Public Ownership of the Means of Production - the Basis of the Production Relations of Socialism

Socialist Mode of Production

The socialist system of the national economy and socialist property.

The economic basis of socialist society is the socialist system of the national economy, socialist ownership of the means of production, established as a result of the liquidation of the capitalist economic system, the abolition of private ownership of the means of production, and the abolition of the exploitation of man by man. 

Exposing the fabrications of the apologists of capitalism about the program of scientific socialism as a program for the destruction of property in general, Marx and Engels wrote: "The hallmark of communism is not the abolition of property in general, but the abolition of bourgeois property" [1] . No society is conceivable without the dominance of a historically defined form of ownership. By abolishing private ownership of the means of production, the proletarian revolution establishes in its place socialist ownership of the means of production. 

Under socialism, the means of production ceased to be capital, that is, a means of exploitation. In a socialist society there are no classes that have monopoly ownership of the means of production and no classes that are deprived of ownership of the means of production. Under socialism, the means of production constitute public property.  The main elements of the production process - the labor force and the means of production - are combined here on a new basis. This base is large-scale socialist production both in the city and in the countryside. Since the means of production have ceased to be capital, under socialism there is no division of accumulated labor into constant and variable capital. The entire mass of labor accumulated by society, that is, the entire mass of means of production and means of consumption available to society for the purposes of further production, serves the interests of the people and cannot be a condition for exploitation. “In bourgeois society, living labor is only a means to increase accumulated labor. In a communist society, accumulated labor is only a means of expanding, enriching, and facilitating the life process of the workers” [2] . 

Under socialism, public property is undividedly dominant in all spheres of the national economy. In the USSR in 1950, socialist property covered 99.4% of all means of production used in the country. With the establishment of the undivided domination of public property, the false theory of the ideologists of the bourgeoisie about the eternity and inviolability of private capitalist property has been completely debunked. 

The transformation of the means of production into public property and the emancipation of production workers from all forms of exploitation marked the establishment of a new, socialist system of the national economy. 

The socialist economic system   is fundamentally different from the capitalist economic system and has decisive advantages over it. 

1. Under the conditions of the socialist system of the national economy, the means of production are public property, that is, they belong to the working people in the person of the socialist state or in the person of collective farms and other cooperative associations, as a result of which the products of labor also belong to the working people; Under the conditions of the capitalist system of economy, the means of production are the private property of the capitalists and landlords, and therefore the products of labor also belong to the capitalists and landowners. 

2. The socialist system of the national economy means that the exploitation of man by man is abolished, and production is carried out in order to satisfy the growing material and cultural needs of the whole society to the maximum; capitalist production is carried on in order to secure the maximum capitalist profit by exploiting, ruining, and enslaving the working people. 

3. Socialist production is developing in a planned manner; the steady rise in the material well-being of the working people and the continuous growth of their purchasing power are a constantly growing stimulus for the expansion of production and a reliable guarantee against crises of overproduction and unemployment; capitalist production develops spontaneously, the growth of production comes up against the proletarian state of the masses and the relative reduction in the purchasing power of the working people, whose consumption capital limits to an extremely low level, which inevitably entails crises of overproduction, the growth of unemployment and poverty of the masses. 

4. Under socialism, each worker receives material benefits according to the quantity and quality of his labor, and the distribution of national income is carried out in the interests of systematically improving the well-being of the working people, expanding socialist production in town and countryside, and increasing social wealth; Under capitalism, the distribution of the people's income takes place in the interests of enriching the exploiting classes and their numerous parasitic servants. 

5. Under the socialist system, state power is in the hands of the working people of town and countryside; the capitalist economic system means that power in society belongs to the capitalists, who use this power to maintain order that is pleasing and beneficial to the propertied classes, while the proletariat and the working masses of the peasantry are classes that are exploited, forced to work for the capitalists and landowners. 

Public property is the basis of the socialist system, the source of the wealth and power of the Motherland, the source of the prosperous and cultural life of all working people. She is sacred and inviolable. The Constitution of the USSR obliges every citizen of Soviet society to protect and strengthen public property. Persons encroaching on socialist property are enemies of the people and are punished according to the law.

Two forms of socialist property.

In the first phase of communism (that is socialism), public socialist property exists in two forms: 1) in the form of state property and 2) in the form of cooperative-collective farm property. State socialist property   is the property of the entire Soviet people, represented by the socialist state of workers and peasants. Cooperative-collective-farm   socialist property is the property of individual collective farms, cooperative associations.

