FEATURES AND ESSENCE OF THE COLLECTIVE INTERESTS OF SCIENTIFIC INSTITUTIONS

V. V. SIZOV

Collective interests occupy a special place in the system of the economic interests of society. They characterize a specific feature of socialist property, connected with the existence under socialism of a relative economic separateness of the individual constituent parts of social reproduction. As is known, this feature is connected with the presence under socialism of heterogeneity in the material and technical base in the branches of the national economy, with socio-economic differences in labor, and so forth. And this “historical immaturity of socialism, the incompleteness here of economic socialization... still contains within itself, permits the existence of a certain economic separateness of individual links of social production.”¹

The economic separateness of the activity of a collective arises with the separation of some part of the single process of reproduction carried out by the given collective. And the essence of economic separateness consists, in the opinion of a number of economists, in the separation of the circulation of funds of an individual self-supporting unit within the whole reproductive process.² But the circulation of funds of one collective or another, while retaining a certain independence, is not isolated within the system of social production. It is an integral part of the national-economic organism and cannot exist outside it. The productive activity of an individual separate collective, while retaining a certain independence within the framework of the whole, is ultimately subordinated to the movement of this whole, within which the separation has taken place.³ On the basis of the economic separateness of individual collectives, their collective interests are formed. As a rule, the collective economic interest is associated with the activity of industrial enterprises. This is quite understandable, since social reproduction functions above all as an aggregate of individual enterprises, constituting its separate functional parts. However, science is a constituent and inseparable part of the development of the production of material goods, beginning with the development of large-scale machine production. K. Marx noted that “the needs of self-

¹ V. V. Radaev, Economic Interests under Socialism. Publishing House of Moscow State University, 1971, p. 244.

² V. N. Cherkovets, The Planned Character of Socialist Production. Moscow, “Ekonomika,” 1965, p. 121; Ya. A. Kronrod, The Laws of the Political Economy of Socialism. Moscow, “Mysl,” 1966, pp. 398–399.

³ See, for example, N. V. Khessin, V. I. Lenin on the Essence and Basic Features of Commodity Production. Publishing House of Moscow State University, 1968, pp. 26–27.

of the production process has now, for the first time, reached such a scale that it permits and makes necessary the application of science.”^4 At present no one doubts the fact that science actively participates in the economic life of society. It is one of the principal factors in increasing the productivity of social labor and in the growth of national income. Thus, according to the calculations of a number of Soviet economists, the annual increase in national income due to the assimilation of scientific achievements amounts to 70–80% of its total increase.^5 Similar calculations are also cited by the foreign statistics of many countries. For example, according to data from the Japanese Governmental Science and Technology Council, up to 40% of the entire increase in industrial output is obtained as a result of the introduction of scientific and technical achievements, etc. Of course, these calculations do not reflect the essence of the matter with complete precision. But one thing is beyond doubt: through the development of scientific and technical research and the use of its results, society receives tangible benefit.

In his time K. Marx noted that human labor had always been a combination of mental and physical activity. At present, in the era of the developing scientific and technical revolution, a substantial shift has occurred toward the mental, creative component of aggregate social labor. Workers in the sphere of science are now part of the aggregate worker. Scientific activity is regarded as a necessary functional part of social reproduction.

Scientific labor, as a rule, is united in scientific institutions. In our country at present there are more than 5,000 of them (including higher educational institutions). Scientific-research organizations possess their own fixed assets, financial and labor resources. Thus, more than 3 million people are now employed in the sphere of science, and total expenditures on it amounted in 1972 to 14.2 billion rubles, or approximately 5% of national income.^6

According to L. Blyakhman, in the research institutes of Leningrad^7 the value of the active part of fixed assets per worker in science, in relation to industry, amounted in 1967 to 70%. Each scientific institution carries out its activity on the basis of the fixed assets and circulating resources assigned to it. Their turnover is relatively economically separate within the framework of a unified reproduction process. This circumstance accounts for the existence among institutions in the sphere of science of collective economic interests. But research organizations are a specific form of collectives, whose basic feature is a special kind of productive activity. According to the “General Regulations on Scientific-Research, Design, Experimental-Design, and Technological Organizations,” scientific collectives “...carry out their activity for the purpose of obtaining new scientific results in the field of science and technology corresponding to their profile, of creating economical and progressive products and technological processes, and of their most rapid assimilation in the national economy.”^8 As follows from the Regulations, the goal of the activity of scientific institutions is the production of new knowledge and its

