The history of economics is quite long and rich. People have always been interested in processes that directly or indirectly influenced their wealth.
The subject of the history of economic doctrines is the stages of the formation of the economy, its development and transformation over a long time period. She also examines in detail the main areas of economic thought that prevailed in a given period.
Unfortunately, the entire history of economic doctrines cannot fit in this article. It seems possible only to indicate the key stages in the development of schools and schools from ancient times to the end of the 19th century.
The history of economic doctrines begins with the attempts of Aristotle and Plato to somehow systematize the information they know in this area. Aristotle made a particularly valuable contribution. He was the first to call economics a science, studied economic activity, and developed the theory of price, money, and value.
The origin of the term “economy” we owe to Xenophon, a historian and writer from Ancient Greece. The name consists of two words, which together have the meaning of "law on housekeeping."
The history of economic doctrines connects with the separation of exchange and labor in society the formation of the economy as a whole on a national scale. This indicates the need for knowledge about the economy of the country as a whole. At the beginning of the 17th century, A. Montcretien, by publishing a treatise on political economy, proved that trade was the main goal of production and gave the final name to young science. This economist, as well as Jean Baptiste Colbert, Thomas Maine, I.T. Pososhkov, are representatives of mercantilism, the main direction of economic thought of that time. At the heart of the prosperity of the nation, they saw the accumulation of precious metals.
In those same years, there was an opposite point of view expressed by the followers of the school of physiocrats. They believed that only the labor of rural workers on the ground can bring incomes that far exceed costs. All other activities only process products without producing anything new.
And, of course, the history of economic doctrines is not conceived without such classics of science as Adam Smith, Jean-Baptiste Say, David Ricardo. On many issues they had discrepancies, but there were a number of premises that united them. So, they all advocated that the state should not interfere in economic processes and provide the individual with economic freedom, and allow them to freely compete. The desire of man (as an economic entity in the first place) to increase his wealth will certainly entail the increase of the wealth of society as a whole. Adam Smith called the self-adjusting mechanism of the economy an "invisible hand." She, therefore, directs the actions of producers of products and its consumers so that the economic equilibrium is maintained. In such a system unemployment cannot exist for a long time, surplus goods or shortages are felt. The followers of Adam Smith and he himself believed that not only agriculture creates the wealth of the nation, but also the labor of the other classes.
The fact that the market economy is exploitative in nature, created the teachings of Karl Marx. He was based on the cost of labor and believed that the wealth of the people was labor of mercenaries. Without paying the labor of ordinary workers, capitalists make huge profits, thereby society is polarized into two classes: the rich and the poor. And within such a capitalist system, the revolution of the proletariat is necessarily brewing. In practice, the theory of the German economist has not been confirmed.
At the end of the 19th century, Alfred Marshall became the founder of the neoclassical trend. He proved that the welfare of producers and consumers will reach its maximum only when economic entities will be able to compete freely.