The Theory of Socialism by M.I. Tugan-Baranovskiy

The ideas of Russian economist M.I. Tugan-Baranovskiy about socialism were significantly different from Marxist and especially from Lenin’s model of future society. The attitude to personality was the “supreme value” for the prominent Russian economist. Besides, M.I. Tugan-Baranovskiy was the opponent of excessive centralization of state power and suggested various ways of its control and restriction. In his opinion, there is only one way of Russia’s development. It implies the following conditions: ? the power is in the hands of socialists without carrying out deep socialist transformations (“It isn’t necessary to think of socialization of all factories in the present”); ? the state will govern the relations between work and the capital. The power determines the size of salary of a worker and the duration of working day; ? the peasant economy is connected with the powerful unions and associations in agriculture; ? the state “regulated” capitalism is limited in the rights to interests of all society and control of working class in the city. The author of the article believes that M.I. Tugan-Baranovskiy proposed rather realistic plan of socialism, similar to the plan of NEP, which was announced by Lenin in 1921 after some unsuccessful economic and social experiments.