^4 From the manuscript heritage of K. Marx. Kommunist, 1958, No. 7, p. 22.
^5 B. F. Zaitsev, B. A. Lapin. The Organization of Planning Scientific and Technical Progress. Moscow, “Ekonomika,” 1970, p. 25.
^6 Pravda, 1972, April 17.
^7 L. Blyakhman. Report at the scientific symposium held by decision of the CMEA. Moscow, 1968, vol. IV, p. 281.
^8 Ekonomicheskaya gazeta, 1970, No. 52, Supplement, p. 1.

implementation in practice. This duality of goals is conditioned by the dual character of the development of science. It is known that its movement is subject to two regularities. One regularity reflects the creative or cognitive function of science, the other—the utilitarian or production-practical one. The creative function of scientific-research activity characterizes it as a relatively independent sphere of social labor, subject in its development to the logic of cognition. The utilitarian function of science is called forth by the needs of practice. In the latter case we consider science as an organic part of the production of use-values, subject in its development to the regularities of that production. In accordance with the duality of the regularities governing the functioning of science, scientific institutions distinguish a dual nature of collective interests: scientific and economic. In singling out the existence of two types of interests among scientific collectives, we must not consider them in isolation from one another. Both aspects of scientific activity are in unity, are continuously improved, and mutually complement one another. The functioning of science as a sphere of economic activity does not separate the process of obtaining new knowledge from its practical implementation in material production. Academician S. G. Strumilin noted that “a scientific idea becomes definitively fruitful from the moment of its practical application in production and, in proportion to this, becomes a social product and possession.”^9 Although the content of the scientific and economic interests of collectives should be studied in their interconnection, nevertheless, for the sake of the substance of the matter, let us consider them separately.

The regularities reflecting the internal logic of the development of science characterize it as a continuous process of producing new knowledge. But since the functioning of scientific-research organizations is carried out within the framework of public ownership, their creative activity appears as a concrete form of realizing, above all, social interests. Society regards science as a process of cognition that is constantly drawn into practice and has as its ultimate goal the satisfaction of the needs of material production. Of course, scientific activity cannot be directed entirely toward satisfying the practical needs of industry. In that case science would lose its relative independence as a specific sphere of the social division of labor and would turn into an element of industrial production wholly subordinated to the laws governing the development of the latter. But, on the other hand, the movement of science toward unlimited self-development in accordance with the logic of the process of cognition objectively comes up against the limited nature of the material, financial, and labor resources at society’s disposal. This tendency has recently been noted in the works of a number of scholars.^10 Since scientific institutions are organic parts of a unified, planned, developing reproduction, the state, through the plan, limits (but does not suppress) the freedom of scientific research and directs it into the channel of its economic needs. The social interest of the socialist state in the development of science is connected with concentrating the activity of research collectives on solving the most important scientific and technical problems.

^9 S. G. Strumilin. Selected Works, vol. 3, p. 442.

^10 G. A. Lakhtin. Economic Methods of Managing Scientific-Research Activity and the Production Assimilation of Its Results. Abstract of dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Economic Sciences, Moscow, 1971; S. Mikulinsky. Report at the scientific symposium held by decision of the CMEA, Moscow, 1968, vol. II, p. 22, and others.

These problems are characterized by the fact that their emergence is prepared both by the needs of material production and by the internal logic of the movement of scientific knowledge. The combination of production and scientific needs and their realization are ensured by national-economic plans. These plans are drawn up on the basis of long-term forecasts. Thus, they take advance account of the future level of technical development of the branches of the national economy and determine the necessary growth of the scientific and technical backlog that will ensure its realization. The basic scientific and technical problems that society sets before collectives of scientists solve the tasks of increasing the efficiency of the functioning of production on the scale of individual branches or of the entire national economy as a whole. Their fulfillment is connected with qualitative shifts in the means of production and with ensuring a high economic effect as a result of their introduction. On the other hand, the concentration of the activity of scientific collectives on subject matter of this kind promotes the advance of science, the discovery of new laws of nature, and the creation of a theoretical reserve of their own results. Finally, such a direction of work contributes to raising the qualifications and qualitative growth of scientific personnel.

Thus, the orientation of the activity of scientific institutions toward fulfilling society’s social order in the form of basic scientific and technical problems helps ensure that science, while creating in the course of their fulfillment its own theoretical reserve dictated by the internal logic of its development, does not become divorced from social practice, resolving urgent problems of material production.

