Political economy - a theoretical and methodological framework for identifying main trends in social entrepreneurship development

The paper discusses some features of the source of social entrepreneurship as a new form of business organization, aimed at implementing social objectives in the context of strengthening neoliberal trends in economic policy and economic theory, rather than at maximizing the owners’ profit. It is demonstrated that, remaining within the framework of the neoliberal ideology which retains its influence in the economic science, it is impossible to create an adequate theory explaining the importance of social entrepreneurship in the context of the process of changing paradigms of economic relations, since under the influence of this ideology false stereotypes are established, which is accompanied by falsification of historical facts. In this context it seems that the methodology of political economy, taking into account the current trends in the transformation of socio-economic relations and the deviation of the trend of social development from the framework of the formally preserved, but declining neoliberal paradigm, is very popular, especially since its problem areas include issues such as the distinction between individual and social forms of production, the relations between the necessary and surplus product, the distribution of surplus value (in case of its occurrence), the issues of individualization and socialization of economic phenomena, the correlation between market and non-market production areas and distribution of the final product, the issue of recognizing the social significance of the result of individual labor...