ABSTRACT
In contrast to "economy" as the general term for the sphere of material production, "economics" means political economy. According to Marxism-Leninism, the political economy of the working class is the economic theory not of property, but of labor. The totality of the relations of production for a given society constitutes its economic order of infrastructure. As the economic theory of the working class, the political economy of socialist society must be understood as a component of Marxism-Leninism. The political economy of socialism provides the theoretical foundations for the particular branches of economics in order to use the productive function of all economic sciences and to employ the newest knowledge, especially of the theory of the economic planning. Thus, socialist political economy or economics is partly in itself a political ideology. In the Novosibirsk Report, prepared for a closed seminar of economic specialists in Moscow in April 1983, Tatyana Zaslavskaya, largely agrees with this view.
