Today, I saw a friend who wanted to know a lot of things and raised this question after the article "A Brief Introduction to Economic Principles III: The Theory of Two Subjects":
"It is easy to understand that there are some things that do not understand the separation of laborers from the means of production and the appearance of asset owners. However, there is still something to be understood about the common ownership of the means of production and the emergence of the ownership of labor. Because at the present stage of development, production is inseparable from collaborative enterprise production, the means of production are either owned by individuals or shareholders, or publicly owned, the first two are capitalist property rights, while the latter is the virtual ownership of the lack of subjects in the past practice, and the exercise of power is an agency system, and the agent has the requirements of maintaining and increasing the value of the entrusted less reliable property rights in addition to the possible personal interests. According to the principles of labor economics. This part of the power should be exercised collectively by the laborers, and the laborers should only obtain the consumption value needed by themselves and their families in the distribution of the fruits of their labor. Then the surplus should remain in the enterprise as the accumulation of the means of production. The question is, what is the internal mechanism of the laborer's determination of the consumption value and the accumulation and distribution of the means of production?Second, how is the flow of the factors of the means of production formed?
For example, the questions in this comment are:
1. Why does the public ownership of the means of production require labor ownership?
2. Why is there a lack of subject or virtual ownership in the existing practice of public ownership?
3. What is the relationship between property rights and labor rights under the labor rights system?
4. How to distribute the amount of new value formed by enterprises under the labor rights system?
5. What is the internal operating mechanism of the enterprise under the labor rights system?
6. How to allocate and flow the means of production under the labor rights system?
This article discusses the third issue.
More than 40 years have passed since the reform of state-owned enterprises, and the separation of government administration from enterprise management was a goal that was put forward at the beginning, but in fact, this goal has still not been truly achieved. Why is this so? This is because in the reform of state-owned enterprises over the past 40 years and more, there has never been a clear distinction between the rights of state-owned assets and the rights of state-owned enterprises, and there has been no clear understanding of the basic question of how the two rights can be obtained and embodied at the same time.
The key to dealing with the question of the relationship between the socialist state and enterprises is to clearly define the main interests of socialist production. The so-called stakeholders of socialist production are also the direct bearers of the results (i.e., interests) of socialist production. The main interests of social production are determined by the situation in both the means of production and the production of labor.
Under capitalist conditions, the laborer is deprived of his working conditions and only owns his own labor power, and the capitalist or asset owner will inevitably become the subject of interest in capitalist production because he has mastered the means of production, and the ownership of assets is the most basic interest requirement of the capitalist or asset owner. Socialism has realized the public ownership of the means of production, and the public means of production have become the material means for laborers to satisfy their own consumption needs, and the differences in social production have been manifested in all aspects of labor rather than in the ownership of assets due to the individuality of living consumption. In this case, the owner of labor naturally becomes the main interest of socialist production, and the ownership of labor is the most basic interest requirement of laborers. Therefore, the ownership of labor is the basis for the existence and development of socialist enterprises. However, for many years, we have not been able to form a clear concept of labor ownership, and thus we have not been able to clarify the fundamental difference between the nature of socialist enterprises (public enterprises) and private enterprises.
It must be pointed out that enterprises based on labor ownership embody the basic characteristics of the socialist mode of production, and enterprises built on the basis of asset ownership embody the basic characteristics of the capitalist mode of production, and there are fundamental differences in the nature of the two types of enterprises:
As an organism of the capitalist mode of production, in order to be able to meet the basic requirements of asset owners or capitalists for asset ownership, a capitalist enterprise must be an independent entity of means of production in nature (that is, in the process of enterprise production and operation, the value of labor power is predetermined to remain unchanged, and the production and operation status of the enterprise is manifested as the change in the profit and loss of the value of the means of production). The clear division of property rights is a necessary prerequisite for the existence and development of capitalist enterprises as independent economic entities, such as the share of the private assets of each asset owner in the total assets of the enterprise.
