Entrepreneurship, knowledge and employment

Discourse of Russian economists on the development of capitalism in Russia

Eliseeva Irina, Saint-Petersburg State University of Economics

The discourse of Russian economists on the development of capitalism in Russia divided the participants into two camps: those, who considered the development of capitalism to be inevitable and those who believed that capitalism in Russia had arisen not in a natural way, but artificially as a result of the state influence. The discussion intensified in the middle of the 19th century. The great contribution into study of the fate of capitalism in Russia was made by V.I. Lenin / Ulyanov (1870-1924) by his work "The Development of Capitalism in Russia" (1899). The peculiarities of Russian capitalism was that it arose on the basis of the legacy of serfdom. But already at the beginning of the XIX century the share of civilian workers in Russian factories amounted to almost half (48%) (M.I. Tugan-Baranovsky Russian factory in the past and present, V.1 The History of the development of the Russian factory in XIX century Moscow: Proletary Publishing House , 1926). The development of capitalism aroused the discussions of economists. Supporters of the so-called "natural" development of Russia (N.A. Karyshev (1855-1905), V.P. Vorontsov (1847 - 1918), etc.) expressed their views against capitalism and considered the natural institutions for Russia such as artels, handicrafts, communities. They considered as artificial institutions as those that belonged to of the bourgeois society. They accused Peter The First of implanting relations and institutions alien to Russia. Their opponents believed that no Chinese wall could shut off Russia from general economic tendencies. The low productivity of Russian workers led to the fact that with low wages of labor in Russia it was almost more expensive than in the West. This was accompanied by the technical backwardness of Russian industry. All these reasons for economic discourse remain to nowadays, exacerbated by such a new feature as the money outflow.

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Keywords: Capitalism, natural laws, artificial laws, wage labor, bonded labor

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