting theories and ideas into practice - all of these elements of human behavior deserve praise, encouragement, not condemnation.
Thus, when assessing the usefulness of economic activity, one must judge by the results, and not by the motives of the activity. Second, for goods and services that are sold on the market, the most effective test is the profit margin. Third, the fact that the business and those who run it have moral obligations does not call into question self-serving behavior, the primary function of business, or the information function of profit.
5. Socialbusiness responsibility
Why do you need a business? The answer to this seemingly childish question has become less obvious in the last 20 years. The answer "make money, maximize profits" for political scientists and ideologists, economists and business school teachers, seemed too rude. Big business, practically without a fight, took on the guilt complex for its wealth and success.
An important role in the rapid growth of popularity of the concept of social responsibility of business was the entry into the international arena of powerful transnational public organizations. They have received “non-profit” status, but they can reduce taxable profit “for profit” of corporations and are interested in cultivating the thesis about the inherent sinfulness of business. By “buying” the loyalty of powerful non-governmental organizations (hereinafter referred to as NGOs), big business receives an indulgence for the right to use resources or damage partners (nature, people), without bearing responsibility for this.
For professional participants in civil society, there was a lack of some element of moral compulsion from business to give money for the implementation of public goals and objectives. The power of persuasion was insufficient to transform transnational NGOs into powerful lobbying structures. The business needed to develop a guilt complex. The actions of NGOs were aimed at making business "socially oriented" as well.
As a result, in addition to standard financial statements, many businesses have begun to prepare reports on social responsibility activities.
Conferences and seminars have begun, projects and programs are being implemented. Simple, human assistance to a person has become part of the company's balance sheet. What has no market value in a free market has become a commercial category. Making often quasi-fiscal transfers (aka hidden taxes) to politically correct projects or even political campaigns (for example, targeted assistance to schools, hospitals or kindergartens where a particular politician is running) meant acquiring the status of a political entrepreneur, a partner in semi-transparent deals. Whereas in rich countries with strong formal and informal institutions, free media and political competition, such relationships are not so inclined to merge the interests of big business and government, but in transitional countries the cover of “social responsibility” can be used to oligarchize the economy, to concentrate political power in the hands of one group. Since the dependence of business on the state remains enormous (there are a lot of instruments for limiting property rights), many actions within the framework of the "social responsibility" of business are becoming another form of merging of the interests of business and the state.
Doctrine social responsibility of business, from the point of view of its supporters, is the response of the business community to the problems and challenges associated with global development trends. In the modern world, it is not enough for business to simply maximize profits. We need to implement the concept of "corporate citizenship". This means that their actions must be coordinated not only with shareholders, but also with many organizations that define the concept of "social". Let us note a certain difficulty in understanding the term "social". When it comes to the social responsibility of business in general, the word "social" refers to all three dimensions, i.e. economic, environmental and social. At the same time, this word refers to a narrower term, actually "social". Only in this way, according to the authors of the doctrine social responsibility of business, you can adequately respond to the "expectations of society" and get an informal, public license for the right to work in the market. It is this behavior that ensures profitable activity in the long term, since the expectations of the population will be satisfied, and people will begin to buy goods and services from socially responsible firms. According to F. Hayek, the adjective "social" has become the most stupid expression in all our moral and political vocabulary. Because of its current usage, "it gradually began to turn into an appeal, into something like a password" 17. The idea of social justice is primarily based on the idea of income equalization (redistribution of income from the rich to the poor). No one can do what the market can do: set the value of the individual contribution to the total product. There is no other way to determine the reward that makes a person choose the activity in which he will most contribute to an increase in the flow of goods and services produced.
The authors of Walking the Talk 18 believe that "we are far from achieving intergenerational equity because we face a growing chasm between rich and poor." . This thesis contains two mistakes at once. The first concerns the claim that the gap between the rich and the poor is widening. It applies only to those countries that have had low or negative economic growth rates. In fact, dozens of poor countries have dynamically narrowed the income gap with the rich over the past 50 years. There are many proofs of this thesis. In 1950, Australia's GDP per capita was three times that of Hong Kong. In 2000, this figure was almost identical in these countries. In 1950, Taiwan's GDP per capita was 1 / 8th that of Britain. In 2000, this ratio was already 7/8. In 1978, when China began reforms, the country's GDP per capita to America's ratio was 19 to 1. In 2000, it was only 8 to 1. Between 1980 and 2000, the aggregate per capita income of the ten most successful Asian developing countries with a population of 2.5 billion, increased by 170%, while in the key OECD countries with a population of 850 million, growth was only 50%. Between 1950 and 2000, the average per capita income in the poorest countries (less than $ 800) increased 4.5 times. This result is better than in rich countries.
The idea that an unregulated market economy contributes to the cultivation of inequality among people is inherently flawed. People are not equal at all. Even among brothers, there are very marked differences in physical and mental qualities. Nature never repeats itself in her creations; it doesn't produce anything in the dozens, its products are not standardized. Any person leaving her workshop bears the stamp of individuality, uniqueness and originality. People are not equal, and the demand for equality before the law cannot in any way be based on the assertion that equals require equal treatment. Making a black man white is beyond human strength. But a black man can be given the same rights as a white man, and thus be given the opportunity to earn the same amount if he produces the same amount.
Yes, formally, the difference in incomes between the poor and the rich has increased in recent years, but for a correct assessment of this fact, it is imperative to take into account the dynamics of wealth growth in poor countries and the numerous cases when poor countries, pursuing a policy of economic freedom, became developed.
