The Economic Form of Material Products of Science

Yu. S. Nekhoroshev

(Submitted by the scientific seminar of the Department of Political Economy)

K. Marx called science “the most solid form of wealth.” He wrote: “The wealth of a country is manifested not so much in the possession of objects already made and mastered as in the superiority of skill and knowledge (acquired through long practice and experience) in order to invent and make more”¹. Science plays an enormous and progressive role in the formation of the national gross product.

The principal economic form in which the products of scientific institutions are used is their realization through the final product of material production. The latter can be taken into account in the increase of the physical volume of national income, although establishing the magnitude of this increase is associated with great difficulties. The final result may also be considered the growth of the country’s net income. The latter, in this capacity, has its advantages. It mobilizes workers to obtain maximum results with minimum investment. The growth of net income usually coincides with the rates of scientific and technological progress.

On the other hand, a significant part of scientific production is embodied not in material production, but in the system of education, in the improvement of the principles of leadership and management. This production indirectly affects production, creating the necessary conditions for the manufacture of material products.

In any case, science itself does not create material products. One can speak of a final product in this sphere only for a scientific institution. From the national-economic point of view, however, this product is always intermediate. Moreover, unlike produc—

of the material product (final or intermediate) is in its main part potential wealth. The potential use value of a scientific and technical achievement is transformed into actual (real) value as it is used in the production process.

The importance of defining the product of science has three aspects. The first aspect is of international significance. It determines the role of science in the economic competition between two systems. A methodology that distorts the content of the category of final product leads to an overstatement or understatement of the actual volume of the annual social product. Thus, for example, the American economist F. Machlup clearly overstates the gross national product of the United States by assigning to it everything paid for by the population, government institutions, and firms, if these expenditures are counted as capital expenditures².

The second aspect has an internal national-economic significance. Without determining the magnitude of the product of science, it is impossible to provide qualified state leadership of this most important sphere of human activity. It is essential to know, at least approximately, what return in rubles is yielded by one ruble invested in science. Here the final product of a scientific institution must be counted as the final product from science in material production.

The third aspect is connected with the need to have objective criteria for evaluating the activity of each scientific institution. Without this, proposals to introduce cost-accounting principles into science become meaningless, and planning and financing are deprived of an objective basis.

The product of science appears in special object-material forms of expression and has specific stages of realization and use. Each form has a different value and characterizes in a nonidentical way the creative output of a scientific worker or institution.

The most typical results of scientific work may be considered: 1) scientific discoveries, materialized in reports, printed works, some kinds of instruments, etc.; 2) inventions, formalized by authors’ certificates or patents, and also by licenses for sale abroad; 3) scientific developments carried out under economic contracts, and rationalization proposals; 4) scientific and technical documentation, consultations, etc.

Abroad, “know-how” has become widespread; it is not only sold within countries but is also an important object in international trade.

Scientific discoveries constitute a relatively small part of scientific output. The number of genuine discoveries is growing more slowly than the number of scientists. It is enough to look, in the library of any large higher educational institution or other scientific institution, at dissertations, Proceedings, Bulletins, and Izvestia written to obtain an academic degree, to become convinced that few ideas in these works lead to a production result valuable to society.

Even when genuine scientific discoveries are involved, only a limited number of them are suitable for direct use in production. Perhaps for this reason the authors themselves—

² F. Machlup, The Production and Distribution of Knowledge in the United States. Moscow, 1966, p. 71.

discoverers cannot always assess the practical significance of their works. Examples from the history of physics: Hertz, Maxwell, Lorentz, de Broglie². Most discoveries find their way into practice only after many years. This often gives rise to such arguments: what, for example, does nuclear physics give to man? Is it not too costly, if one considers that its “products” are photographs of a nuclear reaction, a few numerical curves characterizing the properties of particles? After all, the entire output of a huge accelerator over 20 years could fit into a single briefcase. Would it not be better to spend the money on research in other fields of science?

Indeed, the accelerator “produces” thought, knowledge—the principal value of our time. Is it not an honorable task of science, especially materialist science, to study the structure of matter, space, and time at the contemporary level of human knowledge? After all, high-energy physics investigates the most fundamental properties of the material world, develops our concepts of the laws of nature, and this in turn develops the power of the human mind³. It is precisely discoveries in the natural sciences that lead to radical changes in the mode of thought; and this, by influencing the methods and technology of science, changes all human practice.

