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's easy to understand that workers are separated from the means of production and that asset owners appear. 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?
The questions involved 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 flow or allocate the means of production under the labor rights system?
This article now answers the fourth question: how to distribute the amount of new value generated by enterprises under the labor rights system?
The actual public ownership economic model is the difference between the public ownership model of property rights and the public ownership model of labor rights.
The Soviet model is a typical model of public ownership of property rights, that is, the model of "public ownership of the means of production + property rights system". This model is based on the establishment of a system with the owners as the main body and fully embodying the ownership of assets on the basis of the public ownership of the means of production. Therefore, this model can neither reflect the management right of the laborers to be the masters of the production process, nor can it reflect the laborers' requirements for distribution according to work. I call this model of public ownership the economic model a transitional economic model or an irregular economic model:
The model of public ownership of labor rights is a mode of production that combines the public ownership of the means of production with the system of labor rights, and this model is a mode of production that is opposed to the mode of production of surplus value, which I call the mode of production of consumer value. Because this mode of production implements the distribution according to work, each employee can participate in the distribution of the production results of the enterprise by virtue of labor, and the income of employees has a positive proportional relationship with the production results of the enterprise. Therefore, in the process of developing the public ownership economy with a labor rights system, the results of enterprise development will be reflected through the growth of workers' incomes, and the income of workers and the growth of the total economic volume will be in a state of simultaneous development. Therefore, the mode of production of consumer value is also the mode of production of common prosperity.
The distribution model of the production results of labor-owned enterprises is the distribution mode of the production results distributed according to work, and it is also the distribution mode of the production results that embodies the ownership of labor.
We are familiar with the mode of distribution of the production results of the production team at the time of the people's commune, that is, "what is compensated for consumption, what is paid to the state, what is left for the collective, and the rest is our own".
Here, in the first place, "compensating for consumption" is the compensation for the consumption of the value of the means of production; the two parts in the middle are the two parts that meet the different public needs of the laborers, which also include the deduction of the amount of value that satisfies the needs of expanding reproduction, so this is the deduction of the amount of value of the public needs; and finally, the "rest is their own" is the amount of value used for individual consumption, which is distributed among the members of the collective according to the difference in the amount of labor input.
The meaning of this model of distribution of production results is as follows:
1. Put the compensation for the value consumption of the means of production in the first place, and reflect the basic requirements for the operation and development of labor enterprises as independent labor entities under the premise of maintaining the value of public assets.
2. Under the condition of distribution according to work, the labor of laborers is either to satisfy their own public needs or to meet their own personal needs. Therefore, under the premise of public ownership and distribution according to work, there is no surplus labor, and the labor of laborers is no longer the difference between surplus labor and necessary labor, but between public labor and individual labor. Under the condition of realizing public ownership of the means of production, there are no longer simple bourgeoisie in enterprises, but only labor owners. In a situation where the laborers participate in the distribution of the fruits of production entirely by virtue of their labor inputs, there is no such thing as a "surplus".
3. Under the condition of distribution according to work, the value composition of the mode of production of consumption value is already "the value of the means of production + the value of public needs + the value of individual needs", and there is no longer "the value of necessary labor + the value of surplus labor".
4. Since the amount of value used for personal consumption is the amount of consumption value, as the final result of the enterprise, it appears in the form of a balance. Therefore, the mode of production under the condition of distribution according to work is essentially a mode of production of consumption value, and is no longer a mode of production of surplus value.
Why is it that in the mode of production of labor-owned enterprises, the labor composition of workers has become public need labor and individual need labor, and the value composition has become the amount of public need value and the amount of individual need value (consumption value)?
Because in a labor enterprise, everyone who participates in labor can participate in the distribution of the production results of the enterprise by virtue of labor input, and everyone has become the main body of production. The results of enterprise production are broken down by the amount of labor input after deducting the items of public need. The share of the amount of labor put in by each person corresponds to the amount of value distributed by the value of consumption. Here, whether it is the deduction of the value of the items to meet the public needs or the distribution of the value to meet the needs of individual consumption, it is necessary and necessary to meet the needs of the workers themselves. Therefore, there is nothing left to speak of.
Here we see that in property rights enterprises, the main body of production is the asset, the production and operation activities of the enterprise reflect the ownership of assets, and the enterprise implements the distribution according to capital. Therefore, the worker is paid a pre-agreed wage, and he is not eligible to participate in the distribution of the results of the enterprise's production. In labor-owned enterprises, workers are the main body of production, and the production and operation activities of the enterprise reflect the ownership of labor, and the enterprise also realizes distribution according to work. Therefore, all employees of the enterprise can participate in the distribution of the production results of the enterprise by virtue of the amount of labor input, and no one is excluded from the distribution of production results.
The same enterprise, the same production process, however, due to the difference in the public ownership of the means of production, the production subjects of the labor-owned enterprises and the property rights enterprises are different, which leads to the different claims embodied in the production process, and thus also makes the nature and characteristics of the value movement of the enterprises different: that is, the production results corresponding to the bourgeoisie are the surplus value, and the production results corresponding to the laborers are the consumption value; the difference between necessary labor and surplus labor corresponding to the property right enterprises, the difference between the labor required by the public and the labor needs of the individual corresponding to the labor right enterprises; and the difference between the value of necessary labor and the surplus value corresponding to the property rights enterprisesCorresponding to the labor enterprise is the difference between the value of public needs and the value of individual needs.
Why is it that during the period of the People's Commune, under the condition that the level of development of agricultural productive forces was low, a couple in the countryside could raise three, four, or five children until they started a family, but today, after 40 or 50 years of development, people do not dare to have a second child in an environment where childbearing is completely liberalized? The fundamental reason lies in the difference in the mode of production:
Under the conditions of the labor rights system, the laborer is the main body of production, the production process of the enterprise satisfies the labor ownership of the laborer, and its mode of production is the mode of production of consumer value, which has the characteristics of common prosperity because everyone can participate in the distribution of the production results of the enterprise by virtue of labor input, and this characteristic is reflected through the continuous enhancement of the ability of laborers to survive and develop;
Under the conditions of the property rights system, the bourgeoisie is the main body of production, and the production process of the enterprise satisfies the rights of the bourgeoisie's asset multiplication, and its mode of production is the mode of production of surplus value, because only the bosses or shareholders and other bourgeoisie have the right to participate in the distribution of the production results of the enterprise, and the vast majority of enterprise employees can only get predetermined wages. Therefore, the growth of the enterprise is manifested as an increase in the value of the assets of the bourgeoisie. Because the income of laborers or employee expenses is inversely proportional to the profitability of enterprises, profit maximization and cost minimization are the basic objectives of the operation of property rights enterprises, and this basic characteristic of the mode of production of surplus value determines that the development of the economy is the polarization characteristic of the majority of people working and the minority benefiting, thus also determining the basic contradiction between economic development and the relative decline of social consumption level, and thus also determines the periodic appearance of economic crisis.