ABSTRACT
Consumption is an essential factor in economic development and the operation of all socioeconomic systems. In a self-management economic system the satisfaction of human needs is the ultimate goal of production. Consumption is a form of satisfying needs, and its importance increases in such a system. Under conditions of a socialist self-management economic system, personal consumption is financed through personal incomes, as the purchasing power through which conditions are created for personal consumption or a process of consuming material goods and services to satisfy needs. In the socialist self-management system, public consumption is effected through the implementation of the principles of solidarity and reciprocity. Solidarity in the modern system is not identifiable with the principle of charity but is a complex value-principle, a social law of socialism. In capitalist society the main organizer of social consumption is the state, and the financing is of a budgetary character, so that consumption thus socialized cannot be treated as "joint.".
