The crisis of 2008 was a surprise for both the neoclassical and the Marxist branches of economic science, which could not predict the exact timing of its onset. The crisis contributed to the revival of interest in the «Capital» of Marx, whose model can be brought into line with the modern level of natural sciences. General economy – a hierarchical multi-level model of the market economy – a significant «upgrade» of the «Capital» of Marx on the basis of the method of constructing the genome of biological species (in it the commodity is not a «cell» but a «DNA molecule») – explains the various micro- and macroeconomic processes in including crises. The model contains an algorithm for forecasting global crises. The crisis is the result of periodic overaccumulation of capital. Harbingers of absolute overaccumulation, or global crisis are investment growth, employment growth, lower investment growth rates, unemployment reduction, and wage growth. Such dynamics of the linkage of indicators was observed in 2003–2007. It serves as a basis for forecasting the crisis and developing an indicator of the danger of the crisis
Creating a general model of the economy, “providing a holistic knowledge of the economic system” (AD Nekipelov) is an urgent problem. The paper considers the possibility of using the subject and method of Marx’s “The Capital” in order to build a common model. The subject is an entity of relations within capitalist mode of production of life rather than wealth. The scientific method of ascending not from the abstract but from the simplest concrete to the complex concrete led to the discovery of an “economic cell”. Cell theory has influenced both “The Capital” and the understanding of history as a “linear sequence of stages”.
The subject of the general model is relations that ensure the reproduction of life in a market economy. The method is consistent with genomics. Two factors of the product are the minimum set of “genes” of an “economic DNA molecule”. The cell is totipotent, i.e. possesses a complete stock of genetic material but in different cells the same genes are in an active or repressed state.
Alignment with genomics allows us to build a model of modern market economy, to reconsider the linear sequence and put forward the hypothesis of “totipotency of various methods of production”, the activation of those methods that contribute to the reproduction of the life of society as a whole.
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