Means of Production  is a marxist concept describing the combination of the means of labor and the subject of labor used by workers to make products.

Means of labor include machines, tools, plant and equipment, infrastructure, and so on: "all those things with the aid of which man [sic] acts upon the subject of labor, and transforms it." Those means of production participate in the process of exploiting labor for surplus value. Subject of labor is the material worked on. 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 capitalism. By comparison, the term means of production applies to these means independent of their ownership and their compensation, and regardless of whether the mode of producing is capitalist, feudal, slave, group labor|communal or otherwise.

This term has been more simply described as the resources and apparatus by which goods and services are created. In an agrarian society it is the soil and the shovel, in an industrial society, it is the mines and the factories. For Marx and marxists, the ownership of the means of production is the distinguishing factor in nthe differennce between capitalism and communism or socialism. In the latter, the means of pproduction are conceived of as being nowned by the workers themselves.

See also Social Relations of Production .

To see Wikipedia entry click here .

---

TrackBack URI for this entry

Comments (0)

Subscribe to this comment's feed