The Socio-Economic Form of the Product of Socialist Production

This article is an attempt at a deeper understanding of the socio-economic form of the immediately social product of socialist production.

In the first part of the article this product is analysed from the point of view of the satisfaction of the needs of associated producers, as a use-value. In the author's opinion the size of this use-value is a mutidimensional derived magnitude, which can be defined on the basis of the degree of necessity of consumption, the degree of its being formed as a product for immediate consumption (the degree of its materialization), the time for realisation and the degree to which the need is wide-spread. The relation between the quality of use value and the level of a need is analysed.

The second part of the article deals with the product of socialist production as the outcome of immediately social labour, with the social nature of this product and the labour which forms it. Use values can be compared not only on the basis of the quantity of abstract labour materialized, but also on the basis of new, socially significant forms of social labour — generalized labour and its outcome — the worth of the products of labour. From a quantitative point of view the size of worth depends on the productive force of concrete work, where leisure time is its measure. The author arrives at the conclusion that making valuation an independent category of the political economy of socialism assumes the existence of such a system of production in which the producers of varied use-values mutually cooperate on a societal scale, with the objective of providing the complete welfare and free comprehensive development of all members of society.

Finally the author dicusses the problem of measuring the size of use-value, value and valuation. In spite of the fact that these products of labour have different substances, they can be mutually measured against each other, because they represent and are measured by various sections of social time — use-value by disposable time which is obtained by the consumption of use-value and which provides the area for activities, value by labour time and worth by leisure time. The possibilities and limits of special cases such measurements at lower levels of abstraction are demonstrated.

Full Czech Version publ. In Politická ekonomie, 30, 1989, No 10, p. 1059-1070