Analysis of the conditions for the implementation of the ecosystem approach in the economy in Russia

Rozin Vadim Markovich Doctor of Philosophy Chief Scientific Associate, Institute of Philosophy of the Russian Academy of Sciences  109240, Russia, Moskovskaya oblast', g. Moscow, ul. Goncharnaya, 12 str.1, kab. 310 rozinvm@gmail.com Other publications by this author

In search of funds promising to further develop and improve the efficiency of the economy, researchers have recently turned their attention to the ecosystem approach and the discourse that is just taking shape. The specifics of this approach, especially in economics, are discussed in an interesting article by E.A. Tretyakova and E.N. Freiman "The ecosystem approach in modern economic research" ^[7]. They described the ecosystem approach in some detail: the need to combine systems that can organically interact with each other, the emergent effect resulting from such a combination, consideration of ecosystems not only in the logic of systemic but also environmental approaches, the processes of self-organization and "rational symbiosis" inherent in ecosystems, the need to establish new relationships with comprehensive management systems. At the same time, the authors consider the economy as if by default, it seems to be a reality that everyone understands. By introducing the concept of "economic ecosystems", Tretyakova and Freiman attribute to them the main characteristics arising from the ecosystem approach, in fact, without discussing whether it is possible to implement this approach in a modern economy, such as Russia.

"Thus," Tretyakova and Freiman write, "the authors agree that economic ecosystems are complex dynamic systems with a large number of actors actively interacting with each other and the external environment based on mutually beneficial cooperation and coordination of their interests in the process of sharing resources, producing a product in demand by society and joint competitive behavior.… With regard to economic ecosystems, this implies a variety of economic activities and organizational and legal forms of business, freedom of entrepreneurial and innovative activities, accessibility of information and education for people, freedom to express their creative ideas and realize their intellectual potential, a variety of forms of lending, investment, insurance, etc. ... In addition, the ability of ecosystems to recover after The perceived external impact or internal disturbance is determined by their ability to trigger compensatory effects. With regard to economic ecosystems, this implies not only the creation of all kinds of reserves, the development of insurance, but also compensation for environmental damage caused earlier, reducing the environmental burden on the environment, the maximum possible recycling and reuse of waste produced, etc." ^{[7, pp. 9, 10]}.

All of this so far looks like wishes, the question is whether the conditions for the implementation of an "ecosystem project" are currently in place in the economy, and whether existing forms of sociality (government entities and structures, existing laws) are ready to allow and support "a variety of economic activities and organizational and legal forms of business, freedom of entrepreneurial and innovative activity.", accessibility of information and education for people, freedom of expression of their creative ideas and realization of their intellectual potential, a variety of forms of lending, investing, insurance"? Naturally, it is impossible to answer this question without discussing what the modern economy is like. The answer is not from the point of view of an economist (there are more than one such answers) and within the framework of a philosophical and methodological approach. For the author, this approach involves, first of all, the implementation of the method of cultural and historical reconstruction.

In terms of time, the European economy was developing at about the same time and in parallel with the national state. "The decisive accident," write V. Fedotova and V. Kolpakov, "which influenced the qualitative mutation of markets, was the appearance of national states on the European historical scene. Thanks to government intervention, trade was freed from numerous urban privileges. The state created a single space for an intra-national market, which was already based on the principles of benefit and competition and which increasingly ignored the difference between city and village, between individual cities and provinces" ^{[9, p. 148]}. Initially, the state was mainly concerned with collecting taxes from its subjects and the population, and the more the better. "To [fulfill] all their tasks,‒ writes F. Braudel, the state needed money, and more and more as it expanded and diversified its power <...> Costs ran ahead; they thought about catching up with them, but in general, with exceptions that confirmed the rule, no one succeeded... the deficit deepened like a chasm <...> The state could no longer live as before, at the expense of the sovereign's domain. It was supposed to lay its hand on the wealth in circulation. This means that it was within the framework of a market economy that a certain capitalism and a certain modern state were formed at the same time" ^{[2, p. 525, 527]}.

Here Braudel correctly points to the turn from tax collection to economic formation. It consisted of two innovations: firstly, the inclination of all citizens living in the territory subordinated to the state to submit to the state, and secondly, to clarify to the subjects of power that one of the main tasks of the state is to create conditions for the most favorable management of economy and trade by citizens, then taxes can be increased. This second step was very important and fundamental. In relation to all potential and actual sources of money, the state acted in the same way: it established a common order for all (this is the liberal idea of administrative justice), introduced appropriate laws, and created institutions that ensure social processes that need to be streamlined.

