Capitalism Is Run for the Benefit of the Masses while Socialism Is Run for the Benefit of the Ruling Elite at the Cost of Starvation Wages

I have shown that under capitalism wages are determined by the competition of employers for labor. Businessmen and capitalists are compelled by the market either to pay more for the labor they need than their next nearest competitors or go without that labor. Under socialism there is no competition of employers for labor. Under socialism, there is only one employer, the State, which holds a universal monopoly on employment and which prohibits any possible competition with it by making anyone else’s ownership of means of production illegal. Under these conditions, the conditions of socialism, the only necessary wage is a wage that keeps the citizens alive and able to work, i.e., minimum subsistence.

Even if it had the ability, a socialist state has no reason to pay wages to the general population that are above minimum subsistence. It may pay more in special circumstances, where the work is of special special value to the state by helping to maintain its power or prestige—for example, the work of scientists developing new weapons of mass destruction, the work of secret police agents, and the work of star athletes and performers that serves to bring prestige to the regime. The status of the ordinary citizens of a socialist society is implied in the moral/political premise that the individual is the means to the ends of society. Since “society” is not a real entity and cannot be communicated with in any actual way, what this proposition means is that the individual is the means to the ends of society as divined by the rulers of society. The meaning of this proposition is that under socialism the individual is the means to the ends of the rulers.

--George Reisman, Marxism/Socialism, A Sociopathic Philosophy Conceived in Gross Error and Ignorance, Culminating in Economic Chaos, Enslavement, Terror, and Mass Murder: A Contribution to Its Death (Laguna Hills, CA: TJS Books, 2018), Kindle e-book, 55-56.