Mikhail Ivanovich Tugan-Baranovsky: biography, works, economic views

Mikhail Ivanovich Tugan-Baranovsky is a Russian-Ukrainian economist whose academic career flourished at the beginning of the 20th century. He was also a famous politician and statesman. Tugan-Baranovsky is the 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 wrote many works on the theory of value, the distribution of public income, the history of management development and the basics of joint management activities.

Tugan-Baranovsky: biography

The future Nobel laureate was born on January 8, 1865 in the village of. Solen, not far from Kharkov. Today it is the territory of Ukraine, but at that time the lands were part of the Russian Empire. Tugan-Baranovsky took place - on the paternal line - from the clan of Polish-Lithuanian Tatars. The scientist's mother was an ethnic Ukrainian from the Poltava region. Tugan-Baranovsky studied at a school in Kiev and Kharkov. Since childhood, fond of philosophy, studied the work of Emmanuel Kant. In 1884 he entered Kharkov University, where he continued the study of natural sciences. Four years later, Tugan-Baranovsky received his 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 public 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 and died in a train near Odessa from the third.

Revolutionary moods

During his studies at the university, Tugan-Baranovsky began to actively participate in the revolutionary movement against tsarism in Russia. He was acquainted with Vladimir Lenin's brother, 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 the student demonstration in St. Petersburg, dedicated to the 25th anniversary of the death of writer Nikolai Dobrolubov.

The first good articles

Successful academic career Tugan-Baranovsky began in 1890. His first article, entitled The Doctrine of Marginal Utility of Economic Benefits, was published in October in the journal Juridichesky Vestnik. In this work, he argued reasonably that the labor theory of value and the modern marginalist economy are not in an antagonistic confrontation, but complement each other.

"The lives of outstanding 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 publishing house. He did a little job, only 80 pages. In it, Mikhail Tugan-Baranovsky criticized Proudhon for his lack of internal consistency of the test, his stylistic ambiguity, lack of imagination and hypocritical support for the Napoleonic regime. Mill's views were more liked by Mikhail Ivanovich, because he showed a correct understanding of the spirit of modern science, based on the study of nature.

Getting experience abroad

Like Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Tugan-Baranovsky regarded England as an example for developing countries, particularly Russia. Therefore, the spring and summer of 1891, the scientist spent in the British Museum, studying a collection of rare books and statistical works. Then he returned to St. Petersburg. The next two years he spent studying the theory of business cycles. During this time he wrote a large-scale work "Industrial crisis in modern England: the causes and impact on people's lives." For her received in 1894 a master's degree in political economy from Moscow University. After that he returned to St. Petersburg, he was able to get a job in the university as a privat-docent. Tugan-Baranovsky worked here until 1899, when he was dismissed because of political unreliability.

Political activity

In 1895 MI Tugan-Baranovsky together with the co-author PB 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 Tugan-Baranovsky's economy 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, the world saw his biggest work "The Russian factory in its past and present." For it, he received his 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 this, the scientist returned to St. Petersburg. Here he worked as a privat-docent and professor at the economic faculties of many polytechnic and commercial institutes, as well as at the private university of Shanyavsky in Moscow.

Neo-Kantianism and politics

Gradually, Tugan-Baranovsky's interest in legal Marxism is dying out. He is fond of neo-Kantianism, which is reflected in many of his works of the early twentieth century, devoted to the cooperative movement. In 1901 he published "Notes from the history of political economy" in the journal "National Wealth". This work, like its continuation, was translated into German in 1915. In 1919 the first work of a scientist in Ukrainian appeared under the title "Cooperation, its nature and goals". Since 1906 he worked with Mikhail Grushevsky. With him, he wrote an encyclopedia "The Ukrainian people in his past and future". Tugan-Baranovsky was a member of the Ukrainian party of social-federalists and withdrew from the general secretariat on November 20, 1917, in protest against the proclamation of the Third Universal by the Central Rada, which spoke of the need to grant Ukraine greater autonomy.

