Competitive programs of property reform: the domestic scientific heritage of the end of the 19th – early 20th centuries

The article is devoted to the study and coverage of property issues in the economic thought of Ukraine at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries. The purpose of the study is a retrospective generalization of the results of a critical and comparative analysis by domestic economists of the specified period of alternative property reform programs in the aspect of their theoretical validity and predictive expectations of socio-economic consequences. The results of a critical review by domestic scientists of the Marxist concept of property as a justification for the need for full socialization of the means of production are presented, in particular, the insufficiency of the labor theory of value for the economic justification of the ownership of the working class over the entire social product and the unsuitability of the Marxist theory of the capitalist system development for proving the historical necessity of liquidating a system based on private property. Scientific discussions surrounding various projects of land nationalization as a partial socialization of the means of production are analyzed. It was revealed that the majority of scientists refuted the accusations of private ownership of land and the landowner's right to land rent as insufficient moral justification and considered it inappropriate to carry out land nationalization in any form. The development of the concept of multifaceted forms of ownership as the basis for the effective functioning of the market economy in Ukrainian science is highlighted. The conclusion is substantiated that the development of the economic and legal foundations of a mixed economy, based on the principle of equal partnership of various forms of ownership as a guarantee of the practical realization of their best sides and improvement of the social division of labor, became an important achievement of Ukrainian economic science.