At the beginning of the 19th century, the industrial process began its successful career. Adam Smith and David Ricardo, fathers of the economy, were the ones who started liberalism; It is from this time, when the Accounting begins to undergo the modifications of substance and form, which under the name of accounting principles are still taking place today.
The goodness of the first design of the Diario-Mayor-Único was to bring together in one volume the Diario with its chronological list of concepts, and the Mayor with the accumulation classified by those accounts, with their respective charges and subscriptions, thus saving a great deal of time., because instead of two books one was carried alone.
In the year of 1845 the Commercial Court of Mexico City established the "Mercantile School", being closed two years later, but in 1854 the Commercial School was founded. During this nineteenth century, not only did the economic boom bring more development to accounting practices in relation to professional groups, educational centers, and legal mandates on accounting discipline, but there were also substantial changes in substance and form.
Fabio Besta, known in Italy with the name of "The Modern Father of Accounting", who has been, among theorists, who has come to structure a new theory called "Positive Theory of the Count" thanks to a deep and consistent search historical accounting. Besta begins to explain his theory in the following way: «Accounting is in the midst of complete information regarding money, accounts received, fixed assets, interest, investments, etc., and it is evident that rapid and accurate information is impossible without to establish in the same place the mutations that occurred in each of these objects ", and conceptualizes the account saying:" It is a series of inputs and outputs referring to a defined and clear object, commensurable and mutable,with the function of registering information about the conditions and amount of the object at a particular moment and the changes that intervene in it ", he also states that" the account is opened directly to objects, not to the people who intervene, and indicates monetary values ».
Among the modifications of form, that the Accounting suffered during the XIX century, is the Policy system, which was born from the use of flyers to give more rapid deposits to the account holders of the Bank; later the Centralizing System was invented.
1. Presentation
Inevitably, Accounting - like any other disciplinary field - by focusing on reality, delimits it and shapes it to constitute its object of knowledge, thereby obtaining an image, a form of representation and, why not, a specific form of conception of the world. In this interpretative plot and in this adherence to a theoretical body, an attitude is established, which serves accountants to develop their scientific practice or approach, from the springboards and criteria that have supplied and fed a tradition, which obviously has had to be transferred various landmarks and obstacles for its gradual perfectibility.
Fortunately, in this slow but growing process there has been no uniformity and homogeneity and, on the contrary, theorists with very diverse interests, inclinations and even ideological positions co-exist dispersively. Even though, the revision of these multiple conceptions on accounting is expensive, the truth is that, the reconstruction of the history of accounting as a discipline, allows and will allow to unravel a tight tissue of confusion and uncertainties to finally base on these considerations a reflection that makes it possible to trace a specific line of work that involves less instrumental developments and more from the reflection of the epistemological.
The intention of this work is to interweave relatively diverse problems, bearing in mind that in historical terms, a multiplicity of interpretations can be constructed, which can only be inferred by some constants that articulate and recognize the processes and actors that interacted as transforming agents of that reality..
2. The decline of the feudal system and the original origins of the business economy
Each moment of the historical passing marks its mark on the way material and spiritual developments are objectified; in whose corpus, the contradiction between life and death is variegated, as a dialectical manifestation between the new that is born and the old that refuses to understand its decline.
On the other hand, every new historical stage, in due course, opens gaps in progress and development superior to its predecessor benchmark. These achievements that man sequentially obtains in the course of life, in turn delineate the path of history and require characteristics that define the role of each of these stages, within which a host of relationships and practices interact. they shape the form of social consciousness.
The Feudal system, then, must be understood in this historical-dialectical dimension, of access to possibilities and alternatives that surpassed the previous system; which is perfectly reasonable if we start from the recognition that man grows socially and culturally, insofar as he has references of progress that constitute real challenges for overcoming the precariousness of historical events.
But also, as is obvious, each system has its own contradictions implicit; the emergence of new needs and alternatives and the mechanisms to build social satisfactions to these dilemmas. If a system does not open the gap to build an open horizon, which in response to these hopes for progress, the fabric is convulsed and the social order tends to collapse.
In this process of permanent mutation, man is shaping innovative forms that, from the economic and the political, redefine his transforming task. This reengineering work goes hand in hand over time, for example: In Greek culture, the economic and political center was the city. In the Roman Empire, the city became the quintessential axis of political expression, with a disdain for economics. During Feudalism, a large part of his economic journey was subsumed into the productive relations of the countryside. The advent of capitalist relations turns cities into niches of production and of great political decisions.
The Feudal system, whose irruption dates back to the 7th century, has its time convulsed towards the 14th and 15th centuries, a period in which the main symptoms of its decline and the radicalization of the opposing forces in conflict are reflected. Already in the fourteenth century, it is found that feudal production methods are being replaced by capitalist forms of operation, not only in cities but also in the countryside. In a staggered way, the merchant seizes the new figures of commercial relationship: the market, money, merchandise, prices, which will later become economic categories, sufficiently analyzed by liberal theorists and their Marxist contradictors.
2.1. Medieval: Not everything is Dark
The middle ages, then, should not be understood as the dark, homogeneous, symmetrical passing without certain flashes of creativity that led humanity to lay the foundations for the further development of the realm of the “Enlightenment”. Methodological conceptions to find a vision of the philosophical, where they used processes such as “the summa, which were already handled by the rabbis: of two truths, the best is the third. In other words, when one concept meets another, instead of being rejected, it becomes enriched "(Angel, 1999: 3), they qualitatively show how gradually history advances in the process of mutation from the stage of myths to the stage of logos, managing to demarcate a rupture and a paradigm shift in the ways of seeing the progress and development of society.
