MODE OF PRODUCTION (Marx) : Everything that goes into the production of the necessities of life, including the "productive forces" (labor, instruments, and raw material) and the "relations of production" (the social structures that regulate the relation between humans in the production of goods. According to Marx and Engels, for individuals, the mode of production is "a definite form of expressing their life, a definite mode of life on their part. As individuals express their life, so they are. What they are, therefore, coincides with their production, both with what they produce and how they produce" (42).
http://www.sla.purdue.edu/academic/engl/theory/marxism/terms/modeofproduction. html mode of production Acccording to marxism terminology, a mode of production is a particular combination of: productive forces: the material, social and productive techniques, materials and objects of a particular epoch, and relations of production: the particular property form and methods of exploitation of a particular epoch. http://www.answers.com/topic/mode-of-production MODE OF PRODUCTION The dominant form of social and technical organization of economic production in a society. Historically a variety of modes of production can be distinguished based on both technology and the structure of social relationships. Historical modes of production include hunter-gatherer with very simple technology and common ownership; ancient, with more advanced technology and slavery; feudal, with simple technology and landowning lords and bonded serfs; and capitalist with sophisticated technology, private ownership of capital and a wage system. http://socialsciencedictionary.nelson.com/SocialDict.asp?Criteria=MODE+OF+PROD UCTION&TOS=3 Germany The mode of production is embodied in the prevailing economic system, in the Federal Republic in that of the social market economy and, as in the other developed Western countries, characterized by industrial capitalism. Principal features are the separation of home from workplace caused by the factory system, and the division of society into those who own the means of production and those who must sell their labour in order to survive. Wage-earning workers perform their work subject to someone else's control and (according to Marxian terminology) are thereby exploited, i.e. the value of the services rendered or products manufactured is greater than the wages paid to them. The antagonistic division into capital and labour is in this view the basis of industrial conflict . In has, however, been lessened in many respects in the process of the development of industrial capitalism, particularly through the activity of the trade unions , and the influences have shifted to some extent in the course of structural change . http://www.eurofound.eu.int/emire/GERMANY/MODEOFPRODUCTION-DE.html One could go on for days on the Internet seeking descriptions of the mode of production. I do not claim to have "the Marxist" description. It seems to me that defining mode of production as a "set of property relations" and then defining socialism as a mode of production, which supposed to be a transitional form of property to propertyless society is too narrow. I agree that the concept mode of production embraces property relations. I believe that we are at the beginning or maybe even the beginning of the beginning of a revolution in the mode of producing that is incredibly revolutionary and going to change society 100 times greater than the industrial revolution. The working class must certainly has an important role in the revolutionary process. How we win it over to the cause of the most destitute segment of the population or even benevolent neutrality is going to be very important. Then again it might be revolutionize amid a horrible wartime collapse. That section of the working class - the real proletariat, with the least times to the system that is capital-worker as the unity that sits at the basis of bourgeois production, is important because it is the sector which is going to be thrown into combat with the state. It is this sector which is going to compel society at large to take class stands and class positions concerning its need to consume outside the bond of buying and selling of labor power. Well, . . . we are going to experience the next 30 years and be able to write about it, "if luck be a lady." Peace _______________________________________________ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
