Means of production (abbreviated MoP; German: Produktionsmittel), also called means of labour are the materials, tools and other instruments used by workers to make products. This includes: machines, tools materials, plant and equipment, land, raw materials, power generation, and so on: anything necessary for labor to produce. The term originates with Marx, who explicitly differentiates means of production from capital. For Marx, means of production were the instruments and materials of labor independent of the mode of producing and apporpriating surplus. On the other hand means of production become capital, only within a particular set of social relations: when those means of production participate in the process of exploiting labor for surplus value.Even under these circumstances, capital is not always in the form of means of production, Rather the process or circuit of capital requires capital to change froms from means of production into finished products into money and back into means of production. This particular circuit is called the circuit of productive capital (see Capital vol2 ch1)

Means of production is sometimes confused with factors of production. The term factors of production is typically understood as an explanation for income as duly paid to owners of each means of production and also to the workers themselves within capitlaism. Whereas ther term means of production applies to these means indpendent of their ownership, their compensation and regardless of whether the mode of producing is capitalist, feudal, slave, communal or otherwise.

Owernship of MoP within capitalism

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The analysis of people's relationships with the means of production is one element that stands at the basis of Marxism. Karl Marx focused on labor questions. He considered it a reification to treat labor as just another "factor" in production; it implied an inversion of means and ends, so that people were effectively used as things. The working classes are the principal productive forces of society, since their labor creates and conserves material wealth. The bourgeoisie, meanwhile, comprises people who own and trade in means of production as capital assets, and who hire workers to work for them, using those means of production. The bourgeois as property owner can obtain a profit from the work of his employees because the value of output exceeds the outlay on wages and materials. Therefore, the bourgeois obtains a surplus value from the work of his employees. In the Marxist view, this constitutes exploitation of the workers.

Marx's terms are often employed in economic analysis by socialists who advocate public ownership of some or all of the means of production. The affinity between labor movement causes and this advocacy is very strong - and often shared by social democrats, socialists, communists and greens. Marx's analysis in particular helped to make clear the key differences between capital and "labor".

Marxists define economic systems in terms of how the means of production are used, and which social class controls them. Thus, in capitalism, the means of production are controlled by the bourgeoisie (the "capitalists" - the owners of capital), while in socialism they are controlled by the people's elected representatives and in communism they are controlled collectively by the people themselves.

Footnotes

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See also

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• Mode of production
• Marxism
• Productive forces
• Relations of production
• gross fixed capital formation
• property

Marxist theory | Production

Produktionsmittel | אמצעי ייצור | 生産手段 | Środki produkcji | Produktionsmedel | 生产资料