 

The two forms of socialist property correspond to two types of socialist farms:   1) state-owned enterprises (factories, factories, state farms, MTS, etc.) and 2) cooperative (collective) farms (collective farms, trade artels, enterprises of consumer cooperation). 

The existence of two forms of socialist property is caused by the historical conditions in which the proletarian revolution and the building of socialism are carried out. The working class, having conquered state power, finds historically formed various forms of private property: on the one hand, large-scale capitalist property based on the exploitation of the labor of others, on the other hand, small private property of peasants, handicraftsmen, and artisans, based on their personal labor. In the course of the socialist revolution, large capitalist property is expropriated and passes into the hands of the socialist state. This is how state (public) socialist property arises. At the same time, the program of scientific socialism rejects the expropriation of peasants, handicraftsmen and artisans as hostile and criminal. Small and medium commodity producers voluntarily unite into production cooperatives, that is, collective farms, trade cooperative artels, and their ownership of the main means of production is socialized on a cooperative basis. This is how cooperative-collective-farm property arises. 

Thus, the existence of two forms of social property is an objective necessity and expresses the uniqueness of the paths along which the working class and the peasantry come to socialism, and then gradually to communism. 

“Both of the two classes existing in the USSR are building socialism, entering the system of the socialist economy. But being in one general system of socialist economy, the working class is connected by its labor with state socialist property (public property), and the collective-farm peasantry with cooperative-collective-farm property belonging to individual collective farms and collective-farm cooperative associations. This connection with various forms of socialist property primarily determines the difference in the position of these classes. This also determines the well-known difference in the paths of their further development. 

What they have in common in their development is that both of these classes are developing towards socialism. 

State property   in the USSR is land, its subsoil, water, forests, factories, factories, mines, mines, railway, water, and air transport, banks, means of communication, large agricultural enterprises organized by the state (state farms, machine, and tractor stations, etc. .), state-owned trading and procurement enterprises, as well as public utilities and basic housing stock in cities and industrial centers. 

The territory of the Soviet Union occupies one sixth of the earth's land area - 22.4 million square kilometers. Almost a quarter of this area - over 600 million hectares - is agricultural land;   almost one third - 700 million hectares - is covered by forests. 

The USSR is the richest country in the world in terms of mineral resources.   The socialist economic system brought to life wealth that remained untouched in tsarist Russia. Of the 92 elements of the Mendeleev system, 20 were mined in Tsarist Russia, more than 80 are mined in the USSR. In terms of reserves of iron ore, oil, potash salts, apatite, peat and a number of other important minerals, the USSR ranks first in the world, in terms of coal reserves - in second . 

200,000 enterprises of state industry,   the entire network of railways, water transport enterprises,   state  enterprises in agriculture: about 5,000 large state farms,   9,000 machine and tractor stations, and   thousands of auxiliary agricultural enterprises are the property of the whole people. 

Many thousands of state trade enterprises are the property of the whole people.  The state owns numerous scientific   and cultural institutions. 

State socialist property, which arose as a result of the nationalization of factories, plants, transport, etc., has been greatly increased by the labor of the Soviet people during the years of socialist construction. Thus, in 1953 the fixed production assets of industry grew by a factor of 22 in comparison with 1913. 

State socialist property is fundamentally different from state capitalist property. With the transition of certain enterprises or even entire branches of the economy into the ownership of the bourgeois state, their social nature does not change. The bourgeois state represents the interests of monopoly capital and is in its hands an apparatus of violence through which the oppression of the working majority by the possessing minority is ensured. Therefore, state-capitalist enterprises are enterprises based on the exploitation of the working people by the bourgeois class as a whole, and oppose the people as an alien, enslaving force. 

In a socialist society, the working class holds power in its hands. He owns the state means of production jointly with the whole people. The labor power employed in socialist enterprises is not a commodity, since the working class, which owns the means of production, cannot hire itself and sell its labor power to itself. In view of this, any possibility of exploitation of man by man is ruled out at state socialist enterprises. 

State property is the predominant form of property in socialist society: it accounts for about 91 percent of all the production assets of the USSR. Thus, the vast majority of the wealth of the Soviet country, the most important sources of growth in the material well-being and culture of the working people, are the property of the entire people.

Cooperative-collective-farm property   in the USSR includes public enterprises in collective farms and cooperative organizations with their live and dead implements, the products produced by collective farms and cooperative organizations, and also their public buildings. Collective farms and other cooperative enterprises operate on land that is the property of the whole people. The richest modern technology, concentrated in the machine and tractor stations and used to carry out all the basic work on the collective farms, is also the property of the whole people. 