Those scientific achievements that are directly applied in production enrich society materially, increase man’s mastery over nature, and therefore science in this part may be assigned to the productive forces, and the discovery itself—to national wealth.

It is very difficult to estimate the total return on investments in the development of the fundamental sciences. But it is quite obvious that all modern civilization is based on the practical results of pure science. “The total expenditures on it from ancient times to our day are equivalent to only a two-week output of our industry at the present level”⁴. That is, everything invested in the development of pure science in the past is equivalent to the amount by which the output of this year will exceed the output of past years.

That part of scientific discoveries which, in completed form, can leave the sphere of science and be used directly in production assumes some social form. Under conditions in which commodity-money relations prevail, some of these products of science may acquire a specific commodity form. This commodity form is historically transient and is not inherent in the process of scientific production as such. The existence of the commodity form will become unnecessary when commodity-money relations disappear in all spheres of human relations.

For the time being, however, part of the products of science has the specific form of use value and a special form of value. Here it is appropriate once again to emphasize that not every stage of scientific activity is accompanied by the appearance of products capable of assuming the commodity form. Theoretical investigations that have no direct outlet into production, being generally accessible, do not have such a possibility. But the transformation of part of the products of science into a commodity—

evidence of a further deepening of the social division of labor.

In terms of their economic content, the products of science must be classified among so-called services. “At any given moment, among articles of consumption,” wrote K. Marx, “alongside articles of consumption existing in the form of commodities, there is a certain quantity of articles of consumption in the form of services.” And further: “This expression generally means nothing other than that special use-value which this labor supplies, like every other commodity; but the special use-value of this labor has received here the specific name ‘services’ because labor renders services not as a thing, but as activity—which, however, in no way distinguishes it, say, from some machine, for example, from a clock”⁵. That is, a service is the action of one or another use-value, its useful effect manifested in the process of consumption. As K. Marx wrote, “only consumption first makes the product into wealth, regardless of whether this consumption takes place...”⁶. (Although K. Marx sometimes uses the word “service” in another sense as well⁷.)

Products of science (realized inventions and developments) are part of the national gross product. And as such they are created by productive labor. There exist several, sometimes mutually exclusive, interpretations of the concepts of “productive” and “unproductive” labor. Polar positions are the notions of productive labor: a) as any organized labor, b) as labor creating material goods in the form of things. The truth lies somewhere in between.

By productive labor K. Marx means purposive activity aimed at creating use-values. Its principal feature consists in the direct creation of material goods and material conditions for the cultural life of society.

Unproductive labor only indirectly (and not always) affects the production of things and services. Unproductive labor creates those services that are connected with the social side of production and that bear a pronounced class character (the activity of the state apparatus, with the exception of the organization of public education, medical services, etc.). Services supplied by scientific labor are intended for consumption in any society. The scientific preparation of production as a whole is one of the subfunctions of the collective worker. This means that the labor of scientific workers is one of the important elements of material production, is materialized in the products of labor, and becomes a source of growth of society’s national wealth.

Of course, in the sphere of science as well, not all labor is productive. One should regard as unfounded V. Medvedev’s assertion that the labor of scientific workers must be considered productive regardless of the degree of remoteness from the very process of acting upon the object of labor in which it is found⁸. Productive

labor create only those products of science that satisfy not merely a social need, but a need of social reproduction. They must be the result of the process of reproduction and possess the capacity to be included in it again. Moreover, in the sphere of science, as in any other branch of material production, not all expenditures of labor can prove useful from the social point of view and, in this sense, productive.

The products of science differ not only from commodity-things, but also from other commodity-services. The latter cannot accumulate and are suitable only for one-time consumption. The process of consuming the products of science may be repeated many times and may be indefinitely prolonged.

The use value of a product of science, like that of any other product of human labor, cannot consist of nothing. Every product must contain an object of labor, a definite natural substratum. Although, as K. Marx writes, the proportion between labor and the substance of nature in them varies greatly⁹. The exchange of substances between man and nature also takes place in scientific production. But in the use value of a scientific product there is no substance of nature. Yet inventions cannot be created without objects of labor, by the genius of researchers alone. Accumulated knowledge must be regarded not as an object of labor, but as a substance characterizing the degree of development of labor power and of the means of labor.

