Inflation is a complex socio-economic phenomenon, whose formal sign is the depreciation of money. Most often it is expressed in the form of rising prices, although it also has other manifestations. The economic substance of this phenomenon lies in the area of public reproduction and the socio-economic relations about the distribution of public product and public wealth. In this article, the self-replicating nature of inflation is shown and genesis and evolution of inflationary process at all stages of public reproduction are analyzed. It is shown that each of the stages has the mechanisms capable of generating inflationary potential. The category of "inflationary spiral" is explained in more detail, because it cannot be presented only by a traditional "costs - prices" mechanism. Inflationary spirals can be observed at any stage of the reproduction process, making the task of managing inflation even more difficult. It causes the need for the complex accounting of all the variety of factors of the inflationary process and the inflation consequences in the formulation of an economic policy.