Within all the dissimilar historical traces that the Middle Ages entail, the 12th century, it is characterized by marking the first differential and free journey of this stage of social evolution. The West wakes up from that long dream of darkness, the economy is reborn, the urban regime is reconstituted, customs are refined and; the royal powers fight the religious powers, envisioning the advent of a more secular world. They are the ferments of a new ontological conception that would have its objectification in the period of the illustration. The explanation of its genesis is very complex and is crossed by multiple factors; On the one hand, it is not centered as in the great empires by the absolutist monarchy, its flourishing also obeys the influence and impulse of external conditions and internal spontaneities.As Antonio Caballero expresses when referring to this period, “Urban centers grew, commerce developed, universities arose (Bologna, Padua, Paris, Oxford, they are all from the mid-12th century); the ambitious Gothic style was beginning to replace the modest romantic; Literatures in vulgar language: French, Italian, Spanish were born in Provence, in Tuscany, in Castilla la Vieja. A new world did indeed appear. And for their management they fought, each with their respective means, Popes and Emperors ”. (Caballero, 2000: 27-28).
Accounting as a regulatory practice of commercial relations, only appears embryonic in the Middle Ages and, specifically, in the 12th century; precisely in a society of limited exchanges, in a framework still dominated by a stately economy still constituted as the antipode of the exchange economy. But the economic categories vr.gr.: exchange economy, by themselves, are incapable of explaining the development of accounting; it is required for this, without prejudice to focus the analysis of these categories; collect on the evolution of social history but especially of political history. In this sense, it can be said that the vertiginous development of accounting work was correlatively linked to the formation and first rise of the bourgeoisie, that is,to a bourgeois and urban civilization in which a new spirit of enterprise and a new organization of business are conceived. And, if one wants to penetrate a more detailed explanation of the matter, it is appropriate to relate it to the political transformations promoted by this urban and bourgeois civilization.
Accounting, then, takes shape as a practice in the business world, when the conditions exist, absent until then, for the subject of commercial relations to become an active political class with the capacity to exert decisive influence on the regulation of those business relationships that acquire another dimension of their own. The dawn of these changes began to emerge towards the eleventh and twelfth centuries, true milestones of the crisis of the feudal system, in the political order and in the decline of the stately economy. This internal crisis that involves feudal relations, clears the way for the survival not only of economic initiative, but also of new forms of political relations, never known until then.
By contrast, the fourteenth century for all that it entailed, is considered the "autumn of the Middle Ages." The European continent dominated by Christianity, is masterfully described by Antonio Caballero, as the century where “the dreaded Four Horsemen galloped over the continent announced in the Apocalypse of Saint John: famine, war, plague. And Divine Justice, which is that fourth horseman that we all always forget in the list, because it has never been seen ”(Caballero, 2000: 45).
2.1.1. Medieval Cities as Substitutes for State Power
In some European regions, but with greater uniqueness in Italy, the old vertical and imperial Roman regime of concentration of power, is underpinned by economic power as a building and cohesive element of the urban regime. It is in this framework where the city acquires a substantive dimension, as the axis of the development of commerce and as a fracturing of feudal and stately customs and conceptions. The cities, then, are a redoubt or niche of freedom, where the new imaginary begin to cook; to redefine social stratification, with the appearance of artisans and merchants; that have their meeting place in the cities, constituted as mediators of the interaction of the commercial flourishing.
"It is not unimportant that accounting emerged at the end of the 15th century, or that the cradle was one of the Italian republics. We all know the wonderful awakening of that time and basically the unexpected expansion that trade had. Sieveking, one of the few historians who has emphasized this aspect, asserts that accounting emerged as a direct result of the large-scale creation of mercantile societies, which was a corollary of mercantile expansion ”(Hatfield, 1979: 11).
With the constitution of city-states, substantial changes are generated in the system of commerce and production. At the same time, important transformations take place in the cultural sphere: In the perception that man elaborates of the extra-subjective world; in a greater autonomy of being; in the construction of an ontology freed from extramundane prejudices; in short, in the possibility of relativizing the explanation of the abstract phenomena of reality. As Antonio Caballero puts it… “In that fifteenth-century Italy in which, for the first time since the fall of the Roman Empire, there were men capable of reading without moving their lips, reading was not a sin against the spirit. Man had been freed from the tyranny of God ”(Caballero, 2000: 58).
And, later when referring to this journey of lucidity he argues:
"The Renaissance was a cultural revolution that permeated everything, because it constituted a revolution of mentalities: the arts, sciences, techniques, philosophy, customs, social relations, politics"… "The rebirth was the triumph (always precarious) of reason in freedom over revelation watched by the Church. The triumph of the human will over the divine mandate ”(Caballero, 2000: 59). This mutation obeys the centrality that nature acquires, as a reference to find in it the arguments to build a rational and material explanation for the riddles, unknowns, uncertainty and inconsistencies of a complex world and increasingly insinuating to be thought from the novel., not from the staticity and from the Parmenidean conception of the immutability of being.
2.1.2. Contributions of the Middle Ages to Accounting
The contest that brings the middle ages to the development of accounting is of great importance. The first empirical bases are beginning to consolidate, which will later base the real object of accounting, that is, the symbolic mediation of commercial transactions that objectify the situational state of the economic entity's heritage. Thanks to the practice of doing, devoid of rigorous theoretical elaborations, the conditions are created for the emergence of methodological recording structures such as single entry and later double entry, which will revolutionize the logical structure of accounting and will be an exceptional catalyst for development. of the business and economic structures of modern society. It should also be considered that the company develops structural forms for its operation,where double entry accounting occupies a place of exceptionality. In fact, some scholars have come to attribute the greatest influence on the rise of capitalism to developments in accounting.
Outside of any conceptual consideration, that given the historical circumstances the accounting was not obliged to possess, the truth is that, this era involves the ferments that will have to configure the procedures and methods that will respond to the increasingly complex requirements of a society in permanent mutation and innovation.
On the other hand, in this framework, accounting acquires “social citizenship”, at least as guarantor of matters pertaining to the registration verifiability of a still rudimentary economy, based mainly on commercial relationships. Also in the Middle Ages, institutions such as the collective society were created and perfected; the bill of exchange; business records; the use of company names that define the legal status of accounting entities; commission, transport, insurance, deposit contracts; the largest banking operations, etc.
During this period, the only thing that was not there was a scientific contribution because it is an essentially customary practice, created and applied by the commercial dynamics, this circumstance of necessity historically delayed the progress and disciplinary progression of accounting, although it provided materials and invaluable elements for further qualification.
