Direct Social Production, production based on socialist ownership of the means of production and regulated in a planned way on the scale of all society. When private capitalist ownership dominates, the general form of economic relations between producers is spontaneously developing commodity-money relations, social production being regulated by the spontaneously operating law of value through the market supply and demand mechanism. The domination of public socialist ownership of the means of production engenders a fundamentally new form of economic relations between producers. Socialist production is regulated directly by society. Socialism as a system of planned, direct social production opposes capitalism as a system of a spontaneous, market economy. The planned development of social production becomes possible only when capitalist ownership of the means of production is eliminated and socialist ownership established. The socialist socialisation of the means of production erases the contradiction, inherent in capitalism, between the social character of production and private appropriation (see Basic Contradiction of Capitalism). The material boons created by collective labour are appropriated in accordance with the social character of production. The common fundamental economic interests of the working people make it necessary to coordinate the economic activity of all members of society. Being the owner of the main means of production, society, acting on behalf of the socialist state, takes account of aggregate requirements, available labour resources and the material conditions of production. Thus, it is in a position directly to distribute resources between branches, economic regions and enterprises, in the proportions necessary for best satisfying social requirements. Workers’ control over the production and distribution of output, preparing the conditions for socialist nationalisation of the basic means of production is the first historical form of social control over production in the interests of society as a whole (see Nationalisation, Socialist). Later, the seizure of the commanding heights of the economy allows the state of the dictatorship of the proletariat to develop production socialised in a socialist way according to a single state plan. With the triumph of socialism, when public ownership of the means of production becomes fully dominant and labour is cooperated on the scale of the whole of society, an opportunity arises for developing the entire national economy in a planned way. There are socialist and communist stages of maturity in the direct social regulation of production. The former is linked with the level of development of the property of all the people and with the essential differences in the ownership of the means of production of state and cooperative enterprises and the ensuing differences in the character of labour. Alongside labour socialised on the scale of the national economy, under socialist conditions there is also labour socialised to a considerable extent on the scale of collective farm and cooperative enterprises and the collective farmers’ labour on their personal subsidiary plots, which is not directly socialised. The planned regulation of production under these conditions takes account of the existence of material interests of different kinds of work collective and of individual workers (see Economic Interests). Commodity-money relations also influence the specifics of the socialist stage of improving planned development. These relations help to regulate the national economy under socialism. Under socialist conditions, economic links through commodity exchange organised in a planned way are a form of direct social relations. The above-mentioned differences disappear during the creation of the material and technical base of communism and the intensification of the social character of production, development of the ownership of the means of production by all the people, consolidation of the ties between state socialist (belonging to all the people), and collective farm-and-cooperative property, their gradual drawing closer together and subsequent merging into single communist property. A single degree of socialisation of 89 the national economy is thus achieved. At the highest stage of the communist mode of production, the direct social regulation of production and labour is developed to the maximum. It differs radically from the regulating measures applied by bourgeois states under state-monopoly capitalism. The latter consist mainly in the use of the inverse economic effect of the relations of distribution and exchange (through the budget, finance and credit institutions) on the production process in the interests of capitalists and do not affect the dominant relations of private appropriation of the means of production; they do not, therefore, eliminate the spontaneity of economic-development. They are aimed at increasing the production of surplus value and expanding and intensifying the exploitation of the working peopie.