If the product of science assumes a commodity form (can be realized with the aid of money), then, along with use value, it has some form of price. But what underlies this price? For commodity-things, it is value. Do the products of science have value? (Here we are speaking of scientific discoveries that have a direct outlet into production.) Here we encounter different points of view. For a long time the view prevailed in the economic literature that services (including scientific ones) are created outside the sphere of material production by unproductive labor and therefore have no value. They are pure costs of society. It was said that, if one were to take the opposite point of view, it would turn out that the broader the sphere of services, the richer society is, whereas in reality the foundation of the economy is not commodity-services, but commodity-things.

In the course of discussion, the adherents of the traditional views gradually began to yield their positions. Under the influence of facts from real life (in developed countries employment is growing mainly at the expense of the service sphere), it began to be said that part of services should be included in the value of national income. A. I. Kats defined this part as one-third, although he did not indicate an objective criterion for this share¹⁰.

There are also authors who do not deny the expediency of monetary valuation of services, but believe that services do not create, and therefore do not have, value. “Value is a production relation in the creation of material goods”¹¹. It must be understood that the author does not regard a service as a material good.

Another point of view is that services have val—

a value corresponding to the quantity of abstract socially necessary labor expended on their production. Services have equal rights in the commodity world and circulate on the basis of the law of value. The magnitude of this value is determined not directly, not by counting the astronomical hours spent on their production, but by means of price, that is, through the market, through the evaluations given to services by their consumers. In the opinion of the adherents of this point of view, any other interpretation would mean, in theoretical terms, a departure from Marx’s labor theory of value, and in practical terms, the assertion that from ¼ to ½ of the persons engaged in labor in developed countries receive incomes as a gift from the rest of the population engaged in “productive labor”¹². As a result of the sale of services, not only are the costs (materials and wages) of their production reimbursed, but a surplus product is also realized.

However, no one conceals the difficulties connected with measuring scientific output in value terms. Scientific research in general, by its very nature, is poorly amenable to any measurement. There are examples when scientific investigations that were manifestly absurd in the end became profitable¹³. But is it so easy to determine the number of hours of socially necessary labor expended on the production of commodity-things? After all, value is only an indirect, and therefore very approximate, measure of labor expended.

An additional difficulty in measuring the expenditures of scientific labor consists in the fact that in this sphere its quality—determined by the creative abilities, vocation, and talent of the scientist—plays a more essential role. The widespread view according to which the products of science do not possess value, since they are irreproducible, is not well-founded. Irreproducibility does not eliminate value.

An irreproducible product is also created under conditions of the social division of labor and the property separation of the producer.

Of course, it is difficult to prove, to persuade, that the economic categories of commodity production, by their inner nature, are directly applicable to scientific creativity. Value in money equalizes everything—both talents and mediocrities. The categories of average social labor, the law of reduction, average cost of production, average profit, etc., relate to mass material production and not to scientific inquiry¹⁴. One may even regard as fair the assertion that the labor of a scientist is not subject to quantitative evaluations, that its true value can be shown only by time. It is also correct, to some extent, that the actual value of a product of science is determined not through the mediation of the market, but through the judgments of specialists. But if this were entirely so, then economic science would have no place in the sphere of scientific research. Yet the need for economic analysis here is now more necessary than in any other sphere.

The product of science nevertheless has value. It differs substantially—

is related, in its economic purpose, to the cost of goods sold. This is a value that expresses labor outlays even more indirectly—through the useful changes for society that may occur in production as a result of applying the product of science. Such a value cannot directly underlie the price, but in the final analysis it has a definite influence on it. The price of a product of science is in most cases not connected with its labor-intensity. To a predominant degree it is determined by the consumer’s monopoly. The latter takes into account the economic or other effect that is delivered through useful changes in production. The scale of its use in the national economy has an enormous influence on the magnitude of the price of scientific output.

In most cases the price of a product of science is, as it were, an irrational category; it is regulated by demand and supply, that is, it is determined in the same way as the price of non-reproducible goods (as a monopoly price).