2.2. Background of the Business Economy
2.2.1. Merchants and Craftsmen as Fracturers of the Established Order
Towards the beginning of the high Middle Ages, the ancient merchant class had eroded at the dawn of feudalism, due to the lack of trade routes and the undoubted dominance of Islam in the Mediterranean and of the Normans in the North Seas, whose hegemonic influence marked the disappearance of the circulation and mobility of resources and with it the class of merchants and the urban population. Throughout the high middle ages, economic life is confined to feudal production; that is to say, the exploitation of agriculture and the products of work constitute satisfiers of direct consumption. The rebirth of the European traffic, the embryonic appearance of a new class of merchants, with political personality and citizenship card, is explained by the opening of commercial roads and routes,that slowly but gradually fracture the rudimentary and insular economy of feudal society. This new class of merchants, directs and directs economic development and is sustained by a communal organization that is based in an urban society with political expression, where they coexist - especially in Italy - with the feudal nobility and with an increasingly growing mass of manual workers who gradually become artisans free of the servile ties.where they coexist - especially in Italy - with the feudal nobility and with an ever increasing mass of manual workers who, gradually, become free artisans of servile ties.where they coexist - especially in Italy - with the feudal nobility and with an ever increasing mass of manual workers who, gradually, become free artisans of servile ties.
This economic system in emergency, gravitates on two vectors: the artisan's workshop and the merchant's warehouse, which constitutes a mediator of capital accumulation. In the medieval city, the most characteristic ferments and traits are born, which will be characteristic of the contemporary capitalist system; but that they do not achieve their full materialization in the political-economic dimension, by the authority reserved to the empire and the church, both structures constituted as supporters of the status quo, which resists the transformation of a society that breaks through mobilizing energy and demanding new spaces for their material and spiritual realization.
2.2.2. Commercial Development and the Ferments of Accounting Qualification
Faced with the lack of an authority to represent the new institutionality, the cities gradually assumed the economic and social role and functions that are reserved exclusively for the State; without ignoring, furthermore, that this new configuration of power is organized for eminently business purposes. During this time, the development of trade gave Italian cities certain comparative advantages, in terms of the instrumentalization of accounting: Pisa, Genoa and Venice, were, in their order, from the economic point of view the cities with the greatest commercial influence., with which, at the same time, accounting needs to be recontextualized and reconceptualized, to respond to new business scenarios. These transformations produce profound changes in conception; at work, in knowing,in technique, culture and forms of representation and social and business organization; for example, it is in this section, where the “commenda” develops and in its modern sense, representative institutions and figures appear for accounting, such as the collective and limited partnerships; the bill of exchange, a different conception of banking, accounting books, new forms of recording economic information, the theory of accounts, and the legal unit of the commercial entity is affirmed, in the case of accounting, the accounting entity or economic entity.like the collective and limited partnership; the bill of exchange, a different conception of banking, accounting books, new forms of recording economic information, the theory of accounts, and the legal unit of the commercial entity is affirmed, in the case of accounting, the accounting entity or economic entity.like the collective and limited partnership; the bill of exchange, a different conception of banking, accounting books, new forms of recording economic information, the theory of accounts, and the legal unit of the commercial entity is affirmed, in the case of accounting, the accounting entity or economic entity.
“The complex commercial and financial affairs of the Venetian merchants necessarily led to a documentation and filing system. In the early 15th century Venice began to use accounting twice over, but the use of bookkeeping preceded the Venetians in another part of Italy. Double entry items were used in the bankers ledger in the year one thousand three hundred and forty (1340), and the Florentine merchant and banker books of that generation contained those items. Those books show around the year 1410 that the most important function of the journal was to serve as the basis for the ledger. All transactions are recorded in the "memorial", then in the journal, before taking it to the ledger, so "if the ledger is lost for any reason, theft, fire,shipwreck etc. Through this book, the general ledger can always be reconstructed, with the same items day by day ”(Rincon, 1984: 10).
There is no doubt that these empirical references reveal the substantive importance of environments in the modeling of accounting structures. Accounting would have no practical justification, but rather based on a specific framework where it finds its application and verifiability. The double game, for example, born in the death throes of the Middle Ages, “is the product of an era and spreads quickly because it responds to the prevailing values in it. The dual perspective with which a transaction is viewed, as well as the way in which it describes the essential notes present in all economic events, are identified with the mentality of the businessman. But, at the same time, the use of the double item enhances this organized and organizing vision of commercial activity ”(Tua, nd: 21).
Likewise, once a practice such as accounting is institutionalized, tools are required for its social reproduction and, for that reason, a series of formal institutions are born concomitantly, committed not only to the operation and strengthening of the business process, but also to appropriation and massification of an instructional structure that guarantees the spatial-temporal survival of practices and activities related to the accounting entity, that is, the training of replicating agents of the accounting information model, not otherwise can be explained as in Venice it worked, “at that time, integrated, a building for storage and sale of goods, a stock exchange, a bank, a place of accommodation.This institution was also a mercantile school where the commercial class studied and was formed and the children of the German bourgeois came to learn grammar, calculation, bookkeeping and business practice ”(Rincón, 1984: 10).
These phenomena show a relative correlational symmetry between the accounting system and the socioeconomic environment in which it operates, and it is precisely in this necessary relationship that concepts such as the "accounting entity" begin to take shape, which will later connote different meanings, depending on the lens through which they are observed and the particular or general interests they represent. For example, for Jorge Tua Pereda, "accounting can handle very different definitions of the entity or, more specifically, of the company, from those that conceive the latter at the exclusive service of the owners, to those that define the framework of social responsibility in front of all the concurrent estates and interested in their activity ”(Tua, nd: 23). Whether you like it or not, it is imperative to accept that not only this concept,but many others, which later acquire relevance in accounting regulations, are struck at the dawn of the development of big capital.
2.3. Globalization: An Approach to Analysis from Braudelian Historical Temporalities
Addressing the issue of the origin of economic globalization, it is necessary to trace, even in a very brief synthesis, how the business economy is modernly organized and what the dynamics it projects externally, especially in the shaping of the global market.
