<blockquote>
<p>I would like to ask the criterion (or criteria) behind the typical division of economic systems. For example what is the definition of socialism, corporatism, capitalism etc. using a strict and purely logical method?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Before answering there are some misconceptions in your question that have to be addressed.</p>
<p>Definitions do not flow from some logical rules. It is other way around some logical statements can come from definitions. Definitions themselves are semantics, and more definitions come either from historical usage or just refer to some particular work.</p>
<p>For example, the mainstream definition of economics comes from <a href="https://books.google.nl/books?hl=en&amp;lr=&amp;id=nySoIkOgWQ4C&amp;oi=fnd&amp;pg=PA1&amp;ots=bzwZCXjqdy&amp;sig=ZQdTruiFjz0N__nOycLZwoIUvOQ&amp;redir_esc=y#v=onepage&amp;q&amp;f=false" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Robins (1935)</a> who defined economics as;</p>
<blockquote>
<p>the science which studies human behaviour as a relationship between ends and scarce means which have alternative uses.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This definition does not flow from some logical rules, this is simply the definition because Robins argued it is good definition and most economists accepted it over time.</p>
<p>Similarly, for example socialism is defined according to <a href="https://link.springer.com/referenceworkentry/10.1057/978-1-349-95189-5_1718" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Nove 2018</a>;</p>
<blockquote>
<p>A society may be defined as socialist if the major part of the means of production of goods and services is in some sense socially owned and operated, by state, socialized or cooperative enterprises. The practical issues of socialism comprise the relationships between management and workforce within the enterprise, the interrelationships between production units (Plan versus markets), and, if the state owns and operates any part of the economy, who controls it and how.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This is not because there are some logical rules that say that such system has to be called socialism, it could be called system X. The definition comes simply from usage in literature.</p>
<p>When people try to categorize system different countries have, they use various rules that depend on need of the research. Since there are no universally accepted rules here I will only give an example, not an exhaustive list of possible way how to categorize economies. For example, <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1465-7295.1970.tb01935.x" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Flaag &amp; Flaag (1970)</a> just use data on public ownership to classify if country is more or less socialist. However, I seen various different rules, like using the employment in public sector relative to total employment or various other rules.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>In addition I would like to ask if there is an alternative approach to solve this problem (I would call it &quot;structural&quot;): If we suppose the agents/participants of economic relations, we would describe each economic system by defining the types of relations (labelled arrows) between them. Does such methods exist?</p>
</blockquote>
<ol>
<li>There is no problem per se. You can always come up with some categorization system or measure that has arbitrary many categories. That is not problematic per se.</li>
<li>Sure if you want you can describe any system by series of labeled arrows between some constituent parts.</li>
<li>There is no generally accepted method to classify different systems using arrows. When people use classification like this it is for data analysis. It is possible you could find something like this in some textbook that tries to describe different systems.</li>
</ol>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2024-08-17T13:57:28.223Z
Thank you for your answer. My question neither overlooks nor underestimates the role of history inside economic theories. I am asking about the typical, ideal part of this science, just like a particle can get velocity bigger than light's velocity in mathematics but not in relativistic physics; just like the string 'aaaaaa' is a word of a language into computation theory using the alphabet of English {a,...,z} but it is not a word for linguistics, because it is not an english word . I hope that now I am more comprehensible and the question remains
SK_
CC BY-SA 4.0
2024-08-17T14:36:54.013Z
@SK_ but the point still remains. What is a definition of a particle is ultimately arbitrary. In fact actually aaaaaa is good example, yes it’s not an English word, but not because some logical rules in English language say aaaaaa cannot be a word, it could become an English word at any point people start using it. Going back to the first example, the logical implication that particle cannot move faster then light comes from how we define particle and light. It is not the other way around that the definition of particle or light come from some logical rules established prior
1muflon1
CC BY-SA 4.0
2024-08-17T14:54:07.577Z
'Particle' is an elementary concept in physics; it is an idealized material "atom", a geometric point seen as material. I am impressed by the fact that I cannot be comprehensible! I will make a last try: If you see the International Phonetic Alphabet in wiki, you will observe that there is a difference between *not observed but possible* articulations (white empty cells) and  *impossible* (consequently not observed) articulations (shaded cells). I am talking about such a schema for economic systems.
SK_
CC BY-SA 4.0
2024-08-17T15:10:39.997Z
@SK_ ok but now you are talking about articulations not definitions of words. Moreover, again it is from the definition of articulation you get number of possible articulations not the other way around. I guess an economic equivalent would be what are possible observable characteristics of an economy for example what is possible range for example for public ownership, employment etc. But that is not the same as definition of systems you can in principle define infinite amount of economic systems just by using % of public ownership or using other criteria
1muflon1
CC BY-SA 4.0
2024-08-16T20:14:25.000Z
2024-08-16T20:14:25.000Z
1muflon1
<p>I would like to ask the criterion (or criteria) behind the typical division of economic systems.
For example what is the definition of socialism, corporatism, capitalism etc. using a strict and purely logical method? Such a method would contain arguments like this: we divide the economic systems as to criterion of possession of the means of production by workers into systems that accept it and those that do not. We use one or two new criteria to divide these two branches (a common criterion for both or one criterion for each branch) We continue dividing this way and we get an <em>exhaustive partition</em> of set of economic systems.
In addition I would like to ask if there is an alternative approach to solve this problem (I would call it &quot;structural&quot;): If we suppose the agents/participants of economic relations, we would describe each economic system by defining the types of relations (labelled arrows) between them.
Does such methods exist? Do we have such attempts?</p>

