The category of value as a measure of social harmony

The subject of the work is the problem of quantitative characterization of harmony (the possibility of using mathematical methods to study it). The article substantiates the thesis: the category of value can serve as a measure of social harmony (at least for the economic subsystem of any society). Although the category of harmony, as a concept, including, and even to a significant extent, aesthetic, is directly based on a sense of (beauty), in relation to natural objects (from the proportions of the human body to the distribution of branches and leaves on trees), as well as to material artifacts (architectural, artistic), quantitative measures of harmonious relationships. Here it is more appropriate to turn to another aspect of the category of harmony – the coordination of heterogeneous elements into a kind of integrity. In the middle of the nineteenth century, a neoclassical school was formed in economics, and in the twentieth century it became the leading one, in which the problem of value was eliminated as "metaphysical". Within the framework of neoclassicism, the thesis is accepted that all meaningful economic issues can be resolved without using the category of "cost". In the 1950s and 1970s, the Gini coefficient and similar indicators served as a measure of social harmony, and the tools were an increase in the minimum wage, a progressive income tax and high inheritance taxes. While not denying the importance of the Gini coefficient as a measure of social harmony, we believe that a return to the cost approach is currently very relevant. If the Gini coefficient is a measure of social harmony at the level of consumption, then the cost vector is a measure of harmony at the level of economic processes; as measures of harmony in society, they do not contradict, but complement each other.