Most scientific discoveries have no direct outlet into production. These products of science do not have an independent, economically significant form. Scientific discoveries formulated by science reveal only the ways of using the forces of nature. “The practical application of mechanics, atomic energy, for example, is unthinkable without the discoveries of Newton and Einstein. However, knowledge of the laws discovered by them is still insufficient to build a locomotive or a nuclear reactor”¹⁶). Knowledge of methods and techniques is needed; that is, inventions are needed—products of applied science and production practice. K. Marx wrote that only through technical inventions can science compel the forces of nature to serve society¹⁷). An invention always, or in most cases, rests on data from fundamental science, on one or several discoveries.

In most cases inventions are the product of applied research. Although there is no unanimity in the world literature on the relationship between applied research and inventions. Some (S. Kuznets) believe that inventive activity approximately coincides with the category of applied research. Others (J. Schmookler) hold the opinion that inventions are forms of scientific development; still others classify both inventions and applied research as development. But rarely does anyone confuse inventions with theoretical work¹⁸).

Here we proceed from the fact that an invention is the highest product of applied research. The result of the latter may also be other forms of solution to technical problems, for various reasons not belonging to the category of inventions. A large part of inventions is the result of systematic, purposeful actions by researchers.

What place, then, do inventions occupy in the system of productive forces and in the national wealth of society?

The authors of a textbook on Soviet patent law repeatedly emphasize the idea that an invention is not a material good. They write: “The technical proposal itself nevertheless always remains an immaterial good, the result of a definite creative labor, a thought embodied in one or another objectiv—

¹⁶ V. Roman, The Industrial Revolution in the Development of Society, Moscow, 1969, p. 163.
¹⁷ K. Marx and F. Engels, Works, vol. 16, p. 128.
¹⁸ ME i MO, 1967, No. 12, p. 41.

Consequently, it must be assumed that invention as a mental good has no place in the system of productive forces. But it is especially detailedly and insistently asserted that an invention is an idea, that its nature is ideal and not material, by the well-known Soviet specialist in patent law V. Ya. Ionas¹⁷. He tries to confirm this thought by means of the following thought experiment. If, for example, all wheels on the earth were destroyed together with their drawings, the invention would nevertheless remain, and the wheel would be made anew. If, however, together with the destruction of the wheels the concept of the wheel were to disappear, that is, if humanity lost the idea of the wheel, the invention would perish; the wheel would have to be invented again. “An invention is not an object of the material world,” concludes V. Ya. Ionas. The material aspect of an invention, that is, its object form, introduces only an ideal object into the sphere of legal relations¹⁸.

The very gross error that V. Ya. Ionas commits consists in the fact that he reduces materiality to only one of its forms—substantiality. K. Marx pointed out a similar error in A. Smith: “However, materialization, etc., of labor should not be understood in such a Scottish way as A. Smith understands it. If we speak of the commodity as a materialized expression of labor, ... then we are speaking only of an imaginable, i.e. exclusively social, mode of existence of the commodity, which has nothing in common with its bodily reality...”[^22]. Even consciousness, the idea, are a product of the material world.

It may be agreed that an invention is not a corporeal substance, but it is an object of the material world. Although it is a definite object of the material world, it is not some concrete machine or device, not the first industrial specimen of some product.

However, an invention is also not simply a thought, an idea, a spiritual potency. A new thought may have an entirely independent and finished significance in scientific (especially theoretical, socio-political, etc.), literary, and artistic creation. And in general the “idea,” thought, is an obligatory element of every purposeful human activity. In this man differs from the animal. In this regard one may cite K. Marx’s well-known example of the architect and the bee. Before setting about the production of one or another use-value, man creates its ideal image, mentally constructs it in his head. Under modern conditions such construction on paper, and not in kind, is the profession of a special category of workers—designers, constructors, etc. Ideas and principles live incomparably longer than inventions and still more than the constructions in which they are embodied. The wheel to which V. Ya. Ionas refers, if it is considered abstractly, that is, in the way the named author does, is not an invention. It is in fact an idea on the basis of which, or with the use of which, hundreds of thousands (perhaps millions) of inventions and still more things of various con-

designs and of various purposes. One thing is the wheel in a handcart or in a wagon, and another is the wheel in the landing gear of a modern airliner or in any other modern machine. An invention is a complex material substance. It is not even a complex of knowledge, both existing and newly obtained, as A. B. Nikolaev believes¹⁹. An invention is a combination of knowledge and proposals for the method of manufacturing new devices, and so on, having such a form that permits them, in principle, to be used in practical activity (primarily in economic production). The idea itself, however, in most cases cannot be directly used in economic or other practical activity.

