Real Wages, wages expressed in terms of means of subsistence and services which are accessible to the worker. How great they are shows what quantity of consumer goods and services the working person can buy for his nominal wages. The dynamics of real wages is a function of many factors, some of which tend to reduce and some, to increase them. Among the former are higher prices, taxes, rents, transportation costs, etc. Within the latter are higher nominal wages, pensions, benefits, and other cash incomes. Under capitalism, the prices of consumer goods and services, rents and taxes are continuously rising, especially with soaring inflation. While nominal wages do increase as a result of the workingclass struggle, prices and taxes are usually rising faster. As a result, real wages tend to decline and usually are not able to provide the material and cultural needs of the worker and his family. Bourgeois statistics try to gloss over the real position of the working class and conceal the decline in real wages. For this purpose, in calculating real wages they lower price figures, and overlook the unemployed but include the salaries of highly paid employees, managers, company directors and other “hired” top personnel in the worker’s average nominal wages. Under socialism, the real wages of the working people are consistently rising through direct wage increase, lower or annulled taxes, and maintaining stable prices for consumer goods, rent, etc. The 304 growth of real wages is rooted in the continuous growth of socialist production and total employment. Whenever the state increases the retail prices of certain goods, nominal wages nevertheless rise faster than the price index. Higher real wages under socialism is the main way of increasing real incomes (see Real Incomes of the Population under Socialism). This question is high up among the priorities in the economic policies of the communist and workers’ parties of all socialist countries. The increase of real wages manifests itself the continuous growth of per capita consumption of basic commodities. An important addition to the wages of the working people in socialist countries, particularly the USSR, are benefits and payments from social consumption funds.