By that time, two types of production had developed ‒ entrepreneurial, which was due to the private initiatives of free citizens, and, more slowly, state-owned. At the same time, especially entrepreneurial production was formed for that time as innovative, it was guided by calculations. The entrepreneurs, although they acted at their own risk, wanted to be sure that they would not go bankrupt. "According to Sombart, the capitalist spirit consists of a combination of an entrepreneurial spirit (including a thirst for money, a passion for adventure, ingenuity, etc.) and a philistine spirit (a propensity for accounting and prudence, prudence and economy)" ^{[9, p. 41]}. That is why technologies are rapidly developing that make it possible to calculate what initial funds an entrepreneur has, how much money he will have to spend on materials and equipment, what he will receive as a result of production, and what he will receive by selling his goods, and what profit he will receive.

An example of such a popular technology of that time is the "double entry and balance sheet method". "Accounting records are a reflection of transactions (movement of tangible, debt, cash) on accounts in monetary terms. Account balances are summarized at the end of the period in the balance sheet, which is a table of two columns – assets and liabilities (sources). One of the sources is profit. The identification of profit (loss) from activities is the main task of accounting. Technically, the financial result is identified as the difference between income and costs (for the period), which are collected in the expense and income accounts and then the differences are transferred to the profit (loss) account." ^[10]. Sombart and Max Weber pointed out that this method helped to formulate the concept of capital, and without it, in general, a capitalist economy was hardly possible.

So the state borrows computing technologies from entrepreneurs and, firstly, applies them to improve its own production, and secondly, to improve its second main activity - to provide conditions for efficient production and trade on its territory. For example, by providing loans, it undertakes to provide entrepreneurs with initial capital. Loans, however, must also be calculated (the well-known "interest rate" on the loan), otherwise you will also go broke.

Thus, the emerging European economy was based on several "pillars". Firstly, the taxation of citizens of the state. Secondly, it focuses on economic institutions, primarily production, economic law and the market. Naturally, there were markets before, but with the formation of the state, their activities are normalized and specially organized, not excluding the installation of freedom of market entrepreneurship. "Sovereignty allowed the state to collect taxes, support or, conversely, hinder the free market on its territory, and establish customs barriers for goods from other countries" ^{[9, p. 165]}.

An example of schemes claiming to be economic laws and market regulation are the provisions formulated by A. Smith: "everyone lives by exchange or becomes a trader to a certain extent, and society itself turns into a trading union, so to speak," "the division of labor is limited by the size of the market," "with free competition, supply and demand balance the market and natural price," the individual must be given the opportunity to "pursue their interests completely freely according to their own understanding." and compete with their labor and capital with the labor and capital of any other person and an entire class," "any value consists of three types of income: wages, profits and rent." ^[5]

Computing technologies are another, third "whale" of the European economy. In turn, these technologies are based on economic schemes and models. There are currently two opposing points of view regarding economic schemes and models. One is that they describe a kind of "economic nature" characterized by "economic laws"; the other is that they are only talking about temporary and limited patterns. Compare it:

V. Kolpakov: "Returning to Smith's hypothesis that labor is the basis of well-being, it should be noted that Smith, apparently, was impressed by the success of Newton's work. <...> "economics was becoming a science capable of competing with physics in the discovery of objective laws, and Smith, despite his historical, cultural and other interests, followed Newton's main paradigm, finding regularity, harmony and orderliness no longer in the physical world, but in the world of human relations. In the best scientific traditions of his time, he first observed economic relations in order to explain their nature and patterns. For Smith, nature, including human nature, was a machine created by God, whose goal is human happiness." ^{[9, pp. 161, 165-166]}

Academician V. Polterovich. "Apparently, the diversity of economic phenomena cannot be explained on the basis of a small number of fundamental patterns. An intuitive understanding of this position led to the replacement of the principle of the unity of theory by the principle of the coexistence of competing concepts. There is no doubt that economic theory performs useful functions, creating a necessary tool for understanding reality. There is also no doubt that it is possible to directly use this tool only in relatively few cases." ^[3].

