Kulisher, Iosif

Born Aug. 1, 1878, in Kiev; died 1934. Russian economist and economic historian.

Kulisher graduated from the law department of St. Petersburg University in 1900. From 1908 he taught at St. Petersburg University and a number of other educational institutions. In his works before the Revolution, he eclectically combined various tendencies in bourgeois political economy. The ideas of the historical school exerted the greatest influence on his views. He considered political economy the science of the national economy and reduced it to a description of economic activity during different historical periods. He opposed the Marxist theories of labor value and of surplus value and denied the impoverishment of the proletariat under capitalism. Kulisher saw the source of profit not in the exploitation of workers but in scientific and technical achievements. He rejected the revolutionary conclusion of Marx on the inevitable doom of capitalism. In his works on history and economics, Kulisher collected and systematized a great deal of factual material.