Chapter 58 7. Improving economic effects and others

I fully support Comrade Xiannian's speech at the State Council retreat on September 9.This speech summed up the positive and negative experiences of our country's economic construction in the past 29 years, and at the same time absorbed the most useful things for us that many comrades felt most deeply when they visited abroad, and made a systematic exposition of the economic management reforms that must be carried out in order to realize our four modernizations , is a very important document of our party.I think that because of the reform of the economic management system, the problems are very complicated. Comrades on all fronts, including us who are engaged in economic theory work, should follow the direction pointed out by Comrade Xiannian, further study the reform of the economic management system, and boldly do something. On the basis of the experiment, we will continue to summarize, so that this work can be carried out.

In this speech by Comrade Xiannian, he repeatedly emphasized the issue of improving economic efficiency.Now I would like to make a few comments on this issue. The term economic effect is used more and more in our documents and articles. I think it is necessary to determine an accurate and unified term for this concept, so as to avoid confusion due to different understanding and usage by different people in the future.I think that economic effect should not only be a qualitative concept, but also quantitative and can be calculated. We often see such a sentence: "Use the minimum labor consumption to achieve the maximum economic effect."

We can also accept this statement itself. According to this statement, the concept of economic effect is difficult to quantify and cannot be expressed by a definite quantity.The concept of economic effect, I think, is the proportional relationship between the labor expended and the effect achieved.The effect achieved is not necessarily economical in itself, but it is economical once it is linked to labor consumption.For example, if we hold a report meeting, it may be an academic activity or a political activity. The effect of the meeting itself, such as whether the report is good or bad, is not directly reflected in the economy, but the meeting consumes living labor and materialized labor. As soon as the effect is linked to labor consumption, there is a question of whether the economic effect is good or bad.

We should say that when we engage in a certain kind of social practice aimed at achieving a certain effect, if the effect is the same, the economic effect will be greater if the labor consumption is small; if the labor consumption is large, the economic effect will be small.The concept of economic effect thus determined can be not only qualitative but also quantitative.Such notions about the size of economic effects are generally applicable.If an effect itself can be expressed by a definite quantity, then the size of the economic effect can also be expressed in other words, that is: the same labor consumption, the greater the effect, the greater the economic effect; the smaller the effect, the greater the economic effect. The effect is small.These two statements seem to be exactly the same, but the most essential thing is: when the effect is the same, it is the most essential thing to calculate the economic effect by the amount of labor consumption.Because some effects cannot be expressed by quantity, but labor consumption can be expressed by quantity, that is, human labor is nothing more than labor time, which can be quantified.Of course, there are still some difficulties in concrete terms, such as abstract labor and concrete labor, and there are still some problems in calculation.But compared with the quantitative effect, it is still easier.

Why do we say that the economic effect cannot be quantified by using the phrase "obtaining the greatest effect with the least labor consumption"?We can use the example of running a race to illustrate this problem.When running a race, we need to determine the same starting point and end point, that is, when we determine the same distance, we can compare who is faster, and we can calculate the degree of speed.If the time is uncertain and the distance is uncertain, it is not easy to compare. The concept of "running the greatest distance in the shortest time" is just fast, but it is impossible to measure how fast it is.Therefore, the requirement to improve the economic effect is to achieve the same effect with less labor consumption.

When studying economic effects, there is a special case, that is, the example of material material production. Here, the concept of economic effects can be embodied as the proportional relationship between the produced use value and labor consumption.At this time, the economic effect can be defined not only as the amount of labor consumed by the same use value, but also as the amount of use value obtained by the same labor consumption.This is the most important case, but not the general case.Because we not only produce, but also have the problem of labor consumption in all economic life, the problem of economic effect can be said to exist all the time.Take the meeting mentioned above as an example. Short meetings are long, and small meetings are large. If you only look at the problem from the perspective of economic effects, it is not good.

In the final analysis, saving labor consumption is about time economy.There is a foreign adage: time is money.It reflects the capitalist idea of ​​money, which we certainly don't like to say.But we can say: time is life.Because a person's life is made up of time.No matter how long a person lives, the longevity is only 100 years.Years are made up of months, months are made up of days, days are made up of hours, and subdivided into minutes and seconds.So wasting time is wasting life.Lu Xun said that wasting other people's time is murder for money.Of course, this is different from killing people with a knife. In the latter, people are killed all at once with a knife.What Lu Xun meant was to tell people not to waste other people's time casually.A person's life can also be divided into valid life and invalid life from the viewpoint of labor.When the time comes when nothing can be done, the life of this person is useless from the point of view of labor.Looking at a person's 24 hours a day, part of it is the time for physiological needs, such as sleeping and eating.There is also a part of labor time (including all physical and mental labor time), and a part of enjoyment time and development time.An economic analysis of time is required.How to analyze and classify is worthy of further study.

The progress and purpose of production in our entire society is to meet people's material and cultural needs.There must be two conditions to meet the needs, one condition is to have a material basis, and the other condition must also have time.For example, to go to a movie, you must have a material basis (cinema and movies, etc.), and you must also have free time to watch it.If the means of consumption are divided into means of subsistence, means of enjoyment, and means of development, as Engels said in the preface to Wage Labor and Capital, then it can also be said that there is the time required for survival (the labor time for obtaining the material means of survival , physiologically necessary time, etc.), the time needed for enjoyment (such as watching movies, etc.), the time needed for self-development (such as reading, learning, etc.).

