The practical realization of full employment in the sphere of social production necessitates the more effective use of labor resources, the saving of labor power, and the replacement of live labor by machines. In this connection socialist countries are intensively searching for more sophisticated economic means that will provide effective incentives for expanding production with a smaller work force and for eliciting and releasing reserves of labor power at enterprises. One of these is the payment for labor resources — the special transfer of the monetary resources of enterprises to the state budget for the use of labor power. The essence and concrete forms of these payments are viewed by economists from various positions: as one of the elements in the system of normative payments by enterprises to the state budget for resources used in the production process. This system, which is to undergo development in the future, is a form of taxing the enterprise's profits while imparting to it a stimulating function. The payment for labor resources in this case is a category that expresses the relationship between the enterprise and the state with respect to the distribution of net income; as a component part of the planning system based on optimal valuations of all resources used in production depending on their social utility and scarcity; as a means for the more complete inclusion of the expenditures of live labor in the production costs of enterprises, assuring the more correct determination of the effectiveness of new technology, which should promote the acceleration of the mechanization and automation of production processes and reduction in the size of the work force; as a form of application of such economic measures which, in the face of the manpower shortage in Siberia and the Far East and the existence of large internal reserves at individual enterprises in other regions, would compel managers to be thrifty in their expenditure of live labor and to be prompt in releasing surplus manpower; as one of the prerequisites for securing the comparability of valuations of socially necessary expenditures on production in socialist countries in the selection of optimal variants of specialization, integration, and location of production in the course of the implementation of the comprehensive program of socialist economic integration of COMECON member nations.