The article aims to analyze the evolution of views on the state's role in regulating economic processes using the methodological approach of combining the historical and logical, constructing an objective process of modifying the economic system and subjectivizing it within the framework of the concepts of mainstream economics. The conditions for the transformation of theoretical views based on the determination of the influence of the basic parameters of the economic system are studied, among which the primary attention is paid to the characteristics of the competitive environment. The dialectic of the evolution of theoretical visions is presented as a transition from the dominance of supporters of market self-regulation (classical political economy) to a significant expansion of the functions of the state with an emphasis on the pluralism of approaches to the recognition of the most effective strategies for the implementation of economic policy with the selection of personalized views on the optimal system of its instrumental content. The logic of forming a two-factor model of macroeconomic regulation of the market economy based on historical relativity is revealed. It is shown that the state's acquisition of the role of a social center is a consequence of the delegation of part of its functions by economic subjects in the pursuit of realizing the interests of both the monopoly sector (it was freed from the need to eliminate the structural disparities created by it), and the non-monopolist sector and consumers (they received guarantees of protection competitive features). The stages in the dominance of liberal doctrines and dirigisme policies in the economic theory and practice of the late 20th - early 21st centuries were studied. The main task of modernizing the content of macroeconomic policy in the conditions of transferring the problems of optimizing the distribution of resources to the supranational level, the erosion of state sovereignty is outlined, which consists of finding individual national trajectories of a combination of integration into global economic structures and justified economic nationalism.