Mikhail Ivanovich Tugan-Baranovsky is a Russian-Ukrainian economist whose academic career flourished in the early 20th century. He was also a famous politician and statesman. Tugan-Baranovsky is a representative of the so-called legal Marxism in tsarist Russia. Joseph Schumpeter considered him the most outstanding Russian economist of his time. During his life, he has written many works on the theory of value, the distribution of social income, the history of management development and the basics of joint management.
Tugan-Baranovsky: biography
The future Nobel laureate was born on January 8, 1865 in with. Solenom, near Kharkov. Today it is the territory of Ukraine, but in those days the land was part of the Russian Empire. Tugan-Baranovsky took place - on the paternal side - from the kind of Polish-Lithuanian Tatars. The mother of the scientist was an ethnic Ukrainian from the Poltava region. Tugan-Baranovsky studied at a school in Kiev and Kharkov. From childhood he was fond of philosophy, studied the work of Emanuel Kant. In 1884, he entered Kharkov University, where he continued to study natural sciences. Four years later, Tugan-Baranovsky received a Ph.D. But by this time he was already interested in political economy, so he decided to continue his studies. In 1890, Mikhail Ivanovich Tugan-Baranovsky received another degree. A year earlier, he married the daughter of the director of the St. Petersburg Conservatory Lydia Davydova. He actively participated in social activities and built a successful academic career. In early 1919, Tugan-Baranovsky was sent to a conference in Paris as the head of the Ukrainian delegation. During the trip, he suffered two attacks of angina pectoris and died on a train near Odessa from the third.
Revolutionary mood
During his studies at the university, Tugan-Baranovsky began to actively participate in the revolutionary movement against tsarism in Russia. He was acquainted with the brother of Vladimir Lenin, Alexander Ulyanov, who was executed in 1887 for participating in the attempt on the life of Alexander III. Friendship was interrupted by the arrest of Tugan-Baranovsky for his participation in a student demonstration in St. Petersburg dedicated to the 25th anniversary of the death of writer Nikolai Dobrolyubov.
The first successful articles
The successful academic career of Tugan-Baranovsky began in 1890. His first article, entitled The Doctrine of the Marginal Utility of Economic Benefits, was published in October in the journal Legal Herald. In this work, he argued arguably that the labor theory of value and the modern marginal economy are not in antagonistic confrontation, but complement each other.
"The lives of prominent people"
After the first success in the theoretical field of science, Tugan-Baranovsky decided to write a brief review of the biography and economic views of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and John Stuart Mill for a series of books published by Pavlenkov. He did a little work, only 80 pages. In it, Mikhail Tugan-Baranovsky criticized Proudhon for the latter's lack of internal consistency of the test, its stylistic ambiguity, lack of imagination and hypocritical support for the Napoleon regime. Mill’s views were more to Mikhail Ivanovich’s liking, since he showed the correct understanding of the spirit of modern science based on the study of nature.
Gaining experience abroad
Like Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Tugan-Baranovsky considered England as an example for developing countries, in particular Russia. Therefore, the scientist spent the spring and summer of 1891 at the British Museum, studying a collection of rare books and statistical works. Then he returned to St. Petersburg. The next two years he spent on studying the theory of business cycles. During this time he wrote a large-scale work, “The Industrial Crisis in Modern England: Causes and Impact on the Life of People.” In 1894, she received a master's degree in political economics from Moscow University for her. After that he returned to St. Petersburg, was able to get a university as a privat-docent. Tugan-Baranovsky worked here until 1899, when he was dismissed due to political unreliability.
Political activity
In 1895, M.I. Tugan-Baranovsky, together with co-author P. B. Struve, joined the Free Economic Association. In 1896, he became its chairman and wrote one of his most famous articles, “The Importance of the Economic Factor in History.” Despite the fact that the economy of Tugan-Baranovsky was Marxist in nature, the scientist was never a member of the underground social-democratic movement, which appeared just in this period in Russia. In 1898 he saw the light of his greatest work, "The Russian Factory in its Past and Present." For her, he received a doctorate at Moscow University. From 1901 to 1905, Tugan-Baranovsky actively participated in the public life of the Poltava region. He began to work in the local zemstvo. After that, the scientist returned to St. Petersburg. Here he worked as a private assistant professor and professor at the economic faculties of many polytechnic and commercial institutes, as well as at the private Shanyavsky University in Moscow.
Neo-Kantianism and politics
Gradually, Tugan-Baranovsky’s interest in legal Marxism fades. He is fond of neo-Kantianism, which is reflected in many of his works of the early XX century on the cooperative movement. In 1901, he published Notes from the History of Political Economy in the journal Popular Wealth. This work, as well as its continuation, was translated into German in 1915. In 1919, the scientist’s first work in Ukrainian appeared, entitled “Cooperation, its nature and goals.” Since 1906, he worked with Mikhail Grushevsky. With him, he wrote the encyclopedia "Ukrainian people in his past and future." Tugan-Baranovsky was a member of the Ukrainian party of Social Federalists and resigned from the General Secretariat on November 20, 1917 in protest against the proclamation of the Third Universal by the Central Rada, which stated the need for greater Ukraine autonomy.
