Modes of Production

Conceptual Overview and Discussion

The concept of mode of production is fundamental to Karl Marx's historical–materialist account of human social development. Proceeding from the insight that human beings must produce their means of material existence through creative and cooperative labor as a precondition for engaging in all other forms of activity, Marx argued that, unlike other species, humanity is able to structure the production of its material needs in remarkably diverse ways. While all socioeconomic formations involve human cooperation and division of labor, the specific forms in which these are [Page 568]manifested are subject to considerable historical and geographical variation. This variation refutes any presupposition of a fixed “human nature,” as well as any notion of “eternal” economic laws. It also constitutes the basis for theoretical differentiations and concrete empirical investigations requiring case study research strategies.

Depending on the level of development of the forces of production available to it, a particular human society (or “social formation”) will tend to organize itself on the basis of a specific set of relations of production. These relations of production exert a decisive influence on the production, distribution, and consumption of the total social product, which encompasses both a “necessary product” (the means of subsistence of the direct producers) and a “surplus product” (the material wealth used to support nonproductive elements of the population and to invest in growth). In all class-antagonistic modes of production, virtually the entire social surplus product is appropriated and controlled by a ruling class, which dominates and exploits a class of direct producers. In the third volume of Capital, Marx wrote that the relationship of these fundamental social classes is determined by the “specific economic form” in which “surplus labor is pumped out of direct producers.” But these economic forms are themselves historically and geographically variable. Hence, while feudal serfs, chattel slaves, and modern wage-laborers are all exploited, the ways in which these direct producers are compelled to perform surplus labor and produce a surplus product are determined by the quite different social relations of production specific to feudal, slave-based, and capitalist modes of production. Furthermore, these social relations of production give rise to diverse political and ideological forms (“superstructures”) that “react back” upon the economic structure of society, and are themselves constituted, in part, by such institutions as kinship, law, and the state.

In his 1859 preface to The Critique of Political Economy, Marx referred to the Asiatic, ancient, feudal, and capitalist modes of production as “progressive epochs in the economic formation” of human society. In identifying this historical sequence of class-antagonistic modes of production, however, Marx was in no sense asserting that each and every society (or national community) must experience these modes as inevitable “stages” in its own historical development. Rather, he was ranking them with respect to their capacity to systematically promote the development of the productive forces in general and labor productivity in particular. Thus, the capitalist mode of production is ranked highest because it is the most “revolutionary” in its ability to stimulate labor-saving technological innovation. Even so, capitalism, like all class-antagonistic modes of production preceding it, must undergo an historical–structural crisis resulting from a growing conflict between its forces and relations of production. Capitalist relations of production will be transformed from “forms of development” of the productive forces into “fetters,” opening the way for a period of social revolution and the emergence of a higher form of human society: socialism, as a prelude to advanced communism.

...