As Braudel puts it well, it is essential to situate the analysis of social life from different observation points that involve spatiality, temporality, social orders and hierarchies. Following the conceptual category of temporality, suggests Braudel, consider the evolution of history in three speeds of time: A short-term interval (time of the chronicle and journalism); another in the medium term, where historical mutations occur through cycles, movements and "slow but perceptible rhythms" and; a long-term perspective - the long one lasts - in which change occurs with "a slower cadence that, on occasions, borders on inertia" and in which deeply implanted structures of social life that last through the centuries are studied.
2.3.1. The Internationalization of Medieval Commerce: First Expression of "Globalization"
From the perspective of the - Longue durée - the globalization process traces its origins to medieval Italy, which was the center of commercial flourishing. Also in other latitudes important poles of mercantile development are focused, where the existence of similar institutions and organizations is required, which aim to create the foundations of the contemporary capitalist system. Just to name a few examples: The Lombards and the Jews monopolized the banking business in Europe; In Latin countries, like the Germanic countries and England, the liberties of the cities are affirmed and the rise of the bourgeoisie that tends to become a class "for itself", owner of its own destiny, without ties and ties that the condition.
Apart from medieval Italy, constituted in the center of the commercial flourishing, also in other latitudes important poles of mercantile development are focused, where the existence of similar institutions and organizations is needed, which aim to create the foundations of the contemporary capitalist system. Just to name a few examples: The Lombards and the Jews monopolized the banking business in Europe; In the Latin countries, like the Germanic countries and England, the liberties of the cities are affirmed and the rise of the bourgeoisie that tends to become a class "for itself", owner of its own destiny, without ties and ties that the condition. This explains why this new emergency class is organized corporately in professional merchant associations,that they agree on pacts that allow them room for maneuver in a trade that begins to have dimensions that go beyond the borders of what is strictly local or national; fair courts, land and maritime trade courts are created; etc., phenomena that show substantial changes in the mobility of capital and consequently the redefinition of the spaces of the world.
Disregarding political and religious analysis, the organization of the crusades contributed decisively to expanding the scope of trade towards the eastern world; in the same way, apart from European civilization, the Jews who almost monopolized the banking business in Europe, as well as the Arabs who helped to boost trade with the peoples of the Mediterranean, were important actors in the emergence of the power based on business success and speculation climate, where the "fabulous magic of capitalism" finds its unsuspected launch pad.
Figuratively, the emergence of the new business ethic can be drawn as follows, “When William Shakespeare wrote The Merchant of Venice he managed to unite the capitalist personality and its environment in its classical forms. In fact, the insightful playwright focused his attention on the key to capitalist business relations: the sanctity of the contract. It should be questioned that the Jews were the typical merchants of Venice, but in any case the author united two traditional reputations: that of Venice, as the largest of the mercantile states, and that of the Jew, as an implacable merchant ”(Cox, 1972: 53).
This panorama clearly demarcates that since its interweaving in the framework of economic relations, capitalism as a system harbored within it the irremediable desire to extend its influence as a market economy to all ends and to become a force of a planetary nature.
2.3.2. The Changing Environments and the Accounting Correlate
Following the line of analysis proposed, where socioeconomic changes determine accounting progress, it is appropriate to infer that the exercise and qualification of the instruments of registration and management of accounting information appears not as a national requirement of a State, nor as a uniform system elaborated by several States; but as a body of customs and practices of a "social class": The merchants, who gradually shared some references, in terms of business mentality, desires and needs. This type of "imagined communities", even of different nationalities, is outlining a new accounting task, which, although limited in its conceptual development, was intended to become a tool to improve the operating and instrumental systems for managing business information.
However, the evolution of accounting should not be seen with a synchronous vision of mercantile development, but with a diachronic perspective that shows the interaction of different conjugate variables in the economic relations of the time.
“However, it seems that different operating systems existed to accumulate the information obtained. At this time there are possibly many single-entry accounting practices and some businesses already carry double-entry accounting, as a direct consequence of the natural evolution of single entry.
This shows that accounting was a dynamic activity that had to progress in the same way that the operations of companies and the information needs required by man progressed or were complicated. In other words, there is already a subject in which the information is generated, a person who values, records and reports, and a user of that information who uses it to determine what they have, what they owe, and how much they earn in a period, becoming, therefore, in an important measurement tool that allows calculating the profitability of a business (Burbano, sf: 17).
Towards the middle of the 15th century, the first conceptual approaches to accounting began to be perceived, works such as “Della Mercatura e del Mercante Perfecto”, written by Benedito Cotrugli Rangeo, around 1458; but published around 1573, they state that long before Paciolo there were already concerns about giving an organic and systemic nature to accounting, elements that constitute the first glimpses of the epistemic construction of accounting knowledge, that is, the embryonic beginning of a mutation that allows "to go from the least knowledge stages to the most rigorous knowledge stages".
As a corollary, then it can be said that accounting practice has developed in three fundamental dimensions; a first the economic-social dimension, a second historical dimension that includes the conceptual legacy and; a third the epistemological dimension. This schematic presentation does not assume a division of each of the dimensionalities; on the contrary, the concretion of disciplinary advances will only be possible through the interaction of the stated factors, where the context of justification corresponds to the context of discovery.
It cannot be otherwise explained, that it is in Italy and not in another region, where the first schools of accounting thought appear, called "schools of practice"; such as the Venetian, the Genovese and the Florentine, which built and became the first artisan references that served as a preamble and foundation for the conceptual elaborations that on accounting were developed especially in the 19th century, with the schools of Fabio Besta, with its economic doctrine on accounting and; Giuseppe Cerboni, representative of the legal school of accounting and creator of logismography.
Accounting then begins to give answers to the economic facts that occur in these new business configurations. This occurrence and the dynamics of accounting evolution respond to certain historical parameters, which in essence can be summarized as follows:
- The existence of economic activities and their organic objectification in forms of business representation are a sine quanon condition for the development of accounting and for the construction of a registry memory of economic events. The emergence of "imagined communities", arising from a permanent struggle for the progress of humanity, concomitantly determine the social satisfaction of new needs, within which is the urgent record of economic information, where accounting plays a cardinal role. The destruction of the mythical world and the replacement by one secular, reforms the structure of thought, develops a new scheme of knowledge, with a methodology based on observation and experimentation. Accounting, as a practice of recording information,of course it does not escape this influence, hence the concern for its interpretation, beyond a simple operational exercise.