Thus, the objective need for the development of social production, expressed in society’s economic interest, lies at the basis of the scientific interests of the collective of scientists. The objective collective interest manifests itself in people’s practical activity in the form of material interestedness, which realizes itself in the form of indicators for evaluating the work of the given collective¹. The overall effectiveness of the work of any production collective, as a rule, cannot be expressed by a single indicator. For this purpose, a system of indicators is usually used, comprehensively evaluating all its many-sided activity. However, among a number of indicators one is usually singled out, which serves as the most important form of expression of the collective interest. Such a criterion, most fully reflecting the goal of the scientific activity of collectives of scientists, may be the indicator of the significance and volume of their scientific output. Directly connected with it is also the indicator of the quantitative and qualitative growth of scientific personnel. And although these two criteria do not fully reflect the characteristic of scientific activity, there is no doubt that they must lie at the basis of the scientific interests of collectives of scientists.

New achievements of science, as is known, by themselves create only the prerequisites for increasing the efficiency of social production. Its real growth is ensured by their application. Therefore society is interested in the development of science not only for the sake of obtaining new scientific results, but also in the use of the latter in material production. The product of scientific institutions is consumed by social reproduction above all because its application makes it possible either to reduce labor expenditures per unit of output, or to improve its quality, or society obtains the possibility of producing a new product. The collective econom—

...the interest of scientific institutions, as well as of production enterprises, is realized above all in the indicators on which the formation of material-incentive funds depends. In production collectives their main source is profit. Consequently, the collective interest of an enterprise is reflected most distinctly in the form of the profit indicator, although it should be noted that profit is not its only form of expression. In research organizations, material-incentive funds are established depending on the wage fund, in the amount of 4–8% of its value. The wage fund, in turn, depends on the total volume of research work in value terms. The greater the volume of the latter, the larger the wage fund and, consequently, the more substantial the material-incentive fund.

Profit, as one of the indicators of the work of scientific collectives, is calculated as the difference between the planned and actual cost of research carried out under economic contracts. However, it cannot serve as a concentrated expression of collective economic interest, as, for example, it does at enterprises. Its greatest shortcoming is that it is not connected with the funds of collective incentive. The profit of scientific institutions is spent only on expanding and strengthening their material and technical base, acquiring equipment, materials, and so forth. Consequently, under the existing system of planning the activity of research organizations, their collective economic interest finds expression primarily in the form of the indicator of the total volume of R&D. But this indicator has a number of substantial shortcomings and cannot be used as the goal of the economic activity of a research institute. We have already noted that economic activity in the sphere of science is inseparably connected with the consumption of its results in production, which contribute to increasing the efficiency of the latter. But the expansion of topics and the growth of their volume in value terms, although it affects the size of collective-incentive funds, nevertheless does not fully reflect the contribution of scientific institutions to the development of the country’s economy. Moreover, singling out this indicator as the main fund-forming one does not stimulate collectives of scientists to introduce their achievements into industry.

A significant step forward in resolving the indicated problem was the Resolution of the Central Committee of the CPSU and the Council of Ministers of the USSR of September 24, 1968. It established that “...in the future the economic stimulation of research organizations, as well as the material encouragement of their employees, should be made directly dependent on the actual economic effectiveness obtained as a result of the use of scientific and technical achievements and new technology.”¹²

At present, a certain amount of experience has been accumulated in using the criterion of economic efficiency as a fund-forming indicator in scientific organizations of the Ministry of the Electrical-Engineering Industry. However, the practice of the experiment shows that even in these organizations, so far, little in the way of deductions from the economic effect is entering the collective-incentive funds. The funds are formed, for the most part, through deductions in the amount of 20% of the wage fund for each scientific project approved by the main administration. That is, it is not the economic effect from the introduction of scientific achievements that serves

¹² Resolutions of the Party and Government on Economic Questions, IPL, Moscow, 1970, vol. 7, p. 128.

the principal fund-forming indicator, while the volume of the estimated cost of R&D remains as before. Evidently, in practice there exist certain contradictions that prevent the indicator of economic efficiency from serving as the most important form of expression of the economic interests of scientific collectives. Let us consider this problem in more detail using the example of research institutes that have not been transferred to the new planning system.