In my opinion, Polterovich is more right, but with an important correction. Economics is certainly a social phenomenon, and therefore it is impossible to talk about eternal economic laws. However, we can talk about temporary economic patterns. Here is one example. It is known that Marx did not clearly clarify the fate of the market after capitalism, but the general line in this matter was to replace market relations and the actions of the "invisible hand of the market" with the distribution and calculation of needs. Alexander Bogdanov, in his 1908 novel The Red Star, discusses in artistic form the problems that may arise in socialist production and consumption during the transition to a new economic system. One of the heroes of the novel, Martian engineer Manny, explains to the Bolshevik earthman Leonid how distribution production and society are organized on Mars, where there is already communism. "The numbers change every hour," Manny explained, "within an hour, several thousand people managed to declare their desire to switch from one job to another. The central statistical mechanism notes this all the time, and every hour the electrical transmission carries its messages everywhere.…

– The Institute of Calculations has its agents everywhere who monitor the movement of products in warehouses, the productivity of all enterprises and the change in the number of employees in them. In this way, it is found out exactly how much and what should be produced for a certain period of time and how many working hours it takes. Then it remains for the institute to calculate the difference between what is and what should be for each branch of work, and report this everywhere. The flow of volunteers then restores the balance.

– Is food consumption unlimited?

– Absolutely nothing: everyone takes what they need, and as much as they want.

– And at the same time, nothing like money is required, no evidence of the amount of work performed or obligations to perform it, or anything like that?

"Nothing like that. Even without this, we never have a shortage of free labor: labor is a natural need of a developed socialist person, and any kind of disguised or explicit coercion to work is completely unnecessary for us.

– But if there is no limit to consumption, then are there any sharp fluctuations in it that can overturn all statistical calculations?..

– The difficulties here are very big. The Institute of Calculations must closely monitor new inventions and changes in the natural conditions of production in order to accurately account for them. A new machine is being introduced – it immediately requires the movement of labor both in the field where it is used, and in machine production, and sometimes in the production of materials for one industry or another. Ore is being depleted, new mineral wealth is being discovered – again, the movement of labor in a number of rail tracks, etc. All this must be calculated from the very beginning, if not precisely, then with a sufficient degree of approximation, and this is not at all easy until direct observation data is obtained" ^[1].

Although the market in the USSR did not disappear, it was seriously deformed by the institutions of calculations and distribution (Gosplan, Gossnab, etc.). Nevertheless, the socialist economy based on these principles (concepts of socialist expansion, consumption and distribution, deformed market) existed for decades and during this period it is quite possible to talk about "the economic laws of socialism", insofar as they were consciously constituted, ensured and supported by a socialist society. However, since perestroika and the reforms of the 90s, these laws have ceased to apply, as the social system is changing, and the market and other social institutions resembling capitalist ones are being created. New economic patterns are being formed, which are now often referred to as "hybrid" patterns. And they are, indeed, hybrid. On the one hand, private property and market relations, on the other ‒ quasi-market decisions of the government and the government. Here again, Braudel is recalled, who drew attention to the fact that above the markets there is a layer of capitalist initiative proper, which is only partially economic in nature, but more so it is power and ideological intentions.

According to Braudel, sociality is based on "material life" ‒ diverse, self‒sufficient, routine; above it, a better expressed economic life, which in our explanations tended to merge with a competitive market economy; finally, on the last floor, capitalist activity" ^{[9, pp. 461-462]}. In the second layer, V. Fedotova and Kolpakov note, "horizontal links between different markets are multiplying. It is in this second subsystem that, as a rule, the invisible hand of the market connects demand, supply and price. But that's not all: next to or above the second layer is a layer or subsystem of the “counter market”, which is an element of resourcefulness, speculation, and the right of the strong. According to Braudel, it is in this stratum that the kingdom of capitalism exists both in the past and today after the industrial revolution." ^{[9, p. 45]}

In the Russian hybrid economy, perhaps, there are not two layers, but two economic organisms, one is the market itself, and the other, managing the first through "intermediaries" (Bruno Latour's term), non‒market, powerful and ideological (we observe similar two organisms in the field of law). By the way, such an economic structure proved to be quite successful during its period. To explain this fact, it is worth considering two more circumstances. Firstly, since the twentieth century, the welfare and programmed development of the state (including in Russia since the end of the century) has been based on economics: budget development, government support for private property and market relations, the nature of lending, etc. As a result, the economic system turns into a real vital organ of the social organism. Secondly, the transfer of agriculture and the economy to military tracks, on the one hand, and the increase in salaries for employees at enterprises and the military, on the other, stimulated the development of a wide variety of needs and economic activity. But let's return to the problems of implementing the ecosystem approach.