Based on these assumptions, it can be argued that economic progress shaped and still continues to shape accounting; first, as a recording and accounting technique; then, as a disciplinary field that, from the positivist analysis of the empirical sciences, tried to find the connection between accounting as an instrument for the concretion of economic theory, fundamentally in the conceptual advances achieved by Fabio Besta, in his work "La Ragioneria", where he postulates “the basic principle that accounting does not interest so much the consideration of the legal aspect, that is, the rights in the strict sense, as the consideration of the facts, that is, the actual concretion of the rights. It is useless to us - says Besta - in the genuinely accounting order the enjoyment of a credit right if it cannot be made effective,nor a real property right if the object has disappeared (Fernández, 1977: 30), and finally, a positivist normative disciplinary field, which aims to respond to the information society by standardizing the international accounting model.
2.3.3 Commerce and Mercantile Relationships: Ferments of Capital Development and Accounting Cohesion
The history of the accounting profession, as well as the development of accounting as a discipline, have been invariably associated with the transformations of the capitalist production system. It is in the breakdown of the feudal order, where the leavenings are created for the emergence of a profession that, like accounting, fulfills the role of instrument of social control of the surplus of organizations, as well as influences in a preponderant way the improvement of the tools that give support and a certain objectivity and verifiability to the reports required by the new information users, which gradually and concomitantly appear with the societal evolution, “it has been the company itself that, in its development, has served as an engine for the accounting evolution; the company considered at the same time in its legal aspects,economic, social and organizational ”(Vlaemminck, 1991: 107).
On the other hand, it is the capitalist company that creates the objective and subjective conditions, to start talking about accounting as a discipline that provides answers, in terms of measurement of economic information, of the different units involved in the development of the system. production capitalist. In a first stage, as a contributing factor and promoter of mercantile development; later as promoter of the industrial revolution and; finally as a tool and fundamental support of the financial capital society. Professor Fernandez Pirla, argues referring to this aspect:
"Accounting as a scientific discipline appears, therefore, linked to the field of economic sciences, and, more specifically, in its current development, to that of business economics, although it would be wrong to affirm that accounting is economics. Considered accounting as an economic science whose material object is the economy of the company, its formal object, to which it owes its scientific unity and autonomy, would be the authentic representation and measure of economic reality, using for it an adequate technique, supported by material and statistical principles (Fernández, 1977: 21).
Accounting, as a symbolic tool and as a semiotic phenomenon of representation of the economic process; communicational mediator of the exchange values of organizations, will gradually outline and temper their actions to the pressures of the changing world and the influences of international structures of economic and business power; whose pragmatic postulates are generally adopted by the regulations of the different States receiving the global influence of the capitalist world.
Even though the systematization, organization and cohesion of the accounting system has its original origins during part of the Middle Ages, specifically with the work of Pacciolo, published in 1494, the intrinsic conditions obey the development of the mercantile or commercial system, ferment of the further development of the capitalist mode of production; or as Professor Hernán Quintero argues: “The accounting records are an expression of the prevailing economic and social relations in the space where they are carried out; this space in turn expresses characteristics of the prevailing mode of production in the universal context ”(Quintero, 1996: 24).
The Franciscan monk's work, “Summa Arithmética, Geométrica, Proportioni, Proportionalita et Arte Maggiore”, is not an accounting treatise. "In fact, it seems that the Summa by Luca Pacioli published in Venice in the year 1494, was the first work of mathematics that included a chapter on accounting among its pages, an initiative that later had many imitators" (Hernández, 1995: 165).
In the reference treatise, a series of diverse themes are addressed, but all of them aim to make an approach towards the organization of structures of symbolic representation of reality, the purpose of which should be the possibility of delivering answers, involving more complex abstractions, in the direction of being able to have a reading, in terms of temporality and spatiality, more in line with the changes and transformations of the economic - business environment. The book manages a series of typifications, which essentially externalize the birth of the "economic man", made for transactions and to appropriate and accumulate wealth; A good merchant, says Pacciolo, should: “Gather money; possess intelligence; and have the science of accounting. " Obviously,such a purpose could only be reserved for those who had been assigned the pre-eminence of power management and commercial relations to the privileges of time.
2.4. The Inauguration of the Modern Age and the Accounting Modernization
Working on the analysis of the historical configuration of modern society, Consuelo Corredor Martínez, proposes “as a hypothesis, that the advent of modern society has a double ideology: that of transforming the material environment, and that of transforming man as a center of the same. While the first refers to modernization, the second to modernity (Corredor, 1992: 37).
With the modern age a period of radical transformations and changes began in the spheres of the economic, political, social and spiritual. Modernization, understood as the transformation of the material environment, is reflected, for the particular case of accounting, in the discovery of big business, where its scope of action acquires overtones of globality; trade passes from Europe to America; from the city as a redoubt of power, the concept of nation is passed; from concern for the productivity of money one moves to speculation; from the supremacy of the noble and chivalrous, a transit is made towards the triumph of merchandise and wealth as centralizing power; the union and family notion becomes a business notion;From agricultural production, industry and commerce predominate, evolving the concept of property and business. The chivalric kingdom of the nobility and the spiritual leadership of the church is succeeded by the growing influence of the bourgeoisie which, according to Karl Marx, "Wherever he has conquered power, he has destroyed feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relationships. The variegated feudal ties that tied man to "his natural superiors" have ripped them mercilessly so as not to let substitute another link between men than cold interest, the cruel "cash payment". He has drowned the sacred ecstasy of religious fervor, the chivalrous enthusiasm and sentimentality of the petty bourgeois in the icy waters of selfish calculation. It has made personal dignity a simple exchange value. It has replaced the numerous freedoms deeded and acquired by the one and only soulless freedom of commerce "- and he later concludes -" The bourgeoisie has stripped all its professions that until then were held to be venerable and worthy of pious respect. To the doctor, to the jurisconsult,the priest, the poet, the man of science, has made them their salaried servants ”(Marx, Engels, 1973: 113).
