(Common features for capitalistic economic are:) 1. the existence of politically and legally free men; 2. the fact that free men (workers and employees) sell their labor to the owner of capital on the labor market, by contract; 3. the existence of the commodity market as a mechanism by which prices are determined and the exchange of the social product is regulated; 4. the principle that each individual acts with the aim of seeking a profit for himself, and yet that, by the competitive action of many, the greatest advantage is supposed to accrue for all. ― (1955a: The Sane Society, New York (Rinehart and Winston, Inc.) 1955, pp. 83f.)
The use of man by man is expressive of the system of values underlying the capitalistic system. Capital, the dead past, employs labor―the living vitality and power of the present. In the capitalistic hierarchy of values, capital stands higher than labor, amassed things higher than the manifestations of life. Capital employs labor, and not labor capital. The person who owns capital commands the person who „only“ owns his life, human skill, vitality and creative productivity. „Things“ are higher than man. The conflict between capital and labor is much more than the conflict between two classes, more than their fight for a greater share of the social product. It is the conflict between two principles of value: that between the world of things, and their amassment, and the world of life and its productivity. ― (1955a: The Sane Society, New York (Rinehart and Winston, Inc.) 1955, pp. 94f.)