At present, according to the “Regulation on the Procedure for Concluding Contracts for the Performance of Scientific-Research Work,” the object of an economic contract is the R&D itself, not the result of its application. In this connection, contractual obligations between scientific institutions and industrial enterprises end at the moment the scientific development is completed. The results of R&D, as well as the economic effect from their application, are separately appropriated by the customer enterprises. Consequently, the magnitude of the economic effect from the introduction of scientific results has no influence whatsoever on the economic position of scientific institutions. Naturally, under such conditions the latter have no economic interest in the realization of their achievements in the national economy. True, at present the magnitudes of expected and preliminary economic efficiency are included among the plan indicators of the activity of scientific collectives. The first is calculated by scientific organizations for completed scientific-research work; the second, for initially introduced work. However, these indicators characterize the economic activity of the collective of scientists only formally.

The indicator reflecting the actual economic performance of a scientific institution is the magnitude of the actual effect in the branches of the national economy obtained as a result of the introduction of completed scientific research. But the achievement of this effect depends little on the activity of scientific organizations. Thus, the plan for the introduction of completed scientific-research work is obligatory only for institutions of science. For industrial enterprises, where the realization of scientific achievements and the obtaining of the actual economic effect from their realization concretely take place, this plan for introduction is not obligatory. Usually the managers of enterprises include in their introduction plan only those scientific results that can be introduced during the current year, or from which an economic return can be obtained in the shortest possible time. Moreover, the scale of introduction, on which the magnitude of the actual economic effect substantially depends, is also determined primarily by industrial enterprises.

It seems that proposals aimed at evaluating the activity of institutions of science depending on the actual economic results of introducing scientific and technical achievements should also be extended to the activity of enterprises. This indicator will mainly reflect the economic performance of scientific institutions if both scientific and production collectives are equally interested in the introduction of scientific achievements. This will become possible only if the magnitude of the economic effect from the realization of scientific achievements directly influences the size of their funds for material incentives. Then the economic effect from the introduction of R&D will truly reflect the goal of the economic activity of scientific institutions. In it, the collective economic interest of the latter will be manifested most fully. Such a state of affairs will lead to a better combination of the economic interests of scientific and production organizations in the realization of the nationwide goal—the raising of the efficiency of social produc-

production on the basis of the latest scientific and technical achievements. Moreover, it is known that the greatest economic results are usually associated with the introduction of scientific achievements that revolutionize existing means of production, production technology, and so forth. Obtaining such results, which, as a rule, are preceded by profound scientific and technical research, is usually connected with a certain degree of risk and is fraught with the possibility of a negative outcome. Enterprises, as cost-accounting units, therefore try not to finance scientific research of this kind. And since their work is assessed above all by such indicators as profit, profitability, and volume of sales of output, they are concerned first and foremost with current problems of production.

In this connection, the object of contract work carried out on orders from enterprises is often the partial problems of industry. They are directed either toward improving functioning means of production or toward creating technical innovations whose application does not disrupt the continuity of the technological process. The introduction of qualitatively new equipment, technology, etc., at first has a negative effect on the current indicators of enterprises. The deterioration of these indicators accordingly leads to a reduction in allocations to the funds for the economic stimulation of the production collective. Scientific institutions, in turn, try to avoid contract work having a narrowly applied significance. This is connected with the fact that concentrating the efforts of scientists on solving problems of low scientific value does not correspond to their scientific interests, leads to a dispersal of scientific forces and to the expenditure of the research potential of the scientific research institute. Under such conditions, collectives of scientists cannot fully concentrate their activity on solving major scientific and technical problems, the use of which leads to the highest scientific and economic results on the scale of the entire national economy. This situation, leading to a well-known contradiction in the combination of the interests of society and of scientific and production collectives, has repeatedly been noted in the works of a number of Soviet and foreign scholars².

One of the ways leading to the resolution of this contradiction and to the more complete realization of the scientific and economic interests of institutions in the sphere of science is the further improvement of the planning of scientific and technical progress in the country and, in particular, the improvement of the planning of the activity of scientific research organizations, on which the rates of growth in the efficiency of social production substantially depend.

1. A. Eremin. “Economic Interest as a Problem of the Political Economy of Socialism.” Economic Sciences, 1970, No. 5, p. 27. ↩

2. V. P. Elyutin, “For High Efficiency of Scientific Research,” Vestnik vysshei shkoly, 1970, No. 9, p. 4; G. S. Stefanov, S. Kolev (PRB), report at the scientific symposium held by decision of CMEA, Moscow, 1968, vol. II, p. 272, et al. ↩