Abstract

The paper explains the reasons that make it difficult to carry out an objective evaluation of ways to reduce the total costs of production. It also examines the nature of individual costs and expenses and of the production factors that are needed for the realization of business activities. It also sets out the advantages and disadvantages of methods of evaluating production factors, and of instruments for evaluating the total costs associated with them. It describes the time-labour nature of individual production costs. It also shows the different stances taken by current total cost-pricing methodologies from the standpoints of: the manufacturer’s interests, utility, the impact of market competition, and the presence of monopolies in the market. The unsuitability of such an approach when evaluating the real value of the total costs of goods is shown. It is demonstrated that labour has its natural and market price, and on this basis three variants showing the correlation between cost and price of labour-power are formulated. We propose to measure total costs not in price terms, but on a time-labour principle, based on the input of working time, since labour is one of the main factors of production. An estimate of production costs based on time-labour avoids the distorting impact of value, as it reflects the original time-labour substance within total costs.

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