Mode of production
The mode of production of a society is the sum total of everything that goes into the production of the necessities of life. A mode of production has two main characteristics: its forces of production and its relations of production. Together these form the material base of this society. When the contradictions between productive forces and relations become too severe, there is an eventual breaking point in the form of a social revolution which overthrows the ruling class of the mode of production.[1]
Modes of production
Primitive communism
Slavery
Feudalism
Capitalism
Socialism
See also
References
- ↑ Karl Marx (1859). A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, Preface. Available on the Marxists Internet Archive.
"In the social production of their existence, men inevitably enter into definite relations, which are independent of their will, namely relations of production appropriate to a given stage in the development of their material forces of production. The totality of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which arises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. The mode of production of material life conditions the general process of social, political and intellectual life. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness. At a certain stage of development, the material productive forces of society come into conflict with the existing relations of production or – this merely expresses the same thing in legal terms – with the property relations within the framework of which they have operated hitherto. From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into their fetters. Then begins an era of social revolution. The changes in the economic foundation lead sooner or later to the transformation of the whole immense superstructure."