Economic views
All the works of Tugan-Baranovsky can be divided into several categories according to the topics to which they are devoted:
- On the basics of socialism.
- According to the concept of distribution.
- According to the theory of marginal utility.
- On the basics of cooperation.
- According to the theory of industrial cycles.
About the basics of socialism
Tugan-Baranovsky made a significant contribution to the study of cooperation. He summarized Russian and foreign experience. In his book "The Social Foundations of Cooperation", published in 1916, the scientist shares the concepts of the cooperative movement and such a form of business as a cooperative. The ideal of the first is the creation of a socialist commune, a new person, and the second is economic gain, which fits perfectly with capitalist ideas about farming. However, the main goal of this form of enterprise is not to make a profit, but to increase the labor incomes of people employed in it, and to reduce their expenses for consumer needs. There are various forms of cooperatives: peasant, petty-bourgeois, proletarian. The specific type of a given enterprise depends on the objectives of the class that creates it. For Tugan-Baranovsky, cooperation is a struggle against capitalism, but not with weapons and barricades, but with peaceful means.
Distribution concept
The Tugan-Baranovsky theory includes a separate section devoted to the fair section of the social product. The scientist noted the problem of the existing distribution mechanism, where the masters of the situation are the unearned classes. The wage worker gets an excessively small part of the social product. The construction of socialism depends precisely on the proletariat as a class, because only it can liberate the economy from capitalists and aristocrats. The latter receive unearned income, so they must be fought.
Marginal utility theory
Tugan-Baranovsky did not agree with the concept of labor value of Marx. Marginal utility for him is the reason for the value of household goods. It should not be opposed to labor value, but is its necessary complement. According to Tugan-Baranovsky, the problem is that marginal utility theory is often misunderstood. Ricardo’s teaching is focused on objective factors of value, and Menger on subjective ones. Therefore, they are not antagonistic in nature. On the contrary, the labor theory of value of Ricardo and Marx complement the concept of marginal utility, revealed in the works of Menger. Everything is in perfect harmony. The scientist also proved that the marginal utility of freely reproduced goods is always proportional to their labor costs. This position is often called the Tugan-Baranovsky theorem. Lenin did not share this view of the Ukrainian economist. Tugan-Baranovsky believed that socialism in an unprepared environment is a direct path to slavery and the general poverty of the population. The scientist defended the special role of the middle class as a link between workers and the intelligentsia. However, in the USSR there were big problems with his education. Over time, even Lenin realizes that building socialism is a matter for the future.
Theory of Industrial Cycles
The economic views of Tugan-Baranovsky were quite broad. However, the most modern is his investment theory of cycles. Tugan-Baranovsky was engaged in the study of industrial crises in England. He saw their reason in the disproportionate distribution of capital, which is amplified in the face of limited banking resources. In his work, “Industrial Crises in Modern England,” he emphasized that a capitalist economy itself can create a market, therefore, it has no limitations for its development and growth. However, Tugan-Baranovsky argued that free competition could impede the expansion of production. He considered the cause of the crises not only under-consumption, but also problems in the sphere of credit and money circulation. As a basis for his investment theory of cycles, the scientist took the idea of Marx that industrial fluctuations are associated with the periodic need to renew fixed capital. Thus, according to Tugan-Baranovsky, the phases of the industrial cycle are determined by the laws of investment. Fluctuations arise due to the lack of parallelism in various areas of the economy during the boom, the mismatch between investments and savings, the disproportionality of prices for consumer and capital goods. Considered Tugan-Baranovsky and the role of interest rates on the economy. He said that its increase is a sign that the country has too little capital, and the latter is the main cause of crises, according to the scientist.
Tugan-Baranovsky: proceedings
- "The industrial crisis in modern England, their causes and impact on popular life" (1894).
- "Russian factory in the past and present" (1898).
- “The Doctrine of Marginal Utility” (1890).
- "Proudhon, his life and work" (1891).
- "Essays on the History of Political Economy" (1901).
- A number of works in German.
- "Essays on the Recent History of Political Economy and Socialism" (1903).
- “Theoretical Foundations of Marxism” (1905).
- “Socialism as a positive doctrine” (1918).
Mikhail Ivanovich Tugan-Baranovsky is an outstanding economist at the beginning of the 20th century. A special place in the development of economics as a science is occupied by his theory of industrial cycles, which has become a harbinger of a joint investment concept. The scientist saw the cause of the crises not only in overproduction, but also in the imperfection of the monetary and credit circulation systems. He is not just a representative of legal Marxism, but also one of the most famous economists of the last century. He has works that are devoted to the theory of value, the concept of distribution of social income, the development of the fundamentals of management. The legacy of Mikhail Ivanovich continues to inspire modern scientists, and the conclusions of Tugan-Baranovsky have not lost their relevance today.