<definition><theory>
Strict methods to define economic systems
SK_
# Strict methods to define economic systems

(Asked by: username_0 on 2024-08-16)

I would like to ask the criterion (or criteria) behind the typical division of economic systems.
For example what is the definition of socialism, corporatism, capitalism etc. using a strict and purely logical method? Such a method would contain arguments like this: we divide the economic systems as to criterion of possession of the means of production by workers into systems that accept it and those that do not. We use one or two new criteria to divide these two branches (a common criterion for both or one criterion for each branch) We continue dividing this way and we get an *exhaustive partition* of set of economic systems.
In addition I would like to ask if there is an alternative approach to solve this problem (I would call it "structural"): If we suppose the agents/participants of economic relations, we would describe each economic system by defining the types of relations (labelled arrows) between them.
Does such methods exist? Do we have such attempts?

**Tags:** definition, theory


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## 1 answers

### Answer by username_1 on 2024-08-16. Score: 0

> I would like to ask the criterion (or criteria) behind the typical division of economic systems. For example what is the definition of socialism, corporatism, capitalism etc. using a strict and purely logical method?

Before answering there are some misconceptions in your question that have to be addressed.

Definitions do not flow from some logical rules. It is other way around some logical statements can come from definitions. Definitions themselves are semantics, and more definitions come either from historical usage or just refer to some particular work.

For example, the mainstream definition of economics comes from [Robins (1935)](https://books.google.nl/books?hl=en&lr=&id=nySoIkOgWQ4C&oi=fnd&pg=PA1&ots=bzwZCXjqdy&sig=ZQdTruiFjz0N__nOycLZwoIUvOQ&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false) who defined economics as;

> the science which studies human behaviour as a relationship between ends and scarce means which have alternative uses.

This definition does not flow from some logical rules, this is simply the definition because Robins argued it is good definition and most economists accepted it over time.

Similarly, for example socialism is defined according to [Nove 2018](https://link.springer.com/referenceworkentry/10.1057/978-1-349-95189-5_1718);

> A society may be defined as socialist if the major part of the means of production of goods and services is in some sense socially owned and operated, by state, socialized or cooperative enterprises. The practical issues of socialism comprise the relationships between management and workforce within the enterprise, the interrelationships between production units (Plan versus markets), and, if the state owns and operates any part of the economy, who controls it and how.

This is not because there are some logical rules that say that such system has to be called socialism, it could be called system X. The definition comes simply from usage in literature.

When people try to categorize system different countries have, they use various rules that depend on need of the research. Since there are no universally accepted rules here I will only give an example, not an exhaustive list of possible way how to categorize economies. For example, [Flaag & Flaag (1970)](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1465-7295.1970.tb01935.x) just use data on public ownership to classify if country is more or less socialist. However, I seen various different rules, like using the employment in public sector relative to total employment or various other rules.

> In addition I would like to ask if there is an alternative approach to solve this problem (I would call it "structural"): If we suppose the agents/participants of economic relations, we would describe each economic system by defining the types of relations (labelled arrows) between them. Does such methods exist?

1. There is no problem per se. You can always come up with some categorization system or measure that has arbitrary many categories. That is not problematic per se.
2. Sure if you want you can describe any system by series of labeled arrows between some constituent parts.
3. There is no generally accepted method to classify different systems using arrows. When people use classification like this it is for data analysis. It is possible you could find something like this in some textbook that tries to describe different systems.

> **Comments:**
> **username_0**: Thank you for your answer. My question neither overlooks nor underestimates the role of history inside economic theories. I am asking about the typical, ideal part of this science, just like a particle can get velocity bigger than light's velocity in mathematics but not in relativistic physics; just like the string 'aaaaaa' is a word of a language into computation theory using the alphabet of English {a,...,z} but it is not a word for linguistics, because it is not an english word . I hope that now I am more comprehensible and the question remains  
> **username_1**: @username_0 but the point still remains. What is a definition of a particle is ultimately arbitrary. In fact actually aaaaaa is good example, yes it’s not an English word, but not because some logical rules in English language say aaaaaa cannot be a word, it could become an English word at any point people start using it. Going back to the first example, the logical implication that particle cannot move faster then light comes from how we define particle and light. It is not the other way around that the definition of particle or light come from some logical rules established prior  
> **username_0**: 'Particle' is an elementary concept in physics; it is an idealized material "atom", a geometric point seen as material. I am impressed by the fact that I cannot be comprehensible! I will make a last try: If you see the International Phonetic Alphabet in wiki, you will observe that there is a difference between *not observed but possible* articulations (white empty cells) and  *impossible* (consequently not observed) articulations (shaded cells). I am talking about such a schema for economic systems.  
> **username_1**: @username_0 ok but now you are talking about articulations not definitions of words. Moreover, again it is from the definition of articulation you get number of possible articulations not the other way around. I guess an economic equivalent would be what are possible observable characteristics of an economy for example what is possible range for example for public ownership, employment etc. But that is not the same as definition of systems you can in principle define infinite amount of economic systems just by using % of public ownership or using other criteria  

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