The second mistake is that it is wrong to think of inequalities or differences in growth rates between countries as emerging injustices that lead to a “widening gap” between the incomes of the rich and the poor. The example of 19 Nigeria and South Korea... In 1950, per capita income in the two countries was roughly the same. Between 1950 and 2000, this figure in Nigeria increased by 50%, and in South Korea - more than 20 times. It is clear that the economies of South Korea and Nigeria have developed in very different ways. But this does not mean in any way that it is unfair. Yes, economic growth in the OECD countries between 1950 and 2000 was higher than in virtually all countries in Africa and many developing countries in Asia. However, this is not an example of injustice between rich and poor countries, but evidence of the slow pace of progress in the latter. They did not remain poor because the rich grew faster. Their growth rates would hardly accelerate if the growth rates of the rich countries slowed down. If we take such an indicator as life expectancy, then in the "less developed countries" it increased from 41 years in 1950 - 1955 to 66 years in 2000 - 2005. During the same time in developed countries (according to the UN classification), this indicator increased from 63 to 76 years old. That is, the difference has more than halved: from 22 to 10 years. The world would hardly be better and just if people in rich countries lived less.
There are many studies that answer the following questions: “To what extent has per capita GDP growth contributed to poverty reduction?” And “To what extent the distribution of wealth worldwide has altered the balance both within and between countries in terms of greater equality.” The results are different for the following reasons: 1) different periods taken by researchers for comparison, 2) how is “poverty” defined, 3) how inequality is measured, 4) the weight given to different sources of information on the level and distribution of national income and expenditures ...
From the unprecedentedly high rates of economic growth of the world economy in the period 1950-2000, it can be concluded that the persistently high rates of economic growth had practically nothing to do with foreign aid. Israel is the only exception. Economic growth is not a consequence of implementation government programs or some kind of socially responsible behavior of large corporations, especially as a result of the implementation of some international initiatives. Walking the talk 20 also concludes: “Countries are reducing poverty not because they are implementing welfare programs, but mainly because they have created the conditions for business development. As in earlier periods of history, material progress in poor and rich countries has been achieved through the creation of favorable conditions for economic development and the implementation of creative plans of entrepreneurs.Increasing the level of income and well-being of workers does not depend on the activities of trade unions, price regulation or income levels. There are no data on the basis of which it can be concluded that the rich benefit from higher GDP growth, that the poor depend on the implementation of collective social programs. Analysis of successful economies proves that with the foundations for economic growth in place, countries can grow richer much faster than in earlier periods of historical development. These conditions include such elements as a stable government and the absence of civil unrest, a responsible and transparent government, including in relation to monetary policy, respect for property rights, economic decisions are made primarily by individuals and organizations, the economy is open to transactions with the outside world. These are the basic political and economic conditions that ensure economic growth. Creating such conditions and maintaining them over a long period is a very difficult task. "
The authors of Walking the Talk are typical representatives of the corporate social responsibility movement. They write: "The intensification of market globalization during the 1990s confronts business with broader social responsibility and citizenship." Antiglobalists and supporters of the concept of social responsibility of business see globalization in a completely different way. For them, this is a powerful new wave of multinational corporations and capital, which deprives the government and the people of power. They are wrong on three counts. First, it is wrong to perceive globalization as a wave suddenly coming out of nowhere. The trend towards closer international cooperation has been evident for a long time. It did not lead to any radical changes in the nature of business. Secondly, a world without borders does not exist, and one can hardly predict its existence in the near future. Despite trade liberalization over the past 20 to 25 years, trade barriers remain extremely high. The place of tariff restrictions is taken by non-tariff restrictions. Only 19 countries of the world (in terms of the Heritage 21 Index of Economic Freedom) can create a global free trade area, that is, they have a corresponding liberal regime.
Thirdly, the protectionist, socialist states remained behind the field of globalization, because they did not want openness and international cooperation. At the same time, no one could force them to behave differently. Liberalization decisions are not made by international organizations, but by national governments.
In addition to these three mistakes, advocates of corporate social responsibility use two other myths. The first one is marginalization. Not only governments, but also many in the business community believe that poor countries are victims of globalization, that they are marginalized and doomed to poverty. Therefore, in their opinion, it is necessary to "give capitalism a human face." Businesses are called upon to help poor countries in a new way, to adopt the concept of "global corporate citizenship."
The charge of marginalization is groundless. Indeed, not all countries have been successful in the past 30 years. There are examples of country degradation. However, they became victims not of globalization, but, on the contrary, of its absence, its blocking by national governments. In some cases, problems arise due to natural disasters, wars, and the spread of AIDS.
On the other hand, those countries that have consistently followed the path of creating the foundations of the capitalist economy have achieved great success. Governments have liberalized trade and investment regimes, which have expanded business opportunities and created an effective competitive environment. The OECD countries, on the other hand, have largely retained liberal trade regimes or opted for further trade liberalization. Of course, poor countries in many cases face great problems in accessing the markets of rich countries. The EU, the USA, Japan and other rich countries maintain strict protectionist policies on many product groups, especially in such sensitive markets for poor countries as agricultural products, light industry, but if a poor country decides on systemic market reforms, it gets more benefits than harm. Another striking proof that national governments are often themselves to blame for the retaliatory measures of rich countries is China and Thailand, between 1973 and 1998, the physical volume of exports from these countries increased 16 times, averaging 11% per year. Mexico increased exports 14 times. But India, which largely retained its protectionist practices, increased its exports by only 4.2 times. These data suggest that goods from poor countries can and do enter the markets of rich countries.
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