Means of Production

In Marxist theory, the “means of production” characteristic of a society is fundamental to understanding all other political, economic, and social relations. The means of production consist of a combination of “subjects” and “instruments” of labor. Subjects of labor are “the things worked on” because they are the literal subject of the productive effort. Raw materials are an example of subjects of labor. The oil pumped out of the ground or the trees that are harvested in forests are raw materials. So too are slabs of lumber, though the slabs of lumber are themselves the product of an earlier labor process. Instruments of labor include tools that “work on” the subjects of labor such as the lathes that turn the lumber into bowls or the mechanical robots that bolt the door to a car on the assembly line.

The means of production is more than a description of the production process. For Marx, it is the key source of conflict in class relations because if one class of people owns the means of production and another class creates the products through their labor, then the stage is set for class conflict. Marx and Engels observe in The Communist Manifesto (1983) that “the history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles” (p. 108). Throughout history, classes have stood “in constant opposition to one another” because of the conflict inherent between the owners of the means of production and the people who work for the owners (p. 109). Class conflict emerges directly from oppression by those who own the means of production of those who do not. Under feudalism, class struggle takes place between the landowners and the serfs or peasants. The transformation from feudalism to capitalism changes the class structure and gives birth to “two great hostile camps, [to] two great classes directly facing each other: Bourgeoisie and Proletariat” (p. 109). These classes are defined by their relationship to the means of production: The former owns the means of production and the latter must work for the owners in order to survive.

In capitalism, labor power and the means of production are purchased by the capitalist, who sets the exploitative productive process in motion. Capitalists control production and the resulting product is their property: They expropriate the surplus value of the product. That is, the worker is paid less than the value of his or her work—the difference between what is paid and the value produced is “surplus value.” In “Wages, Price and Profit” (1983), Marx writes that “The surplus value, or that part of the total value of the commodity in which the surplus labor or unpaid labor of the working man is realized, I call Profit…. [T]he very fact of the possession of the instruments of labor enables the employing capitalist to produce a surplus value, or what comes to the same, to appropriate to himself a certain amount of unpaid labor.” (p. 61). Expropriation of surplus value by the bourgeoisie exploits the workers who produce but do not own the fruits of their labor.

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