On the Price of the "Free Gifts" of Nature

In connection with the development of cost-accounting relationships among individual enterprises within the national economic turnover of all the values and the requirements of socialist competition among the working people of our country, of late, more and more frequently, the need arises for appraising, in the costs of production of competing collectives, such natural wealth as land, water, minerals, etc. Nature has distributed them far from evenly among the various regions; and this strongly distorts the results of the competition even in terms of the most important indices, such as the labor productivity and profitability of the activities of the various collectives and enterprises. This also lowers the effectiveness of bonus funds which, not utilized where they are most needed, are wasted without results.

Differential Ground Rent Under Socialism

In capitalist society the surplus value distributed among the ruling classes is divided in the main into the entrepreneur's profit and ground rent. Since in socialist society these parasitic classes have been abolished, they no longer share in the distribution of the surplus product. Its totality remains in the hands of the new society of working people and, moreover, it stands to reason that >u>the former class divisions which distinguished ground rent from the entrepreneur's profit vanish>/u>. As private ownership is abolished, absolute ground rent disappears altogether, while under the new conditions in which the law of value operates, profitability undergoes substantial changes.

Social Productivity of Labor and Methods of Measuring It

The "law of the increasing productive power of labor" is a most important one in political economy. In disclosing its substance, Marx defined it as a law, "according to which the costs of production are constantly falling, while living labor continues to grow more productive." (1) He called it a general universal economic law. Consequently, this law operates in all the stages of the evolution of social production. However, under capitalism it manifests itself merely as a tendency that is constantly being violated, andtherefore it does not possess unqualified significance. Moreover, when capitalism grows decrepit and more and more moribund, it contradicts the requirements of this law and even, as Engels noted, "interferes with the growth of productivity."

The Law of Value and Planning

The idealist philosophers were justifiably reproached for the fact that they were merely trying to explain the world, when it was a question of its radical reorganization. Naturally, these accusations do not apply to Soviet economists, who are among the representatives of the most revolutionary theory of our epoch. However, it is regrettable that even in their midst there are many who in these times of radical changes in all social relations lag behind the pace of these changes. Clinging too long at times to what are obviously antiquated ideas, they are not doing enough to advance theory, and under these conditions even the most advanced theory begins to lag behind revolutionary practice, which ic, advancing faster.

Some Problems of the Further Development of the Kolkhoz Regime

The MTS reorganization law, being one more step on the way to communism, throws new light on important problems concerning further development of the kolkhoz regime. Until recently the question how the two different forms of socialist property â state and kolkhoz-cooperative â in Soviet agriculture would come closer together had remained unclear. However, in the last three or four years our experience in this field too finds more and more practical roads to further forward movement.

The Problem of the Genesis of Capitalism in Russia

The problem of the genesis of capitalism in Russia has a history all its own. At the close of the last century the Narodnikis disputed not only the existence, but even the very possibility of capitalist development in Russia. One major Narodnik argument to support this idea was their utterly groundless assertion that at a time when the leading capitalist countries firmly controlled foreign markets, the domestic market in backward Russia was insufficient to nourish capitalist growth. Precisely for this reason Lenin, in his profound study >u>The Development of Capitalism in Russia>/u>, directed his attention to this problem, namely, how the domestic market for Russian capital was formed, and citing the example of capitalist evolution in the post-reform Russian village, he showed how capitalism itself was creating the domestic market that it required.