In the modern era that capital inaugurates, a new man emerges, with a spirit of risk, moved by the unlimited appetite for profit, wealth and the perverse hallucination by the infinite fruition of money. And this new imaginary is justified in the same way by the construction of an ethical rationality, enthroned with the supreme cult of reason and the immeasurable desire for material progress, which will cause indiscriminate modernization, which will ultimately lead to a growing process. of man's alienation from his natural and cultural environment; Miguel Giusti, poses referring to the logic of morality, built by the moderns, “Modern philosophy emerges with the conviction of making a radical turn in the conception of man and of rationality. Of this conviction there are various expressions and formulations, one of which - perhaps the most important - is the idea of the self-foundation of reason. That reason is based on itself means that reason does not admit any criteria external to itself, to which it must submit. External criteria are, for the moderns, tradition, theology or any type of natural ordering (as the moderns knew what Aristotle's opinion was). ” And later, by way of illustration, the author states how "Hobbes explicitly maintained, in De Cive, that moral philosophy should apply, in the same way as prime philosophy,the geometric model to the study of ethical and political phenomena ”(Giusti, 1996: 8).
2.4.1. The Rationality of Capitalism and the Change of the Accounting Model
Primal capitalism, conceptually supported by the Smitian theory of economic liberalism, which had its greatest flourishing in the first half of the 19th century, gradually and inevitably transformed its structure, to such an extent that the importance of the consumer as a determining factor and potential generator of Productive demands, with the development of financial capitalism, was modified substantially or in the most optimal of analyzes relegated to the background. The free play of inter-company competition, brought with it the elimination of the weakest in the market, making this fact, paradoxically, a factor of business renewal and at the same time of concentration and centralization of capital.It is this immense power incubated by the influence of capital that resizes the productive capacity of companies and enhances the mobility of productive resources; the more the economy advances, the more optimal should be the use of capital.
In this historical cycle conventionally located in the decade of the 70s. In the 19th century, capitalism arose from the large productive units that went beyond the national sphere and broke any boundary of national borders. Technical qualification in companies delivers better and higher production volumes; economies of scale lower costs; the supply of products increases as a result of the "culture" of consumerism that multiplies the range of superfluous consumption and implements production standards, all this coupled with the insufficiency of metropolitan markets that fail to absorb all of production, gives rise to the multinationality. Francisco Errasti, referring to this topic, argues:
“The appearance of multinational societies on a world scale has caused a change in the structure of productive institutions. A company can consider in different ways, the possibility of selling in other markets to increase its profits:
- Exporting part of its production abroad, which is without a doubt the easiest way of penetration. Producing in the foreign market itself, transferring the manufacturing license to a local company. Installing official subsidiary companies abroad. It is the most consistent mode of penetration. "
And later, referring to the extraterritoriality of its sphere of influence, he adds, “Through direct investment abroad and the creation of numerous subsidiaries, they have created enormous companies, which move across the borders of the countries without taking into account the national interests of the country where they operate, since the capital of a multinational society has no nationality. Although economic efficiency is the obvious purpose of their actions, multinationals acquire a clear political projection in today's world. So much so, and this is a fact of transcendental importance, that international investment has begun to displace trade ”(Errasti, 1979: 31-33).
Accounting navigates in this environment; merchants who had been the axis to outline changes in business information structures, merging multiple local markets that gave rise to a unified internal market and its projection in foreign trade; models are beginning to fragment and they are established that respond to the new national configurations, opposed to the autonomy of that class of professionals who were merchants, at the head of whom was discretion in the management of accounting information.
If in the precapitalist society, the accounting responded to the entornal needs from the legal paradigm of property, that is, the accounting model was supported by the logic of the patrimonial information, “The legal side of the company, considered as the locus of a dense network of rights and obligations, gave the first impulse to the registration of accounts and preserved its basic terminology to this day.
The confusing image of an economic patrimony that has to be expressed in accounting data so that the various variations and mutations of values can be followed, pushed the accountants to pass to the second phase of evolution and, encompassing the first accounts of people in A general system led them to register all the heritage elements successively and to merge into a single whole the complex "nature, work and capital" whose integration under the aegis of an entrepreneur constitutes the "company" of the economists "(Vlaemminck, 19 91: 110).
In modern society and basically in the period of the industrial revolution, the accounting paradigm varies towards the exercise of control, no longer exclusively referring to property, but rather to the rationality of productivity, yield and efficiency of capital, while Laws inherent to the capitalist system suppose minimum costs and maximum utility. It then begins to develop the concept of managerial accounting, as a symbolic tool for representing new business realities. “Business managers in the early 1800s had wide latitude to select accounting methods; each company could establish, without restrictions, the rules on asset valuation and profit determination.The exaggerated financial information reflected the spirit of entrepreneurs in rapid industrialization and economic expansion and produced short-term advantages for companies (Chatfield, 1988: 18).
2.4.2 The Globalization and Globalization of Capital and the Manifestations of Perverse Extraterritoriality
The concept of State-Nation, as it was structured from the perspective of liberal democracy, is subject to an imperative and permanent mutation.
“Along with the globalization of capital, the transformation of the role of nation states is observed. It is not that they disappear, as it is commonly said, but that their function as regulating entities of the capitalist relationship is modified. Indeed, in view of the overcoming of the control of a territory and of fixed and determined borders by a State, a violation that has been facilitated by technological innovations in telecommunications, the States have renounced the functions that until now had served as regulators of capitalism. Thus, their traditional roles of regulating the currency, labor, international trade, capital flows, the promotion of a culture and national values, the protection of the internal market, etc. have been abandoned.to adopt now the logic of globalization ”(Vega, 1999: 65).
Furthermore, as María Teresa Uribe indicates, "globalization and the growing interconnection through markets have called into question the nation-state model from which the entire process of economic modernization and political modernity of the last centuries developed" (Uribe, 1996: 85). There is a great difference between the trade routes that characterized the mercantile and free trade period and the scope of the imperial system inaugurated with the advent of the international monopoly, where the global structure of production and exchange goes beyond the control of the nation-state.. The web of transnational relations and networks of interaction and communication transcends national societies and evades the regulations and normativities of national states.
