Ways to Lower the Materials-Output Ratio

Abstract

At the June (1980) Plenum of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, L. I. Brezhnev noted: We have set ourselves the cardinal task of increasing the effectiveness of production and of improving the quality of our work, This goal must always be kept in sight. The July 12, 1979, decree of the Central Committee of the CPSU and the USSR Council of Ministers called for the introduction of the normative net output indicator. One of the basic purposes of the indicator is to provide optimal conditions for lowering the material intensiveness of production, The significance that lowering the materials-output ratio holds for increasing the effectiveness of social production stems from the growing share of expenditures of embodied labor in general production costs and from the increasing volume of production and consumption of material resources.