The political economy analysis of the current trends of development of social entrepreneurship

Abstract

The paper considers some peculiarities of genesis of social entrepreneurship as a new form of organizing entrepreneurial activity aimed not at maximizing the owners’ profits, but at realizing social tasks to which the activity of such enterprises is related. It is shown that being under the dominance of neoliberal approach and its influence on the economic theory it’s impossible to create an adequate theory explaining the significance of social entrepreneurship within a context of changing the paradigms of economic relations, as imposing the false patterns followed by the falsification of historical facts - that is a result of the influence of that ideology. At the same time, political economy, and, in particular, its Marxist stream, provides a much wider range of opportunities for its adequate assessment. An attempt of applying such an approach to the analysis of this phenomenon is presented in the article. A new perspective, within which social entrepreneurship is considered as a phenomenon which can’t be incorporated into the traditionally deemed capitalistic way of production, according to the Marsist’ political economy views, is provided. The main milestones of development of social entrepreneurship, in terms of evolution of property relations, ways of production and models of management at the level of enterprises are considered within the concept of post-capitalist stages of social development of D. Laibman. It is shown that social entrepreneurship contains the features of generation of a new social structure, which doesn’t correspond with the traditional values of capitalist relations, because it is based at a high extent on the principles of the solidarity economy, which enters into a conflict with a model of the competition economy, in terms of which it emerges.