Net Income of Society, part of the value of the aggregate social product which when sold is taken apart from social production costs. Because prices do not coincide with value and the depreciation sum with the real wear and tear of fixed assets, and because of changes in proportions, the monetary form of the net income deviates from the material content embodied in it. In capitalist society, net income represents the entire realised surplus value. It falls into profit, rent, interest, and is appropriated by the exploiter classes and is used to intensify the exploitation of the working people. The socio-economic nature of net income in socialist society is different in principle. It is created by the exploitation-free labour of workers, is social wealth, and is used in the interests of all the working people. As an economic category, the net income of socialist society as far as its creation and distribution are concerned expresses the relations between society as a whole, the collectives of enterprises and individual workers. The socialist nature of net income is also manifested in its use. When Lenin characterised the social nature and purpose of surplus product under socialism, he pointed out that it did not go to the class of owners but to all the working people, and to them alone. Under socialism, the mechanism of the formation of net income differs in principle from that under capitalism. While in capitalist society net income is 249 formed spontaneously in the course of fierce competitive struggle between owners, in socialist society it is formed on the basis of the planned production and sales of goods, the rate of development and proportions, volume and range of products and price levels set consciously by society. The experience of building socialism in the USSR and in other socialist countries has confirmed the necessity and expediency of dividing society’s net income into two parts. One part, in the form of turnover tax, payment for production assets, fixed or rented payments, free profit remainder, deductions for social security requirements, income taxes from collective farms and other cooperative organisations, etc., is accumulated by the state and forms the centralised net income of the state. The other part comprises the net income of state enterprises and agricultural cooperatives (collective farms) (see Net Income of a Socialist Enterprise). The economic nature of both these forms of net income is the same. The existence of two forms of society’s net income is determined by the specifics of socialist public ownership of the means of production and the requirements of the planned development of the socialist economy. The unity of public ownership and the interest of the entire population presupposes the centralisation of part of society’s net income. The most important national requirements are satisfied through this fund, and the economic and organisational activity of the socialist state is provided with finances. Alongside this cost-accounting principles of managing production plus collective interests ensure that part of society’s net income is placed at the disposal of the production collective to meet its interest in fulfilling state plans, expanding reproduction and making it more efficient.