The economy is the base of any society. Economy occurs with a man; exists with a man, and in the name of a man. Moreover, there are also men of the economy, whose thoughts are the stronghold of the entire history of this science. According to Robert L. Heilbroner (1999), the world-known philosophers and prominent economic thinkers, Adam Smith, David Ricardo, Thomas Malthus, John Stuart Mills, Karl Marx, Thorstein Veblen, John Maynard Keynes, and Joseph Schumpeter, had influenced the course of history by their theories greatly. Their theories and thoughts differed in many respects; nevertheless, they were led by the mutual passion for research and knowledge of human nature to create wealth and then rush for it. Their economic theories, in fact, put the chaotic world into the meaningful structure of regularity and harmony. Thus, gradually, an economist by economists, idea by idea, the science of economics with all its contradictions and commonness was developed.
Adam Smith was the founder of the entire economic science. Along with his successors, David Ricardo and John Stuart Mill, he developed the classical political economy. Together with Thomas Malthus, he represented the first modern school of economic thought, classical economics. It was developed in the period when capitalism was developing from feudalism and the great changes in society were to come. In the revolutionary book An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776), Smith allocates the central problematic issue of the economic development of society and its well-being. The economist primarily investigates the reasons for the growth of the nation’s wealth, the role of labor in the process, and the factors of the productivity increase. According to Smith’s ideas, a wealth of the nation consists of the productive capacity and depends on such factors as the division of labor and accumulation of capital that it makes possible. His work is considered the cornerstone of capitalism, namely the idea that the country’s future income depends on this capital accumulation. The more people invest in better production processes, the more wealth will be created in the future. According to Smith, the principle of complete laissez-faire country is a condition of wealth. Moreover, Smith is famous for the well-known “invisible hand of the market.” Under the “invisible hand, » Smith explained a strange paradox: when acting in their own interests, each person not only gets richer by him/herself but also multiplies the wealth of society. Thus, he proposed the concept of an “economic man,” driven by selfishness and greed. One more popular Smith’s novelty is Smith’s dogma. In the very heart of this dogma, there is a value determined by the income sources: wages, profit, or rent. In general, Smith’s ideas were the symbol of free-market economics and that was one of his main destinations.
David Ricardo became interested in the economy after reading Smith’s works. He studied the economy as a complex system, in which the economic laws work as a mechanism to ensure these laws exist. Ricardo outlined his views on the Principles of Political Economy and Taxation (1817), in the preface to which he wrote that the main task of political economy was to determine the laws that governed the distribution of the created product. The economist fully shared the stand of Adam Smith against the national economies. Nevertheless, Ricardo developed the labor theory of value more consistently than Smith did. On its basis, he also created the theory of rent. He considered labor a source of rent while Smith believed that the rent was a special gift of nature. Ricardo also thought that the wages are withheld in the stringent subsistence limits by the natural law of population. This law is called the “iron law” of wages. Being the architects of the classic economic thought, Smith and Ricardo still disagreed on some issues. Smith, as a natural harmony believer, is a representative of the optimal position while Ricardo is a representative of the pessimistic one. The most vivid differences in the economists’ thoughts consider their views on the prospect of economic growth and capital accumulation.
Smith’s disciple in a number of questions about the classical school, and the author of An Essay on the Principle of Population in Connection with the Future Improvement of Society (1815), Thomas Malthus was an ardent opponent of Ricardo. Both Ricardo and Malthus being good friends in life were rather opponents in the understanding of economics. Malthus stated that Ricardo was wrong, and Smith was right speaking about the law of increasing cost production. In general, Malthus’ ideas were contrary to the rent concept of Ricardo. Malthus suggested that the rent was a kind of economic surplus. He particularly struck Ricardo for his thesis about the opposition of wages and profits. If to speak about his main work about population, Malthus concluded that all the calamities of the people were associated with the laws of nature, in particular, with the economic concept of a general glut. By virtue of this concept, according to Malthus, the population is too large as compared to the necessary means of its subsistence. In the end, the Malthusian catastrophe is inevitable, because the unabated population is exponential while the growth of the food supply is expected to be arithmetical.
John Stuart Mill helped develop the ideas of economies of scale, opportunity cost, and comparative advantage in trade. In theoretical and methodological terms, he is largely close to his idol David Ricardo. His best work Principles of Political Economy and Some Aspects of Their Applications to Social Philosophy (1909) were presented by Mill as logical conclusions from the teaching of Ricardo. Nevertheless, his work demonstrated the creative achievements of the economist and became a textbook for several generations of economists in Europe. Mill’s approach to economics is based on his belief in the superiority of socialism. Therefore, his main task was to find the practical resolution of these contradictions, to show that a c