Economic views

All the works of Tugan-Baranovsky can be conditionally divided into several categories in accordance with the topics to which they are devoted:

1. On the basics of socialism.
2. According to the concept of distribution.
3. According to the theory of marginal utility.
4. On the basics of cooperation.
5. According to the theory of industrial cycles.

On the foundations of socialism

Tugan-Baranovsky made a significant contribution to the study of cooperation. He summarized the Russian and foreign experience. In his book "The Social Foundations of Cooperation", issued in 1916, the scientist shares the concepts of the cooperative movement and such a form of economic enterprise as the cooperative. The ideal of the first is the creation of a socialist commune, a new man, and the second is an economic gain, which fully fits into the capitalist concept of economic management. However, the main purpose of this form of enterprise is not to make a profit, but to increase the labor incomes of people employed on it, and reduce their spending on consumer needs. There are various forms of cooperatives: peasant, petty-bourgeois, proletarian. The specific type of this enterprise depends on the goals 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.

The concept of distribution

The theory of Tugan-Baranovsky includes a separate section devoted to the fair division of the social product. The scientist noted the problem of the existing distribution mechanism, where the owners of the situation are non-labor classes. The wage-worker gets an inordinately small part of the social product. It is from the proletariat as a class that the construction of socialism depends, because only it can liberate the economy from capitalists and aristocrats. The latter receive unearned income, so they must be combated.

The theory of marginal utility

Tugan-Baranovsky did not agree with the concept of Marx's labor value. Ultimate utility for him is the reason for the value of economic goods. It should not be opposed to labor value, but is its necessary complement. According to Tugan-Baranovsky, the problem lies in the fact that the theory of marginal utility is often misunderstood. The teaching of Ricardo is focused on objective factors of value, and Menger - on the subjective. Therefore, they are not antagonistic in nature. On the contrary, the labor theory of value of Ricardo and Marx supplement 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 values. This 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 general poverty of the population. The scientist defended the special role of the middle class as a link between the workers and the intelligentsia. However, in the USSR with his education there were big problems. In time, even Lenin realizes that building socialism is the business of the future.

Theory of Industrial Cycles

Economic views of Tugan-Baranovsky were quite wide. However, the most modern is his investment theory of cycles. Tugan-Baranovsky was studying industrial crises in England. They saw the reason for this in the disproportionality of the allocation of capital, which is increasing in the conditions of limited bank resources. In his work "Industrial crises in modern England," he stressed that capitalist economy itself can create a market, so it has no limitations for its development and growth. However, Tugan-Baranovsky argued that free competition can hamper the expansion of production. The reason for the crises, he believed, was not only underconsumption, but also problems in the sphere of credit and money circulation. As the basis of his investment theory of cycles, the scientist took Marx's idea 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. The fluctuations arise from the lack of parallelism in various areas of the economy during the upswing, the discrepancy between investments and savings, the disproportionality of prices for consumer and capital goods. Tugan-Baranovsky considered the role of the interest rate on the economy. He said that raising it is a sign that there is too little capital in the country, and the latter is the main cause of crises, according to the scientist.

Tugan-Baranovsky: works

1. "The Industrial Crisis in Modern England, Their Causes and Influence on People's Life" (1894).
2. "Russian factory in the past and present" (1898).
3. "The doctrine of marginal utility" (1890).
4. "Proudhon, his life and work" (1891).
5. "Essays on the history of political economy" (1901).
6. A number of works in German.
7. "Essays from the Modern History of Political Economy and Socialism" (1903).
8. "Theoretical Foundations of Marxism" (1905).
9. "Socialism as a positive teaching" (1918).

Mikhail Ivanovich Tugan-Baranovsky is an outstanding economist of the early 20th century. A special place in the development of the economy as a science is occupied by his theory of industrial cycles, which became the forerunner of the joint investment concept. The scientist saw the cause of crises not only in overproduction, but also in the imperfection of systems of monetary and credit circulation. 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 public income, the development of the foundations of management. The legacy of Mikhail Ivanovich continues to inspire modern scientists, and the findings of Tugan-Baranovsky have not lost their relevance today.