Cooperative collective farm property is primarily the property of the 93,000 collective farms:   collective farm buildings, hundreds of thousands of livestock farms, socialized draft animals, agricultural implements, a large network of collective farm cultural and community institutions (clubs, reading rooms, nurseries, rural laboratories, etc.). In the course of socialist construction, public collective-farm property has increased enormously. From 1940 to 1953 the indivisible funds of collective farms increased 2.5 times.

The cooperative form of industrial production in socialist society exists in the form of industrial artel enterprises.   Industrial cooperation is designed to develop the production of mainly consumer goods, using primarily local resources of raw materials for this. The means of production used by the enterprises of trade cooperatives and the products they produce are the property of the trade artels. The industrial cooperation of all systems in the USSR in 1953 totaled about 16,000 artels with industrial production. The cooperative form of enterprises in trade exists in the form of consumer societies,  comprising mainly the rural population. The property of 23 thousand consumer cooperation societies is an extensive network of shops, shops, warehouses. 

The all-round strengthening and development of state and co-operative-collective-farm property is the most important condition for the further growth of the entire national economy, the gradual transition of Soviet society from socialism to communism. 

State and cooperative-kolkhoz forms of ownership, as well as state enterprises and collective farms, are of the same type   in their social nature. What is common   between state enterprises and collective farms is that both of them: 1) are based on socialist socialized means of production and collective labor, 2) exclude the possibility of exploitation of man by man, 3) conduct their economy in a planned manner, in the interests of satisfying the growing needs of the working people, 4) implement the socialist principle of distribution according to work. 

At the same time, there are certain differences between state and cooperative-collective-farm forms of ownership, as well as between state enterprises and cooperative (collective) farms . 

Firstly.   State enterprises are dominated by socialist relations of production in their most mature and consistent form. State property is public property;   in state enterprises all the means of production without exception have been socialized. Cooperative-collective-farm property is group property,   the property of individual collectives or associations of workers (agricultural artel, consumer society, trade artel); in the collective farms (in their artel form) the main  the means of production of the co-operative peasants; a certain part of the means of production, in accordance with the Rules of the agricultural artel, is not socialized and remains in the personal property of the collective-farm household (collective farmer's personal subsidiary plot). 

Secondly.   The output of state enterprises is the property of the socialist state and is sold in the manner and at prices established by the state bodies. The output of collective farm production is the property of the given collective farm. Part of this production is used to fulfill obligations to the state in the form of procurement at fixed state prices and to pay in kind for the work performed on the collective farm by the machine and tractor station. All the rest of the output remains at the disposal of the collective farm and is used to set up established public collective farm funds and to distribute it among the members of the artel according to workdays. Collective farms sell some of their produce at purchase prices, which are much higher than procurement prices, or through collective-farm trade at market prices.

Thirdly.   In state enterprises, which are the property of the whole people, the share of the social product that goes into the personal consumption of the worker is paid in the form of wages.   The state establishes a pre-fixed wage rate per unit of product or working time. The collective farmer, being a member of this artel, which is group property, receives his share of income on workdays .  from the fund of his collective farm. The size of this share of income depends both on the degree of the collective farmer's participation in social labor, which finds expression in the number of workdays worked out by him, and on the level of labor productivity and the development of the social economy of the collective farm, which finds expression in the height of payment for each workday. The better the collective farm as a whole works, the higher the yield of agricultural crops and the productivity of animal husbandry in a given collective farm, the higher the income of each collective farmer. Wages are paid to the worker in cash. The income of the artel is distributed among the collective farmers in cash and in kind (products). While the source of income for the worker is only labor in the socialist enterprise, the main source of income for the collective farmer is his labor in the social economy of the collective farm. an additional source is labor in the personal subsidiary plot of the collective farm yard. The collective farmer sells part of his produce, received by him for workdays and from his personal subsidiary farming, on the market. 

Fourth.  The socialist state directly manages the enterprises belonging to it, exercising control over them through its authorized representatives, the directors of the enterprises, who are appointed and dismissed by the corresponding state bodies. State organs directly plan the entire production activity of these enterprises and regulate the basic provisions in the field of the socialist organization of labor. In collective farms, in accordance with their cooperative nature, all affairs are managed by the supreme body of the agricultural artel - the general meeting of collective farmers and the board and chairman of the collective farm elected by it. The production and financial plans of the artel, internal regulations, production rates and prices, the procedure for distributing income are established by the collective farmers themselves on the basis of the Charter of the agricultural artel guided by existing laws, plan assignments and directives of the socialist state. .

