In practice, socialism requires a ruling elite.

1. Socialism requires authoritarian rule of economic society Consider government in two parts: laws and regulations related to the economy and everything else. It's possible to have free markets and the rest of the government under authoritarian rule; Taiwan under Chiang Kai-Shek is an example. Socialism requires authoritarian control of the economy, but the rest may be either democratic or authoritarian. India in the period after independence was democratic socialism. The Soviet Union was authoritarian socialism.To control the major industries, the government must:a. Decide what products are produced. In theory both Apple and Android might be allowed to coexist, but in practice the government usually finds no good reason divide talent and capital to sponsor both. It decides what is best.b. Decide how much of each product will be produced, and how much of each service will be made available.c. Decide how much each product and service will cost and what each worker will be paid.d. Decide what new ventures are funded, and what R&D will be performed.e. Decide what imports will be allowed and what exports will be offered. If the socialist government did not control imports and exports, control of the economy would soon be lost to free market competition. There are few, if any, examples of either pure socialism or 100% free market economies. Nonetheless, we can identify economies in which government dominates control of some number of major industries. We can then observe how the control operates. For example, right after WWII, India and Japan had roughly equal-sized auto industries. Under socialism, India kept Hindustan Motors protected from competition, [7. http://en.wikipedia.org...] while the same time in Japan Toyota was forced to compete in free markets. [8. Friedman, Thomas, The Lexus and the Olive Tree, Ferrar. 1999]. Socialism restricts competition. There is no conflict between democracy and having a ruling elite. In the United States with a democratically-elected mixed economy, the Federal bureaucracy passed over 5000 regulations this year, each with the force of law. Each has the force of law, and provide partial control of banking, energy, and health care. Full socialism requires much more control, and hence a larger ruling elite. The ruling elite comprises a high-level leadership that sets priorities for the economy, a vast bureaucracy that translates policy to individual economic decisions, and a police force to ensure compliance. 2. A bureaucracy is necessary for socialism. The number of products give us an idea of how many decisions the government must make to control the economy. ThomasNet provides an index of just the industrial products available in the United States. They list “over 100 million products” from 810,000 suppliers in the United States. [9. http://www.thomasnet.com...] We must add the consumer products. A search for all products on amazon.com yields 233,768,714 results. [10. http://tinyurl.com...] The amazon listings contains products that are out of stock or no longer available, and some products are listed multiple times under slightly different names. On the other hand, amazon has few inexpensive items like those found in dollar stores, and very few inexpensive heavy items like canned goods or bulk commodities. Amazon doesn't sell fresh produce, prescription drugs, and certain other types of goods. Hence, a very conservative estimate that there are roughly 100 million consumer goods. That gives a total of 200 million goods subject to government decisions per (a) through (e) above. The numbers are remarkable. Companies rarely make identical products, because each company wants its products to be distinguished by design details, color and style, durability, and quality. For example, 7500 wineries produce 360 million cases of wine, perhaps 50,000 branded varieties. [11. http://www.wineinstitute.org...] The average supermarket has about 42,000 products. The government will decide upon a more limited number of products which it decides are adequate to serve people's needs. If ten competing products can be winnowed down to one, there still would be 20 million products to manage in the economy. To this must be added services: professional services like law and medicine, repair services, cleaning services, education, transportation, and recreation. For example, there are about 30,000 airline flights per day in the U.S. Each is a service that must be planned to exist or not, and must be priced.There are far too many decision for voters to consider each one. It's not possible for workers in each product or service operation to make the decisions, because they have a strong bias to keep their own operation going, they cannot grasp all the interactions among products, and they don't have the expertise needed to translate leadership policy to individual product decisions. Workers at one winery cannot be expected to decide if their operation should be shut down or expanded, or what quantities of what varieties at what quality levels they ought to make. Moreover, if they were given such decisions, government control would soon be lost to market competition as each operation attempted to gain advantage over others.3. A large police force is necessary.A socialist government removes property rights, and not everyone will go along with that. Black markets, smuggling, and an unregulated underground economy will inevitably arise, so there must be a substantial police force to suppress it. In fact what distinguishes government control from private control is that the government can use force to obtain compliance from citizens. Force includes fines, additional removal of rights and privileges, and imprisonment. A large police force must be maintained to prevent free markets from prospering and undermining the socialist system. The policing required is substantial. For example, government control of banking is undermined by individuals and crime organizations making unauthorized financial transactions. China has a death penalty for making private loans, but “shadow banking” persists. [12. http://tinyurl.com...] It was the same for the Soviets, “Involvement in the underground economy had become a fact of Soviet existence by 1980. Economic activities regarded as normal in market economies not only were prohibited under Soviet law, but also carried heavy penalties. …” [13. http://tinyurl.com...]The loyalty of the police force must be maintained, otherwise bribery and corruption would foil government control. The only practical way to do that is by giving the police more pay and benefits than those they are policing. 4. An elite is required to sustain socialismNon-democratic regimes maintain power through an elite whose loyalty is secured by granting them power and privileges. In Communist bloc countries the elite had Party membership. Iran has the Revolutionary Guard Corps.Democratic socialism must have a substantial base of loyal regime supporters to provide the work needed to achieve re-election. A large bureaucracy must exist to make decisions, and a large police force must exist to enforce the decisions. This is already a power elite, and the elite already has a vested interest in keeping socialist government in power. Their power already makes them an elite, but it is small step from that to making them more elite by giving them more money and benefits, and that is a practical inevitability. In the United States, government employees receive 74% more compensation and four times the job security as private sector workers. [14. http://tinyurl.com...]The patterns of a ruling elite are broadly observed in the history of socialism. [3] I can find no exceptions. Socialist control of an economy requires a power elite for policy making, detailed decision making, and enforcement. The elite grants itself further privileges to maintain power.