In order to be able to meet the basic requirements of the owners of labor for the ownership of labor, a socialist enterprise must be a productive labor entity in the process of production, and the public means of production remain unchanged in value in the process of production, and the operating conditions of the enterprise are manifested in the fluctuation of the amount of consumption value (whether there is much change in labor income), rather than the profit or loss of the value of the means of production. The necessary premise for the existence and development of socialist enterprises as independent economic entities is the clear distinction of labor rights, that is, how much labor is consumed in the formation of the enterprise's products, and what proportion of each laborer's labor is in the total labor, and so on. The essence of the relationship between the socialist state and the enterprise is how the means of production in public ownership are combined with the labor force on the basis of individual ownership. Since the means of production have been publicly owned, and the means of production owned by the public have a large-scale wholeness, it is impossible and unnecessary for the public-owned enterprises to exist and develop as independent entities of the means of production as individuals.
Therefore, if our enterprise concept cannot break through the framework of the entity of the means of production, it will be impossible to untie the knot of the relationship between the state and the enterprise, there will be no real separation of government and enterprise, and it will only be a utopian dream for socialist enterprises to become independent market entities.
There are two basic reasons why SOEs cannot develop themselves as independent economic entities:
First, in the process of establishing the socialist mode of production, we have gone into the misunderstanding of asset ownership, and proceeded from the principle of "whoever owns and who operates" to form the "state-owned and state-run" model. In this model, because the state has squeezed out the status of workers as the main body of socialist production, resulting in the externalization of the main interests of state-owned enterprises and being in a non-standard state, state-owned enterprises cannot operate independently and self-restraint in management.
First, in the process of establishing the socialist mode of production, we have misused the wage system and failed to realize distribution according to work (the issue that wages are not a rational form of distribution according to work, and the wage system has not realized distribution according to work, will not be discussed here for the time being), and if we cannot realize distribution according to work, we cannot distinguish between state-owned assets and the fruits of laborers' labor in terms of value; on the one hand, the laborers cannot really work more and get more, and they lose their enthusiasm and responsibility to participate in production and labor and enterprise management as masters; on the other hand, they cannot develop themselves as a truly independent economic entity in the value movement。 Therefore, in order for state-owned enterprises to truly become independent economic entities and become independent market entities, it is necessary to let the laborers be the masters of the country, and it is necessary to truly realize the distribution according to work; in a word, it is necessary to fully embody and meet the basic requirements of the laborers for labor ownership.
As long as we open the iron lock of asset ownership and go to the basis of labor ownership, the correct socialist mode of production will appear before us: this is the "state-owned labor camp" model.
"State-owned" embodies the basic characteristics of public ownership of the means of production, and as a basic function of a socialist state, it is manifested in the superiority that the means of production can be distributed according to social needs and flow according to efficiency, and at the same time, it is also the basic condition for the realization of distribution according to work in socialist enterprises. The state only regulates social production through the distribution and rational flow of the means of production, so that social supply and social demand are always in a state of balance, and at the same time, through the determination of a reasonable cost level and the supervision of the distribution process of enterprises, state-owned assets are in a state of value preservation.
Here, the "highly concentrated property rights" embody the superiority of the socialist state in distributing the means of production and adjusting the state of production according to social needs, and the laborers' labor ownership embodies the superiority of socialist enterprises in operating flexibly and satisfying themselves on the basis of distribution according to work. Once the "state-owned and state-run" model is replaced by the "state-owned labor-run" model, all kinds of drawbacks inherent in the old system will disappear with it, and the development of state-owned enterprises will enter a bright spring.
Fundamentally speaking, the basic issue in the reform of state-owned enterprises is not what kind of property rights system to establish and how to establish the property rights system, but how to replace the property rights system with an enterprise system that comprehensively embodies labor ownership and how to establish an enterprise system with labor rights. The implementation of the responsibility system for establishing agricultural production on the mainland has been able to bring about vitality because the model of "compensating for consumption, paying enough to the state, keeping enough for the collective, and keeping the rest for itself" has fundamentally embodied the labor ownership of "whoever works owns" and has satisfied the interests of the vast number of laborers for labor ownership, while the reason why the reform of state-owned enterprises has not succeeded for a long time and has achieved little results is that we have never been able to break free from the shackles of asset ownership and have never established a labor rights system in state-owned enterprises. When we really get out of the misunderstanding of asset ownership, the problem of state-owned enterprises not separating government from enterprise will naturally disappear.