While in the eighteenth century and much of the nineteenth century, trade routes were mediated by simple networks of interaction, the contemporary global order is configured as a system that addresses a multiplicity of forms of transaction, which link societies in highly complex that virtually end territorial limits as barriers or obstacles to socio-economic activities and relationships, thus creating a world of infinite uncertainties. National markets lose their functionality; under the influence of the global, they are fused, rather than tied to the transnationalizing influx.
Obviously, transnational penetration does not occur symmetrically, indifferently and homogeneously in all recipient countries. It depends on the characteristics of the sectors, and on the opportunities that the countries may present to these conglomerates. But also, it depends on the profitability conditions offered to the metropolitan capital, except in the case of obtaining strategic resources, where the motivations imply guidelines of another order.
Now, the influence of the transnational company is not limited to the exclusive domain of its capital and its production, as it generally tends to be considered, its influence is present in the entire production chain or network with which it is related. In other words, when viewed in terms of power, its coverage is not limited by the concept of legal ownership of the company, since its significance covers a much broader scope of action where it can influence the decisions of the other sectors in which it participates in. reason for its centralizing power. This form of decision induction is an extension of the economic ownership that these corporations exercise beyond what the legally considered ownership fees allow.
It could be said then, that the most outstanding phenomenon of today is the prevalence of shared sovereignty, where the privilege of this is borne by transnational organizations, vr.gr., the World Trade Organization is the first organism to establish international rules and sanctions. In this context, of a unipolar world, the warlike actions that take place are the result of the submission of the States to the logic and rules of the game implemented by the structures of international power.
This phenomenon of shared sovereignty makes the concept of the nation-state, in the sociopolitical and classic sense of the term, inevitably tends to be substantially modified, which does not mean, as some analysts proclaim, the end of the State, but rather the mutation or transformation of the idea of sovereignty, as the role of the States and, especially those located in the third world, will be less and less clothed in a certain degree of sovereignty that enables them to be interlocutors at the international level, in a world where survival depends on the ability and capacity to build networks.
Today the urgent obligation of the States resides in the possibility of joining international networks that guarantee them to play with certain levels of autonomy and real options for dialogue and financial and commercial agreement. The enormous challenge lies in inventing a kind of "democracy of globalization", which means moving towards the formation of an omnipotent and omnipresent super state, like the one that until now is being sold from the perspective of neoliberal theories.
Milton Santos, addressing the issue of globalization and its implications starts from recognizing that, «The attempts to build a world are always led to conflict because it seeks to unify and not unite. It is one thing to have a system of relationships, the benefit of the greatest number, based on the real possibilities of a historical moment; something else is a hierarchical system of relationships, built to perpetuate a subsystem of domination over other subsystems, for the benefit of some. It is the latter that exists.
Today, what is unified worldwide is not a desire for freedom, but for domination, it is not the desire for cooperation but for competition, all of these, requiring a rigid organization scheme that crosses all corners of human life. With such designs, what globalizes, falsifies, corrupts, unbalances, destroys ”(Santos, 1995: 33).
Manuel Castells, in one of his studies, presents a typification of the changes in the current economy and states that it “is based on three aspects: it is an informal economy; it is an economy that works in networks; and it is a globalized economy ”(Castells, 1999: 6).
The informal economy has its capital support in productivity that is closely linked to competitiveness and, in this sense, the technological infrastructure creates an added value fundamentally related to the capacity for the rapid process of information processing and concomitantly with the generation of knowledge, irreplaceable elements for the competitiveness of the company. Serial production, the Fordist model that for a long time had been the support of production processes, loses reason for being compared to those processes mediated by information networks that are woven through the merger and interconnection of small and medium-sized companies that work for large emporiums; In other words, “the complexity of today's economy lies in the fact that the economic unit is the project, not the company.The latter is the unit of management and ownership, but the unit of action is a business project made up of pieces of companies of different types that are constantly connecting and disconnecting ”(Castells, 1999: 7).
This archipelago of companies linked as Siamese to large centralized capital emporiums, require for their functionality high levels of flexibility, decentralization and mobility; These factors make it possible, from the monopolistic perspective, to enjoy higher profitability ceilings, regardless of where the small or medium business units constituting the network may settle. In this sense, capital does not have nationality, hence the tendency towards fragility and vulnerability of peripheral economies, with respect to the preponderance of the hegemonic countries.
On the other hand, the process of economic globalization is enthroned with the spectacular advancement of communication technologies, which enable the circulation of capital with spaces of freedom throughout the world, which does not imply that globalization is a symmetrical and homogeneous process, in where the world is in a kind of "undifferentiated globe." On the contrary, “the strategically central activities of that economy have a globalized nucleus in the sense that it works as a unit throughout the planet, on a daily basis. The most important of these activities is that of the financial market ”(Castells, 1999: 8).
Today's world is based on an economy of speculation and not production, wealth creation has been supplanted by the immeasurable manipulation of fraudulent fictions of information turbulence. "The development of new computer technologies has strongly influenced the characterization of the globalization of the economy, allowing the transition from a product economy to a symbol economy, which coincides with the new stage of financial capitalism" (Ander- Egg, 1998: 39).
In this entornal framework, what once constituted control of control has ceased to be in force, like the generally accepted accounting principles, today converted into international standards, while these, in Bachelardian terms, constitute epistemological obstacles that hatch the efforts of torization and consolidation of rigorous positions that structure a strong conceptual framework that accounts for and responds to the innumerable problems derived from the information society. The concern for productivity and competitiveness, enhanced today by the ability to process information and generate knowledge, exceed the problem of measurement, the central axis of the control model, to move to other scenarios such as decision-making schemes in the present time.that distort or falsify the informative delay mounted on typical schemes of an accounting structured for the unique and unavoidable truth; meanwhile, as Castells puts it, “What has really happened is that we have automated the functioning of capital with levels of speed and complexity that only the electronic instructions network can handle. It is true that there is always human intervention but it is a response that must react in fractions of a second, not primarily to market data, but above all to the information turbulence ”(Castells, 1999: 8).
