Marxism, mainstream and political economy

Abstract

The history of political economy in Russia is inextricably linked with the history of Moscow University, where the Department of Political Economy was established in 1804, when there was no yet either Marxism or mainstream as branches of classical political economy. Rapid development of capitalism in the 19th century became the basis for further development of political economy and the formation of neoclassical trend of economic theory, which further transformed into a generalized term ‘economics’. In future, the market principles of economics spread throughout the world, which predetermined the place of economics as the basis of economic science and economic education, highlighting it as a mainstream. However, despite the historical zigzags in the development of Russia, the Department of Political Economy retained its generic name while simultaneously teaching and researching all the schools of economic theory that arose in the 19th–21st centuries. This approach is consistent with one of the most important principles of Moscow State University — to foster fundamental and consistent university education of its graduates. Without diminishing the importance of any part of modern general economic theory, the article shows that it is political economy that forms the fundamentality and consistency of economic knowledge, constantly maintains a connection with economic development and its problems, revealing the leading role of an individual in the digital intellectual age.