Combining of Industrial Production, a form of concentration of production based on the cooperation between different types of production within one enterprise or a group of connected enterprises, where the products of one enterprise serve as raw materials, semi-finished items or auxiliary materials for the others. Under capitalism, the development of cooperation is restrained by private ownership of the means of production and by the struggle between competing monopolies. Under socialism the economic importance and advantages of cooperation are determined by public ownership of the means of production and planned economic management. Cooperation is based on the specialisation of socialist enterprises (see Specialisation of Production). The basic forms of cooperation are as follows: cooperation based on the comprehensive utilisation of raw materials; cooperation based on the combination of successive stages of raw material processing; cooperation based on the comprehensive utilisation of waste or of raw materials, semifinished products and energy. All these forms are in fact intermeshed. Cooperation between related enterprises is one of the necessary conditions of technical progress and the rational organisation of social labour; through the economical and rational utilisation of”raw materials, semifinished items, waste and energy a significant economic effect is produced. It ensures continuous technological processes and a dramatic reduction of the duration of the production cycle, thus resulting in a marked growth of labour productivity and lower cost of product (cost price). Cooperation creates the best conditions for rationally utilising the country’s natural resources and for an even location of industry. In the USSR, industrial cooperation is most widespread in metallurgy and in the chemical, textile, timber and paper industries. The process of cooperation facilitates industrial management, makes it more rational and helps create the material and technical base of communism.