Differences between state enterprises and cooperative (collective) farms are differences of a non-indigenous nature. These are the differences between the two types of economy within the limits of socialist   relations of production. State property is the highest form of socialist property, and the state form of production is the highest form of socialist production. 

Enterprises based entirely on state ownership are enterprises of a consistently socialist type. Lenin defined them as enterprises in which "both the means of production belong to the state, and the land on which the enterprise stands, and the entire enterprise as a whole" [4]. In state enterprises, the means of production, the labor of workers and employees, and the products they produce are socialized on the scale of the whole of society. The state form of production embraces the leading branch of the national economy—socialist industry. Large factories for the production of agricultural products - state farms - are public property. The state owns land and the main instruments of production - tractors, combines and other agricultural machines concentrated in machine and tractor stations. State property, as the highest form of socialist property, plays the leading and determining role in the entire national economy.

Personal property under socialism.

Public property under socialism extends to the means of production and to manufactured products. Some of these products later serve as means of production, while remaining public property. The other part of the output, consisting of articles of consumption, is distributed among the workers in accordance with the quantity and quality of the labor of each of them, and becomes the personal property of the   workers. 

In The Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels pointed out that communism does not deprive anyone of the possibility of personal appropriation of a certain share of the product of social labor. socialism only destroys the miserable character of such appropriation, which is inherent in capitalism, when the worker lives only to increase capital, and lives only insofar as the interests of the ruling class require it. 

Describing the foundations of the future socialist society, Engels wrote in Anti-Dühring that here “public property extends to land and other means of production, and individual property to other products, i.e., to consumer goods” [5] . 

With the destruction of the capitalist mode of production, the economic laws of capitalism, which limit personal property, personal consumption of the masses of the masses to beggarly limits - the minimum of   life's blessings necessary for the maintenance and reproduction of the labor force - lose their force.

In contrast to capitalism, where production is put at the service of the selfish goals of enriching the exploiters, socialism subordinated production to the goals of maximum satisfaction of the continuously growing material and cultural needs of the whole of society. Socialism not only does not abolish personal ownership of consumer goods, but creates the only firm guarantee of ever more complete satisfaction of the personal needs of all members of society. 

The right of personal property of the workers of socialist society extends to their labor income and savings, to a dwelling house and ancillary households, to household and household items, to articles of personal consumption and convenience.

A special type of personal property under socialism is the property of the collective farm household.   In accordance with the Rules of the Agricultural Artel, each collective-farm yard owns a subsidiary farm on a household plot, a dwelling house, productive livestock, poultry, and small agricultural implements.

The source of personal property in the era of socialism is only labor. Under the conditions of the undivided domination of socialist production relations, objects that are in personal ownership cannot be converted into capital, that is, used as means of exploitation. The right to personal property, as well as the right to inherit personal property, is protected by the Constitution of the USSR.

Personal property under socialism is inextricably linked with public property as its basis. With the multiplication of social property, with the growth of the people's wealth, ever greater masses of products are used to satisfy the personal needs of the working people of socialist society.

The nature of socialist production relations.

The relations of production in a socialist society differ fundamentally from the relations of production of capitalism and other social formations based on private ownership of the means of production. 

Socialist relations of production are characterized by: 1) the undivided dominance of social ownership of the means of production; 2) the liberation of the working people from exploitation and the establishment of relations of comradely cooperation and socialist mutual assistance; 3) distribution of products in the interests of the working people themselves. 

socialist property. on the means of production determines a completely different than under capitalism, the nature of the mutual relations of people in the process of production. While private ownership of the means of production inevitably divides   people, gives rise to relations of domination and subordination, exploitation of some people by others, causes conflict of interests, class struggle and competition, public ownership of the means of production unites   people, ensures a genuine commonality of their interests and comradely cooperation. 

The dominance of public ownership of the means of production also determines the completely different nature of the distribution of products under socialism in comparison with capitalism. 

Insofar as there are no exploiting classes and no exploitation of man by man in socialist society, there is no division of labor into necessary and surplus labour, and also no division of the product into necessary and surplus product. Socialist relations of production determine the objective necessity of a completely different division of labor and its product than under capitalism. Since under socialism the means of production are in public ownership, and production itself is designed to satisfy the needs of society as a whole and each of its members, the labor of workers in production is divided here into the following two parts: labor for themselves and labor for society. Accordingly, the product of labor (minus that part of it which is used to replace the spent means of production) is also divided into two parts; a product for oneself and a product for society. Labor creates for itself a product that is distributed among the production workers in accordance with the quantity and quality of their labor and goes to cover the personal needs of the worker and his family. Labor for society creates a product that is used for social needs: for the expansion of production, the development of education, health care, the organization of defense, etc. In a socialist society, where the working people themselves are in power, labor for society is as necessary for them as and work for yourself. A product for society, used to expand socialist production, multiplies the material prerequisites for further growth in the well-being of the working people. The product for society, spent on the development of education, health care, social security, and other public needs, also serves the purpose of satisfying the needs of the working people, just as the product for oneself. 