As products of material production and as objects of the material world, inventions, under certain conditions, may assume the commodity form. Moreover, of all types of scientific output, it is mainly inventions that possess an independent commodity form (irrespective of their introduction into production). The share of scientific output in the commodity world (that is, as commodities) is relatively small. The revenue received from the commodities of scientific production does not exceed 13% of companies’ expenditures on carrying out scientific research in production²⁰. But 80% of this revenue comes from patents and licenses issued for inventions²¹. In 1965 the amount received by U.S. companies for inventions, according to A. B. Nikolaev’s calculations, was 1.8–2 billion dollars²². All this indicates that in the sphere of scientific research as well (and especially at its points of contact with it), value categories and value calculations have quite real content.

An invention, if it appears as a commodity, has use value. This use value is a highly specific substance. It is material (it is not simply an idea), but it is not corporeal. Like a production service, the use value of an invention is capable of performing a definite role in material production. This role comes down, in the final analysis, to delivering certain material benefits to the person who acquires the property right to this invention. Herein lies the specificity of the utility of an invention’s use value. Another feature of it is uniqueness, although not absolute: society can satisfy one and the same technical need with an entire class of inventions. In general, if an invention is sold and bought, this means that it has, first of all, use value. Every commodity is bought not because it is value, but because it is use value and, as such, satisfies definite needs.

But a commodity is the unity of use value and value. The value of an invention, like that of any other commodity, is created by labor. That is, its sole substance is labor. And any other assertion (for example, that the value of an invention is partly determined by its use value) is anti-scientific, a departure from Marxism. But it is also incorrect to sever pro-

the process of the formation of value from the specificity of use-value. Use-value, although it does not determine value, nevertheless has a substantial influence on the forms in which it is introduced, in particular on the price. The price of an invention has many features of a monopoly price, established for non-reproducible commodities. But all the same, the magnitude of value is an auxiliary price-forming factor.

Value exists here, despite the fact that there are no sufficiently reliable criteria for determining socially necessary labor expenditures. But science is no exception here. People speak, for example, of the value of oil wells, although drilling them does not always bring the expected results. The difficulty of determining expenditures does not eliminate the problem of such determination; it can be carried out only on the basis of value. The specificity consists in the fact that labor expenditures in the scientific sphere are determined not by time, but still more indirectly—through the economic or other useful effect delivered to society. Or, better to say, through the cheapening of commodities. K. Marx wrote as follows: “Insofar as natural science teaches how... to replace human labor by the forces of nature, it costs nothing... and absolutely cheapens commodities”²³. That is, scientific achievements do not add value to the social product of production, but they reduce the value of each individual commodity. “The less value they transfer to the product... the more closely they approach in their service the forces of nature”²⁴.

The connection between the expenditures of scientific labor and the useful effect is not always seen with sufficient clarity. Most often it seems that there is no connection at all between expenditures and useful effect. But this is not so. Under modern conditions, dozens, and sometimes hundreds, of collectives work on the solution of one and the same technical problem. An objective competition (or rivalry) of scientific and technical ideas takes place, as a result of which only one (the first) will be recognized as an invention. Statistically, it is possible to take account of all of society’s labor expenditures on this invention. From the standpoint of society, these expenditures may be recognized as useful, since they ensure the possibility of duplication in solving the task posed. Although for an individual scientific collective (which did not succeed in being first) these expenditures at this stage prove unreimbursed (or are reimbursed through financing from the state budget). Thus, in the process of competition among scientific and technical ideas there may take shape something like socially necessary labor expenditures (not socially necessary time). Where, however, there is no such competition, no solutions that can be counterposed to the invention, the price for it is detached from labor expenditures. For a certain time the price will be a monopoly price, regulated only by supply and demand. This means that the given sphere of scientific research is strictly classified, firmly isolated from the unified process of scientific creativity and social production. The law of value in such a case is observed only on the scale of society as a whole.

