ACTA JURIDICA - A MTA Jogtudományi Közleményei Tom. 9 (1967)

1967 / 1-2. sz. - WELTNER A.: Structure of the Socialist Economic System

Acta Juridica Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae. Tomus 9 (1—2), pp. 1—32 (1967) Structure of the Socialist Economic System* by A. WELTNER Professor of the Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest I. 1. After the victory of the socialist revolution in a country its society has to face tho historic task of organizing the connection between the means of pro­duction transferred to the state and collective ownership, and the manpower of the society, liberated from exploitation. This process is going on by the establish­ment of state enterprises, that is to say, economic bodies, by the delimitation of their tasks, with the placing at their disposal the fixed and current assets called also company assets, required for the fulfilment of the said tasks and making pos­sible the formation of the communities of workers and employees within the frames of state companies. The principal problems examined here by the author are the economic and social content embodied in the legal frame of state companies, the establishment and development of the structure of state companies, the meaning of the term com­pany assets, and the rights and liabilities bearing on the community of a state company. 2. The starting point of the study is that state and collective ownership has been arising as a new type of joint ownership that cannot be considered as a form of joint ownership as established in capitalist or even socialist civil law, hav­ing been raised to an overall collective lovel but it reflects the return of joint ownership of the primitive society at the remarkably higher level of socialism. Looking at its social destination, the fundamental characteristics of this type of joint ownership are that, through it, the enforcement of a partial ownership from a sociological view- point has been ensured for the citizens, because within the framework appropriately delimitated by law, it renders possible for them the fol­lowing rights: a) to combine their manpower with the means of production being in collec­tive ownership, that is to say, the right to work; b) the participation in the national income, that is to say, the right for so­cialist distribution; c) the participation in the public administration of the socialist State as the body possessing ownership as weil as tho participation in the operative manage­ment of the companies, that is to say the right to participate in administration and management. The functioning of tho above-mentioned, highly simplified system is taking place, however, in complicated organizational and legal forms, essentially in three fields, that is to say, at national lovel, in the range of the units of the economic system, and in tho relations of the individual citizens, all the three being inter­connected by several links. a) As to the national level, the State exercises here the rights of ownership resulting from the joint collective ownership in the interest, and as représentant, of the whole society, principally by moans of state and administrative organs. Individual citizens and various social organizations formed by them are gradually invited, however, to participate in the accomplishment of the various administra­tive functions of state organs acting on behalf of the State as owner of rights. * The revised text of a locture held at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences on November 18, 19G4. 1 .1 eta Juridica Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae Tomus 9, (J9G7)

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