Public ownership of the means of production and the products of labor and the distribution of the products of labor in the interests of the working people determine the decisive advantages of the socialist economic system over the capitalist system. All the benefits of large-scale social production, which ensures a huge increase in the productive power of labor, go to society as a whole and to the working masses, and not to the exploiters, as is the case under capitalism. 

The dominance of public ownership of the means of production means that socialist production is free from the contradiction between the social character of production and the private capitalist form of appropriation of the results of production inherent in capitalism. Under socialism, the social character of production corresponds to socialist ownership of the means of production. Because of this, in a socialist society there is a complete correspondence between the relations of production and the forces of production.

Describing the socialist system, I. V. Stalin writes:

“Here the relations of production are in full conformity with the state of the productive forces, for the social character of the process of production is reinforced by social ownership of the means of production. 

Therefore, socialist production in the USSR does not know periodic crises of overproduction and the absurdities associated with them.

Therefore, the productive forces develop here at an accelerated pace since the relations of production corresponding to them give them full scope for such a development . 

In contrast to the production relations of modern capitalism, which serve as fetters for the development of the productive forces, socialist production relations ensure the rapid growth of the productive forces. Having arisen and developed on the basis of certain productive forces, socialist relations of production, in turn, are a powerful engine for their further accelerated development. 

The complete correspondence of socialist relations of production to the nature of the productive forces of society does not mean, however, that there are no contradictions between them. Being the most mobile and revolutionary element of production, the productive forces even under socialism go ahead of the relations of production, and the relations of production only after some time are brought into line with the state of the productive forces. The present relations of production in the USSR are going through a period in which, fully in line with the growth of the productive forces, they are moving them forward at a rapid pace. But contradictions between them inevitably arise, insofar as the development of production relations lags behind and will lag behind the development of the productive forces. However, under socialism, in contrast to social formations based on exploitation, it usually does not come to a conflict between the relations of production and the forces of production. Socialist society is in a position to bring production relations into line with the nature of the productive forces in a timely manner, since it does not include classes interested in preserving obsolete forms of economy. 

SUMMARY

1 . In the USSR, public ownership of the means of production reigns supreme. Under socialism, there are two forms of public property: state and cooperative-collective farm. Correspondingly, there are two types of socialist farms: state enterprises and cooperative (collective) farms. 

2. In a socialist society, state property is public property. In the USSR, it covers the vast majority of the country's wealth. Cooperative-collective-farm property is the group property of individual collective farms, artels of industrial cooperation, and consumer societies. State property is the highest, most developed form of socialist property; it has a leading and determining role in the entire national economy.

3. Personal property under socialism extends to consumer goods. A special type of personal property is the personal property of a collective farm household. The personal property of the working people is growing on the basis of the multiplication of socialist social property. 

4. The production relations of socialism are characterized by: 1) the undivided dominance of social ownership of the means of production; 2) the liberation of the working people from exploitation, comradely cooperation, and socialist mutual assistance between people in the process of producing material goods; 3) distribution of the product in the interests of the workers themselves. 

The labor of workers in socialist production is divided into two parts: labor for themselves and labor for society. By labor for themselves, workers create a product that is distributed among them according to the quantity and quality of labor, and by labor for society , a product that goes to public needs. 

Under socialism the relations of production are in full conformity with the nature of the productive forces and are the main and decisive force determining the rapid growth of the productive forces of socialist society.          

[1]  K . Marx and F. Engels, The Communist Manifesto, K. Marx, F. Engels, Selected Works, vol. I, 1948, p. 21.

[2]  Ibid., p. 22.

[3]  V. M. Molotov, The Constitution of Socialism, Articles and Speeches, 1937, p. 267.

[4]  V. I. Lenin, On cooperation, Works, vol. 33, p. 433.

[5]  F. Engels, Anti-Dühring, 1953, p. 123.

[6]  I. V. Stalin, On Dialectical and Historical Materialism, “Problems of Leninism,” ed. 11, 1952, p. 597.