Various variants (models) of the formation of prices for inventions have been considered by A. B. Nikolaev²⁵.

It should also be noted that under capitalism the commercial value of an invention, that is, the benefit from it for the patent holder, does not reflect its social utility. The commercial value of an invention consists in the patent owner’s right to restrict or even prohibit the use of the invention by his competitors. It reflects the monopoly conditions of its production and application. In view of this, scientific achievements, its discoveries and inventions that have become public property (or, better said, have become available for gratuitous use), are not worth a penny. K. Marx emphasized the idea that the time required to assimilate the discoveries of science has almost no relation to the labor time needed for their original creation²⁶. In the case of high costs for technical improvement, capitalist firms prefer to protect their interests not by patenting and publishing its essence, but by keeping it secret. A tendency has emerged to trade in technical results, rather than in monopoly patent rights.

Thus, under conditions of commodity production, the economic connection between various forms of scientific research and other spheres of activity (primarily with production) is mediated, or may be mediated, by commodity exchange. An invention, as a product of human labor, unlike “ideas,” may be an object of ownership, a form of national wealth. The decree of the Council of People’s Commissars of the RSFSR of June 30, 1919, declared inventions created on the territory of the RSFSR to be the property of the whole people. V. I. Lenin assigned to inventions, as national wealth, an important role in the technical re-equipment of the entire national economy.

As a component part of national wealth, inventions are intermediate products. Moreover, for the organizations where they are created, they are a final product. The enterprises that use these products regard inventions as an additional production factor, standing alongside expenditures on materials and labor power. The fact that an invention is an intermediate product does not diminish its value for society. Without it, progress in the development of production is impossible. Moreover, practice shows that the existence of many scientific institutions can be justified commercially only on condition that their work is brought to the level of inventions.

At the same time, the potential and real use value of an invention must not be confused. An invention becomes a real wealth of society as it is realized in production. But the time required to assimilate inventions is very often protracted. And this makes them a clot of deferred labor, only potential wealth of society.

Thus, if an invention is potential wealth of society, it is no longer simply a spiritual potency. It is already significantly closer to material wealth than a discovery. An introduced invention saves and facilitates labor for society, satisfies new needs, promotes growth in the volume of production and growth in labor productivity. K. Marx directly called inventions means,

with whose help “science compels the forces of nature to serve labor, and thanks to which the social or cooperative character of labor develops”^31).

In Marx’s Capital there is even a paragraph entitled “Economy Effected by Inventions”^32). Today such economy is taken into account by statistics. In 1970 the average annual saving per invention introduced in the USSR amounted to 35 thousand rubles^33). Calculations show that the economic effect from introduced inventions and rationalization proposals is 13–14 times greater than expenditures on invention and rationalization.

Introduced inventions that yield real savings often have the significance of potential wealth, because it is very difficult to establish their actual value for society. It is not always possible to determine the scale on which an invention will be used, or the period during which it will produce savings for society. And what is calculated is determined very conditionally and approximately.

Those inventions which, for one reason or another, have not reached production (and they are still the majority), like discoveries, must be regarded as potential wealth. If the potential possibilities of science were realized in full measure, then even now we would have complete abundance of material goods. However, the potential and real possibilities of science do not coincide. According to an American source, the ratio between the number of “ideas,” technically feasible solutions based on them, patents and, finally, patented inventions introduced into production is 540:98:8:1^34). And under our conditions, the realization of all discoveries and inventions requires colossal capital investments, which accumulate gradually. As the accumulation increases, the achievements of science will be introduced to an ever fuller extent, which in turn will lead to the growth of social wealth. Science will be transformed into a direct productive force. Such a qualitative change in the role of science will signify the attainment of maximum efficiency in social production.

