Public Property and Its State Form: Contradictions and Potential of the USSR

Abstract

The article shows that in the USSR, the development of associated social creativity (including such a phenomenon as “enthusiasm”), based on public property, was opposite to the opinions of most economists one of the important sources of development of this economic system. At the same time, the opposite content was hidden behind the form of public property in the USSR – ​the alienation of workers from the functions of management and appropriation of public wealth due to the bureaucratization of state property, which was the main brake on the development of the economy in which these property relations dominated. The analysis of this contradiction shows that public property most fully realizes its potential either as a state property (in such extreme conditions as wars, global catastrophes, etc.), or to the extent it is based on associated social creativity. The potential of public disposal and appropriation based on social creativity is especially great in the field of production of public goods (education, health care, art), where public ownership of the results of creative work can take the form of “everyone's ownership of everything”, which makes it possible to remove the restrictions of intellectual private property.