3. Basic Bibliography
ANDER - EGG, 1998. Ezequiel. Reflections around the process, of Globalization. Lumen-Hvmanitas Publishing House. Argentina.
ANGEL, R. José, Guillermo. 1999. Conference: “CREATE AND RECREATE - An essay on the possibilities and the impossible. Module presented at the Diploma in Technology and Innovation Management: Universidad del Cauca.
BS Yamey. 1949. "The Science of Accounting in the Development of Capitalism". In: Economic History Magazine, vol. I. No. 2-3. London.
BRAUDEL, Fernand. 1984. History and Social Sciences. Editorial Alliance. Madrid Spain.
BURBANO, Jorge, Enrique. SF Compilation of the text "History and Doctrine of Accounting" by Joseph Vlaemminck, and the text Accounting: Historical Analysis of its Object and Method by Jorge Enrique Burbano. Compilation and adaptation prepared by Alvaro Caldón Ramírez and Jorge Burbano. Printed material to be used in the Chair of Accounting Theory, Universidad del Valle.
KNIGHT, Antonio. 2000. And the West conquered the world - Between the great dread of the year 1000 and the great terror of the year. El Ancora Editores. Bogotá 2000.
CASTELLS, Manuel. 1999. Globalization, society and politics in the information age. In: Political Analysis Magazine No.37. Institute of Political Studies and International Relations- National University of Colombia.
CORREDOR, Martínez, Consuelo. 1992. The Limits of Modernization. Cinep - Faculty of Economic Sciences - National University of Colombia. Santa Fe de Bogota.
COX, C. Oliver. 1972. Capitalism as a System. Editorial Fundamentos. Madrid.
CHATFIELD, Michael. 1988. Accounting principles considered as conventions: The doctrine of conservatism. In: TEUKEN Journal of Accounting Research No. 2. San Juan Bosco University, Patagonia Argentina.
ERRASTI, Francisco. Current Challenges of the Industrial Revolution. Pamplona (Spain): University of Navarra (EUNSA) 1979
FERNÁNDEZ PIRLA, José María. 1977. Economic Theory of Accounting. ICE editions. Ninth edition. Spain.
GIUSTI, Miguel. 1996. Morality or Ethics - An Old Philosophical Dispute. Conference published in the evaluation methodologies module. Universidad del Valle - Office of the Vice President for Extension.
HATFIELD, Henry, Rand. 1979. Defense of accounting. This text is part of the first chapter of the book: "Contemporary studies on the evolution of accounting thinking"; compilation by Micchael Chatfiel - from the University of Californian Los Angeles. Ediciones Contables y Administrativas SA. Mexico.
HERNÁNDEZ, ESTEVE, Esteban. 1995. "A Sum of Arithmetic Prior to De Luca Pacioli's: The" Sum of Arismetica by Francesch Sanct Climent "(Barcelona, 1482). In: Revista Contaduría-Universidad de Antioquia Nos. 26-27, Faculty of Economic Sciences-Department of Accounting.
MARX, Karl. ENGELS, Federico. 1973. Selected Works. Progreso Editorial. Moscow.
RINCÓN, PEÑA, Guillermo A. 1984. Public Accounting as a profession. Editorial The New Book. Armenia.
SANTOS, Milton. 1995. The Contemporary Acceleration: time, world and space-world. In Universidad del Valle Magazine No. 10. Santiago de Cali.
TUA, PEREDA, Jorge. Sf "The Social Dimension of Accounting". Conference reproduced in Xerocopia, Universidad de Antioquia.
URIBE, DE HINCAPIÉ, María, Teresa. 1996. "The Old and the New in the Colombian Political Crisis". Political Studies Magazine No. 7-8. Institute of Political Studies - University of Antioquia.
VEGA, CANTOR, René. 1999. "The Globalization of Capital and the Metamorphosis of the World of Work". In: López de la Roche Fabio (Compiler), Globalization - Uncertainties and possibilities. Third World Editors - IEPRI (UN). Santafé de Bogotá - Colombia.
VLAEMMINCK, Joseph. 1991. History and Doctrine of Accounting. Editorial Index. Spain.
www.gestiopolis.com/el-devenir-contable-y-la-historia-del-capital/
See BS Yamey, "The Science of Accounting in the Development of Capitalism". In: Economic History Magazine, vol. I. No. 2-3. London 1949, pgs. 99-113.
The “commenda” existed in antiquity, but its real dimension emerged in the Middle Ages and basically consisted of the association of an anonymous capitalist with a merchant who acted on its behalf, a fact that gave it the guarantee of reserving part of the profit of the capitalist, in other words, was the symbiosis between capital and labor.
On this subject Professor JM Fernández Pirla, argues “The account is an accounting creation that aims to present and measure the economic, legal and administrative processes that take place in the field of business economics in order to understand the true economic reality of it. " For greater clarity, his work can be consulted. Economic Theory of Accounting. ICE editions. Ninth edition. Spain 1977, in its chapters III - IV - V.
Fernad Braudel, a significant member of the Annales school, states that in history there are dozens and even hundreds of different times, an attempt to classify this enormous mass of temporalities, they are grouped by this author under a triple schematization of time: The short duration, the conjunctural or average time and, the time of the structures or called long duration. Three times, which refer to realities analyzed by the social sciences or by history. Temporality of short duration, which deals with the rhythm of daily events, the story of the chronicle and journalism, the time of episodic history; the medium-term temporality, which leads to the analysis of the different economic, political, cultural and social situations, in reference to the recurrence of phenomena,events and characteristics of different human generations and; long-term time, which finally deals with processes and structures with a journey of more than a century, where persistent realities are analyzed that effectively make their presence felt in the evolution of human processes (Braudel, 1984).
The nation-state, according to Alain Lipietz, is conceived as a community of individuals bound by a social contract, it develops with the generation of mercantile practices. Commercial law and the wage relationship are identified, institutionalized within this framework, in the shadow of state sovereignty. It is at the level of the nation-state where social contradictions are regulated and, therefore, where the coherence of true regimes of accumulation is gradually consolidated.
