Wages under Socialism, the bulk of the necessary product, which is produced in enterprises owned by the whole people and goes into the working people’s personal consumption in the form of money, in accordance with the quantity and quality of the labour expended by them in social production. As an economic category, wages express socialist relations of production, in particular relations between society as a whole and the employees of state enterprises, and also between the workers and work collectives with respect to the distribution of the bulk of the necessary product. Wages amount to the working people’s share of the personal consumption fund within the national income. As can 388 be seen, the level of wages depends on the national income, the personal consumption fund and the worker’s labour input. Under socialism, wages differ fundamentally from wages under capitalism, which constitute a converted form of the value and price of labour power and express relations of exploitation. Expanded reproduction of labour power under socialism is also carried out through consumption from social funds. Growing wages and social consumption funds provide the basis for raising the living standards of the working people. A distinction is drawn between nominal wages and real wages. The real incomes of the population under socialism include, in addition to wages, benefits and allowances met through the social consumption funds. The real incomes of the working people are steadily growing thanks to stable state retail prices of consumer essentials, constantly rising minimum wages, rates and salaries of shopfloor and office workers, and the growing social consumption funds. The state specifies the general terms of remuneration for labour on a centralised basis and regulates the size of wages. In doing so, it seeks to ensure that correct account be taken of the quantity and quality of work, to stimulate the growth of labour productivity, improvement of the quality of products and a rise in the efficiency of production. This is effected through the tariff system (see Tariff System under Socialism), the application of different forms and systems of wages and means from the economic incentives funds, The main forms of wages are piece rates and time payment. Piece rates depend on the volume of output of a certain quality and have the following forms (systems): direct piece rates, indirect piece rates, progressive piece rates, piece rates plus bonus, and payment by job. Depending on the form of labour organisation (see Organisation of Social Labour), every one of these systems can be individual or collective (team). When time payment is applied, earnings are made dependent on the actual length of time worked and the worker’s skills. There exist a simple time- payment system and a time-payment plus bonus system. With the further mechanisation and automation of production, the share of time payment (especially of the time-payment plus bonus system) is growing and collective systems of payment are being used more widely. In most economic sectors, wages consist of two parts, the wage scale (basic) and the supplementary (see Tariff Part of Wages). The forms and systems of wages are improved and the rise in wages is ensured on the basis of the priority growth of labour productivity compared with rises in wages, of the greater dependence of the size of payment on the final results (see Final Results of Production Activity) of work and of enhancement of the role of wages as an incentive for raising labour productivity and the efficiency of social production, speeding up scientific and technical progress, improving the quality of products and lowering the cost of product. To improve wages, the Soviet state undertakes to promote the system of the material incentives to workers, depending on the results of their work; in most sectors enterprises are to set up wage funds on the basis of wage rates per rouble of output (see Wage Rate), they are empowered to use part of the wage fund saved to pay bonuses for doing more than one job, for performing a given quota of work with a smaller number of workers and for top performance and skills.