Economic Levers and Stimuli (under socialism) , the tools of planned management of the economy. Among these are: the socio-economic development plans, cost accounting, profit, cost of product (cost price), price, credit, economic incentives funds, etc. A skilful use of economic levers and stimuli is the main road towards better economic management. They form a single interlinked system of planned management. The levers and stimuli based on the principle of material incentives and responsibility cannot be employed successfully if not dovetailed with the economic development plan. At the same time they are the necessary and compulsory element of state economic management. Cost accounting, which uses many levers and stimuli to encourage economic growth and more efficient production, plays an important role in the system of economic levers. The leading role of a fiveyear plan in guiding social production presupposes the use of stable (long-term) normatives (see Rated Planning). Assignments set for the enterprises for the manufacture of products and rates of expenditure also provide for economic levers and stimuli, which affect the economic interests of work collectives and individual workers and make them interested in attaining the goals set by society. Thus, one of the most important requirements of planned economic management is being realised—to make advantageous for every work collective and every worker that which is advantageous for society at large. The economic levers and incentives and the entire system of indicators must fuse the interests of the individual worker with those of the enterprise, and the latter with those of the state, encouraging them to take on and fulfil higher plans, save resources, reduce production costs, and more quickly to produce new articles and manufacture goods of higher quality and needed assortment. The economic levers and stimuli develop and improve along with the system of planned economic management depending on changes in the objective conditions and goals set in the CPSU’s economic policy. It is of prime importance today to interest the Soviet enterprises in attaining high final results in the national economy, in fully satisfying social requirements, in raising the efficiency of social production and improving the quality of output. This enhances enterprises’ responsibility for fulfilling the plan and contract obligations, for the timely delivery of high-quality products in large assortment to the consumer 109 and for the rational use of resources. The system of cost-accounting stimuli, wholesale prices, and the procedure of forming and using the economic incentives funds, are restructured accordingly. Improving the economic levers and stimuli is aimed at making fuller use of the new opportunities at the disposal of the economy of developed socialism and at further boosting the efficiency of production and the quality of work throughout the economy (see Economic Mechanism).