Logical coordinates of the market scene: a methodological aspect of Aristotle's Economic Theory

Abstract

The article is devoted to the problem of relevance of Aristotle's principles of market exchange, which initiated Western economic thought, and his theory of logical substantialism. The initial circumstance of the emergence of market exchange is the horizon of diversification of professional specialization, which causes the emergence of both an excess of labor products of a particular professional and an inevitable shortage of labor products of other specialists. The presence of a surplus of one and a deficit of the other induces the phenomenon of a market scene designed to overcome a personal consumer-productive imbalance. In the market, a person as a carrier of economic interest is divided into a buyer and a seller. Being on different sides of the counter, however, the buyer and seller pursue the same motive of profit. The generic identity of the exchange motive of the subjects of supply and demand generates a contrast of its specific expressions that come into collision: it is more expensive to sell for the seller and cheaper to buy for the buyer. It was at the instigation of the ancient Greek metaphysician, who centered the horizon of collective management on the market scene of commodity and money trading, that the system of arbitrary balancing of consumer and productive interests of economic figures was called "market". The center of gravity of the scales of market exchange is the coin as a material carrier of logical substantiality, which in Aristotle's metaphysics is assigned the role of a "fixed mover". Approximately in this capacity, the monetary substation determines the functioning of the market economy.