The Structure and Forms of Socialist Property

Abstract

The Twenty-Seventh CPSU Congress advanced the problem of reforming property relations to the forefront. The new edition of the CPSU Program adopted at that Congress emphasizes: "the strengthening and enhancement of public ownership of the means of production, which is the basis of the socialist economic system, is now and will continue to be the focus of the party's attention. In the future as well it will be necessary to raise the level of socialization of production, its planned organization, and to steadily improve the forms and methods of realization of the advantages and potential of public property" (1). What occasions such a formulation of the question? It is predetermined primarily by the fact that ownership of the means of production forms the basis of any society's economic system. It is this that permeates all production relations and acts as the "clamp" that unites them into a unified whole. For bourgeois society, this is private capitalist ownership. For socialist society, it is public ownership. The basic advantages of socialism and all its historic attainments are specifically associated with public ownership of the means of production.