Thus, the products of science are scientific discoveries, inventions, and developments. Although these are objective indicators of creativity, they do not unambiguously express the productivity of the labor of a scientist or a scientific collective. But there are as yet no better criteria for evaluating activity. Therefore the Central Committee of the CPSU and the Council of Ministers of the USSR, in their decree “On Measures to Increase the Efficiency of the Work of Scientific Organizations...” (1968), provided for the creation of a general procedure for the acceptance and evaluation of completed research and development projects. When evaluating the activity of scientific collectives, it is advisable to be guided by such indicators as novelty and promise (incidentally, discoveries and inventions are characterized precisely by these), as well as by the number of discoveries and inventions, and the number of licenses sold abroad. It is precisely through discoveries, inventions, and developments that the direct “technological” connection between science and the economic growth of society is realized. At the same time, one should not diminish the educational connection, which

^31) K. Marx and F. Engels, Works, vol. 16, p. 128.
^32) See: K. Marx and F. Engels, vol. 25, part 1, p. 115.
^33) Problems of Invention, 1971, no. 5, p. 5.
^34) Problems of Invention, 1969, no. 6, p. 20.

may be no less effective for society (in industrialized countries approximately 30% of economic growth is associated with the level and effectiveness of the education system³⁵). But it is less amenable to economic analysis.

³⁵ ME and MO, 1969, No. 4, p. 115.

1. K. Marx. Technical Notebooks. TsPA IML, fond 1, inventory 1, 1696 (3865), p. 88. ↩

2. See: V. A. Fock, Remarks on the “Creative Autobiography” of A. Einstein. Uspekhi fizicheskikh nauk, 1956, No. 1, p. 109. ↩

3. Acad. B. Pontecorvo, On elementary particles, accelerators, and skeptics. Pravda, 1967, February 1; Acad. G. Budker, The Economics of the Micro-World. Pravda, 1969, February 27. ↩

4. Science and Humanity. Znanie Publishing House, 1966, p. 220. ↩

5. K. Marx and F. Engels, Works, vol. 26, part 1, p. 151, p. 413. ↩

6. Ibid., p. 294. ↩

7. A. Kogan, “On Two Different Concepts Expressed by K. Marx in the Terms ‘Service’,” Economic Sciences, 1968, No. 10, p. 70. ↩

8. V. Medvedev, “On the Question of the Character of Labor in the Sphere of Services,” ME i MO, 1969, No. 10, p. 106. ↩

9. K. Marx and F. Engels, Works, vol. 13, pp. 22–23. ↩

10. A. I. Kats, Labor Productivity in the USSR and the Principal Capitalist Countries. Moscow, 1964, p. 47. ↩

11. M. I. Skarzhinskii, Labor in the Nonproductive Sphere. “Mysl,” 1968, p. 22. ↩

12. Ya. Pevzner. “There Is No Double Counting of Services.” ME i MO, 1969, No. 3, p. 89. ↩

13. B. Dodge. The Industry of Scientific Research and Its Profitability. The Effectiveness of Scientific Research. Moscow, 1968, p. 305. ↩

14. E. Sollertinskaya. “V. I. Lenin and Questions of Methodology in the Theory of Realization and National Income.” Ekonomicheskie nauki, 1969, No. 9, p. 15. ↩

15. B. S. Antimonov, E. A. Fleishits. Patent Law. Gosyurizdat, 1960, pp. 60, 61, 64. ↩

16. S. N. Dednokov even asserts: “...that which cannot be an object of the material world is not an invention.” See Questions of Invention, 1968, No. 11, p. 8. ↩

17. V. Ya. Ionas. “The Object of Invention.” Questions of Invention, 1969, No. 7, pp. 3–6. ↩

18. K. Marx and F. Engels. Works, vol. 26, part 1, p. 154. ↩

19. ME and MO, 1967, No. 12, p. 43. ↩

20. ME and MO, 1969, No. 2, p. 26. ↩

21. Voprosy ekonomiki, 1968, No. 9, p. 63. ↩

22. A. B. Nikolaev. Social Reproduction and the Development of Scientific Research in the USA. Moscow, 1969, p. 64. ↩

23. K. Marx and F. Engels, Works, vol. 26, pt. 2, p. 613. ↩

24. K. Marx and F. Engels, Works, vol. 23, p. 401. ↩

25. A. Nikolaev. “The Product of Scientific Research as a Commodity.” ME i MO, 1969, No. 2, pp. 30–33. The author denies the formation of value in the creation of inventions. In his opinion, this product has use value and the form of price. ↩

26. K. Marx and F. Engels. Works, vol. 23, p. 398. ↩