Tretyakova and Freiman specifically emphasize such a characteristic of economic ecosystems as a certain independence from external management and control. At the same time, many authors note that this interaction is implemented without external management and control. "In particular," they write, "Jacobides, Cennamo and Gawer point to this, saying that "an ecosystem is a set of actors with varying degrees of multilateral, non‒common complementarity that are not fully controlled by hierarchy" and G. B. Kleiner, who understands an ecosystem as "a spatially localized complex of organizations, business processes, innovative projects and infrastructure systems that interact with each other during the creation and circulation of material and symbolic goods and values, capable of long-term independent functioning due to the circulation of these goods and systems and free from strict centralized control.” The absence of strict centralized control makes such horizontal connections flexible and mobile in terms of spatial and temporal characteristics, increasing the level of adaptability of the systems. A.V. Ovchinnikova and S. D. Zimin draw attention to the peculiarity of economic ecosystems to organize “dynamic interaction between participants from different industries, organized around the allocation of resources, which contributes to a higher level of development and growth.” K. N. Sergeeva and N. V. Kazantseva point to decentralization and coordination of the interests of actors in the process of dynamic interaction as important distinguishing features of economic ecosystems" ^{[7, p. 8]}.

Does this characteristic conflict with the existing organization of the Russian economy? If we are talking about a system of market relations, then "freedom from strict centralized control" is a natural principle of the classical market, recall Smith, who argued that an individual has the right "to pursue his interests completely freely according to his own mind and compete with his labor and capital with the labor and capital of any other person and an entire class." But after all, the Russian market is directed and regulated by the second social organism, which has built a rigid vertical relationship with the first market organism. There are a variety of connections and relationships here: administrative, institutional, economic, group, and personal. And most of them have already developed, are reproduced, and, as a rule, do not coincide with the ideals and attitudes of ecosystem projects and proposals. The latter proceed from the requirements of building organic connections: territorial, industrial, managerial, organizational, providing the necessary conditions, realizing humanistic and environmental ideals, etc. And the established connections and relationships were established for other reasons.: benefits, corporate interests, power relations, traditions.

But if this is the case, and there are contradictions, then it is likely that the implementation of the ecosystem approach and projects involves at least two points. First, it is a study of the current Russian economy from the point of view of real connections and relationships, real historical, social and group conditions and interests. Secondly, the discussion of the possibility of changing these established connections and relationships in the direction of creating conditions for the formation of an ecosystem economy. In fact, with the implementation of the ecosystem approach in economics, in addition to the state and entrepreneurs, another social entity enters the social scene ‒ self-organizing social communities and organisms. His fate will largely depend on the attitudes of the state and literacy in terms of scientific thinking and practical action.

V.S. Stepin, introducing the concept of self-developing systems, specifically draws attention to their open nature, to the fact that their development presupposes an external environment. "The development strategy of modern (post-non-classical) science,‒ he writes, "is determined by the development of complex, self‒developing systems. Self-developing systems represent an even more complex type of system integrity than self-regulating systems. This type of system objects is characterized by development, during which there is a transition from one type of self-regulation to another. Here, self-regulation is an aspect, a stable state of the developing system. The change in the type of self-regulation of the system is a phase transition that can be characterized in terms of dynamic chaos. In modern science, it is described within the framework of the dynamics of nonequilibrium systems and synergetics. Self-developing systems are characterized by a hierarchy of tiered organization of elements and the ability to generate new levels of organization in the process of development. Moreover, each such new level has the opposite effect on the previously established ones, rebuilds them, as a result of which the system acquires a new integrity. With the advent of new levels of organization, the system differentiates, and new, relatively independent subsystems are formed in it. At the same time, the control unit is being rebuilt, new order parameters are emerging, and new types of forward and reverse connections are emerging. The changes in the structure of self-developing systems as new levels of organization appear in them and their former foundations are rebuilt can be depicted using the following scheme. Complex self-developing systems are characterized by openness, exchange of matter, energy and information with the external environment. In such systems, special information structures are formed that record the features of its interaction with the environment that are important for the integrity of the system (the "experience" of previous interactions)" ^{[6, pp. 48-49]}. "Of all the conditions for the flow of synergetic processes formulated by the authors of synergetics," writes Elena Ushakovskaya, "the most important condition is the openness of the system in which the process takes place. One cannot disagree with this condition. Openness, the possibility of sharing with what is beyond it, is a condition for life, development and evolution. No system can develop without exchange with the environment" ^[8].

Ecosystems may well be subsumed under the concepts of self-developing systems. But after all, such systems have yet to take shape, and the external environment for them is the state and its institutions. Society is also asking for it, but, as you know, Russian society is weak and inert. Nevertheless, the fate of the ecosystem economy will largely depend on the attitudes and efforts of these three social entities (the state, its institutions and society). Another important participant in this process is economics. Economic models of ecosystems should be built in it, allowing access to new computing technologies, without which the new economy will not take place either. Of course, digitalization and computerization will play an important role in the latter case.