The paper provides a justification of the laws of supply and demand using the concept of a marginal firm (technology) for the case of perfect competition.The ideological factor of excessive attention to the analysis of marginal parameters at the firm level in the introductory economics courses is discussed. The author connects these issues to the ideas of J. B. Clark and gives an alternative treatment of exploitation.
The paper reviews the textbook Essentials of Economics by Paul Krugman and his co-authors from the point of view of its relevance for the Russian education system. It also compares this textbook with similar books by P. Samuelson and N. G. Mankiw. The author emphasizes a high didactic value of Krugmans book for teaching in the context of the student-oriented paradigm of education. The absence of significant substantial differences from the earlier textbooks is emphasized.
The paper briefly characterizes the content of S. Bowles advanced textbook in microeconomics and comments on the key themes that constitute the book: on the relationship between uncertainty and optimization, technologies and production function, altruism and self-interest, cooperation and competition. The main attention is paid to the temporal dimension of the economics processes.
The article tries to distinguish theoretical notions of factors and resources in economics and to consider paired connections between factors (labor, capital, and land) and resources (information, energy, matter). The author traces the logic of transition from scarcity of direct reproducible material goods via limitations of non-reproducible indirect goods (energy resources) to limiting of individuals creative opportunities as a factor of survival of humanity.
The article analyzes "Conception of Long-term Socio-economic Development of Russian Federation" designed by RSPP (Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs). The time period up to 2020 is considered to be medium-term. The author argues that if one takes into account the perspectives of Russian socio-economic development, then the main points of departure for the "Conception…" are to be determined in the light of long-term (50 years or more) vision of cultural, demographic and ecological challenges. The author proposes measures to overcome mutual distrust in the hierarchy of power which is traditional for Russian management culture by suggesting that the potential of judicial and economic principles of the new "mother's capital" institution be developed.
The author analyzes some descriptions of the subject matter of economics as a science and a "discipline" (a "subject" or a "course") which are widespread in the western textbooks. The article stresses the connection between those descriptions and spheres of their authors' scientific activities. The views on the subject matter of economic science are shown to be inconsistent both with real human's life and with the basic notion of goods introduced by C. Menger. The author suggests that the economics course should begin with the description of the marginal aims of economic activity which are the subsistence of life and the increase in welfare.
The changing proportion of science and education in the works of A. Smith, J. Mill, A. Marshall and P. Samuelson is considered in the article. The accent is also made on the shift of the economists' attention from "the life of things" to the life of people and to the problem of its adequate reflection in the textbooks. The author makes some assumptions on the further evolution of beginner's textbooks on the economic theory.
After 1991 the legislative basis of education economy in Russia has evolved from late-Soviet constrained subjectiveness not to full subjectiveness but to its elimination. The legislature didn't mark the difference between legal and economic norms, between the free character of education and its accessibility. As the author points out, the activity of all branches of state power in this sphere has committed deviations from constitutional norms as well as related federal codes and laws and their practical realization. These deviations have not allowed the educational system to function adequately. Some measures on improving the situation are considered in the article.
The author points out that self-education is the ontological basis of the educational process. Self-education forms a specific type of personal "natural economy". In industrial society teaching technologies reduce education to objective oriented learning leaving behind subjective oriented upbringing. Various markets are emerging in educational sphere characterized by the tendency to substitute "live" labor by "embedded" one. But even the most advanced countries have not extended WTO principles to the educational area.
The questions of mutual relations of science, politics and religion are considered in the second part of the article. To the author's opinion religiousness is present in any act of economic decision-making as the science cannot answer the question "What for?". Nevertheless alternative calculus of probable effects of management should be based on scientific knowledge to a maximum degree. The author compares available alternative variants of globalization with "Prussian" and "American" ways of capitalism development in agriculture. The interest of liberals in marxism in modern Russia is connected with the search of means of ideological management of the citizens educated in the Soviet system.
The article continues the discussion on the urgency of Marx's ideas for modern Russia started in No 5 and 6 by the article of E. Gajdar and V. Mau "Marxism: between the Scientific Theory and "Secular Religion" (Liberal Apologia)" and continued in No 7 by the article of A. Buzgalin and A. Kolganov "Do We Need Liberal Marxism? " In the first part of the article questions of economic theory, first of all the difference in treatment of the category of production relations between Marx and domestic scientists are considered. The author pays attention to treatment of the category "direct producer": for Marx this one is the businessman making economic decisions and responsible for their success with his property. Besides it is underlined that Marx had not finished the work on the second and the third volumes of "Capital", and most likely the marginalist revolution could have played a leading role here. Inadequate translation of some of the terms in Russian (sometimes deliberate) can also be blamed for distortion of Marx's heritage. To the author's opinion initial installation is important in consideration of Marx's theory: the choice of political approach exaggerates revolutional ideas of his doctrine (at the end of his life Marx had rejected many ideas and called "Manifest" "party excrement of twenty years' prescription"). The scientific approach will allow the scientist for example to continue the analysis of submission of labor to capital, to investigate qualitative aspects of the labor theory of cost.
