Economic Role of the Socialist State, the economic and organisational activity of the state directed at transforming society along the socialist lines, developing and improving social production, ensuring the steady growth of people’s well-being, controlling the measure of work and measure of consumption, fostering new work discipline and a communist attitude to work. The state organises the joint activity of all members of society, fuses the economic interests of the classes and social groups, with the interests of all people playing the leading role. In the USSR, the state conducts its economic and organising activity on the basis of the scientifically substantiated economic policy of the CPSU—the organising, leading and guiding force of society. For the Communist Party and the Soviet state, the economy is the main policy, whose successes largely determine the onward movement of Soviet society towards communism and the consolidation of international positions of the Soviet Union. In its practical activity, the socialist state relies on the objective economic laws of socialism, takes into account the higher requirements of material life, and the domestic and international situation. In the period 113 of transition from capitalism to socialism, the socialist state is the main lever of the revolutionary transformation of the capitalist economy into a socialist economy, of asserting new relations of production. With the triumph of socialism and the establishment of socialist ownership, the state concentrates the bulk of the means of production in its hands. This allows it to become the organiser of the country’s entire economic development. Through its planning and administrative bodies, the Soviet state, on the basis of the Leninist principle of democratic centralism, guides and manages the economy and determines the volume and pace of growth and structure of production in all of its sectors, the volume and structure of capital investments, and directs the siting of the productive forces and the development of science and technology. Through the system of trade enterprises, the state directs the movement of most commodities and develops the retail and service sphere in the interests of most fully ensuring the people’s requirements. Through its monopoly of foreign trade, it conducts the country’s foreign trade operations. It organises the financial system and money circulation, implements the budget, and fixes prices in the state trade and the purchasing prices of farm produce. The control over the measure of work and the measure of consumption is implemented in accordance with the principle "from each according to his abilities, to each according to his work”. The state’s economic and organisational function embraces the planned training of qualified personnel and their distribution throughout the economy. Another aspect of the economic role of the socialist state is that it organises the work of millions of people, implants new work discipline by combining material and moral incentives and encouraging innovations and a creative attitude to labour, and helps make labour a vital necessity of every person. The Soviet state organises assistance and close economic cooperation with other socialist countries on the basis of the planned development of the international socialist division of labour (see Division of Labour, Socialist International), coordination of the national economic plans of socialist countries, specialisation and cooperation of production, exchange of expertise, etc. It also provides economic assistance to the developing countries, helping them to achieve economic independence from imperialism. Consistently following the Leninist policy of peaceful coexistence between countries with different social and political systems, the Soviet state organises economic ties with the capitalist countries as well. Now that Soviet society has entered the stage of developed socialism, the economic role of the state has intensified. The new Constitution of the USSR stipulates that the supreme goal of the Soviet state is the building of a classless communist society, and its main aims are: laying the material and technical base of communism, perfecting socialist social relations and transforming them into communist relations, moulding the citizen of communist society, raising the people’s living and cultural standards, safeguarding the country’s security, further consolidating peace, and developing international cooperation. The features of the state of the whole people become more pronounced, and the working people, work collectives are more fully involved in discussing and dealing with state and public matters. On this basis, the process of the steady transformation of socialist statehood into communist self- management moves ahead gradually. In a communist society, planning and accounting, managing the economy and cultural development, which are now the prerogative of the state, will lose their political character and become functions of social self-management.