The Subsistence Fund and the Reproduction of Labor Power

Abstract

When we study the sources of expenditures on the reproduction of labor power, we find expenditures from the family budget and the state budget. The magnitude and structure of these expenditures can be determined in various ways: the corresponding items of expenditure in the state budget are known, representative budget studies can be made to ascertain family expenditures, and the size of the consumption fund in national income can be calculated. All this information makes it possible to determine the kind of resources and the quantities of these resources that are used for the reproduction of labor power in socialist society. But this is only the prerequisite to the more extensive examination of the problem and to the determination of the magnitude of the necessary product. This requires the resolution of a number of theoretical problems. Among them in particular is the following: Is it appropriate to single out the subsistence fund, which is formed from the producers' necessary product, as an independent economic category? If we agree with those authors who maintain that the necessary product under socialism is produced directly as the consumption fund' or with the premise that the latter takes the specific form of wages and social consumption funds, we will have to admit that there is no place in socialist economic theory for the "subsistence fund" category.