The study of economic issues is inseparable from the study of labor, and the study of labor requires the study of time, but so far it seems that there is no book that makes a scientific and detailed analysis of time.The purpose of our socialist production is to meet the growing needs of the people.Then in terms of time, the people must continue to have a better and reasonable control.If you are working for survival all day long, then this method of time management is very low-level.For example, primitive society spent a lot of time working for survival, but even in that period, there was still some time for entertainment, such as dancing.A person who is deprived of any time for rest, recreation, lives as a slave.In one's time management, leisure time, enjoyment time, and development time are very important.

Of course, making such a distinction over time should not be absolute.In working hours there may also be wasted time, idle time.In addition, labor itself can also have the nature of enjoying and developing oneself, that is, labor itself can also be a means of enjoying life, and this kind of labor time also has the nature of enjoying time and developing time.This also prolongs the enjoyment time and development time of people.The boundaries between enjoyment, development and labor are not sharply separated.In the advanced stage of communism, each according to his ability is to turn labor into a means of enjoying life, and labor into enjoyment labor and development labor. This is the ideal of communism.Of course, in other societies, part of the labor is enjoyment labor and developmental labor, but there is still a lot of monotonous and heavy labor that does not imply enjoyment or development.This is limited by the level of productivity development.What makes a communist society different from other societies is that labor has generally become enjoyment and creative labor.

Analyzing labor consumption is very useful.To reduce the consumption of social labor is to create conditions for more people in society to enjoy and develop.There are twenty-four hours in a day, which is fixed, so is there any way to increase the time?Is there any way to produce time?This is labor.Labor consumes time, and at the same time labor can produce time.With the increase in labor productivity, the economic effect of the whole society has been improved. It does not take so much labor time to produce so many products, and people can use the saved time to increase production, so that people can obtain more means of subsistence. , enjoy information and develop information.The means of production are not final products, and the products used to meet social needs, apart from those used in class struggle, can only be personal consumption materials and materials used to meet the needs of social development, science, education and culture.At the same time, labor productivity increases, economic effects increase, and leisure time actually increases.There are two meanings here. One means that the material resources are more abundant, and people have more abundant material materials for leisure time to enjoy. The other means that people do not have to spend so much time on productive activities and have more leisure Time to enjoy and develop yourself.The more developed the society, the more developed the production, the richer the time.Conversely, the richer the time, the more time there is for research, improvement, and development, and the more advanced science and technology and production will be. In terms of the basic economic law of socialism, the issue of improving economic efficiency is a fundamental issue.Everyone has labor consumption, and we use various methods to save a little labor consumption in every link.The time saved can be used to increase other products when social products are insufficient, but the time cannot be fully scheduled.No matter what kind of society there is always free time for people.This free time is very positive.A society without free time can never progress.If people who do scientific work are busy all day long and have no free time, or even if they have free time, they are cold and hungry, then it is quite difficult to think scientifically.Therefore, the study of economic effects and the analysis of the increase in labor productivity and the improvement of life in terms of time are fundamentally based on the requirements of the basic economic laws of socialism. The economic effect of the whole society is the comprehensive result of many economic effects, just as the development speed of social production is the comprehensive result of many production development speeds.The rapid development of the whole society is the result of the rapid development of each link, but it is not a simple arithmetic addition, but a systematic, interconnected and balanced relationship.As with speed, so with the overall economic effect.If the overall social plan is inappropriate and the management work is poor, so that the various factors cancel each other out, or slow down, resulting in a backlog, etc., it will affect the improvement of the overall social and economic effects. Of course, the issue of economic effect is also affected by various factors other than the economy, as well as superstructure, ideology, and political thought.For example, the dissemination and development of Marxist theory, the deepening and popularization of ideological and political education, the development of socialist democracy, the consolidation of the dictatorship of the proletariat, and the strengthening of the socialist legal system can all play a role in promoting economic effects through various economic factors. .On the contrary, the counter-revolutionary sabotage by the "Gang of Four" and the ideological confusion caused by the "Gang of Four" in the past few years will also cause a lot of waste and reduce the economic effect.When the "Gang of Four" was rampant, they were destroying and wasting big things, and it didn't make much sense for us to make careful calculations in small places.But today we need to pay great attention to the economic effects, and make scientific demonstrations on the economic effects of the various measures we have taken. If we can follow the results of this kind of research, then we can receive results, reduce labor consumption, and speed up production. speed and improve people's lives.If it cannot be implemented due to the management system and superstructure, it can also improve our understanding and determination to reform the management system and superstructure correctly, so emphasizing economic effects is also a kind of political education. Now that we are carrying out the four modernizations, we must carefully calculate and budget everywhere, and everyone cares about the economy.I think that from the first grade of elementary school, children should be taught to cherish time, pay attention to efficiency, save wealth, oppose waste and destruction, and so on.A middle school student must learn some common sense of economics and understand the meaning of economic effects. Every subject in a university must teach economics, and cadres must learn economics.Many of us now have too weak economic viewpoints, don't know how to manage money, and don't pay attention to economic effects, which brings great losses to our work.It is necessary to take various measures to greatly strengthen the economic point of view.