The mode of production is (according to Karl Marx's theory) the unity of production relations and productive forces that are characteristic of a particular historical period and which provide society with material goods.
Productive forces are a combination of labor and tools. At the same time, the labor force takes into account knowledge, skills and experience corresponding to the historical context, and the tools differ in their complexity and mechanization. Productive forces directly depend on the natural habitat of a particular social formation.
Industrial relations are historically established ways of organizing production, which include property rights, distribution of material goods, and other legal aspects of the relationship.
Karl Marx, following the stages of social evolution proposed by Hegel and Saint-Simon, identified five main historical modes of production:
- primitive communal;
- slaveholding (antique);
- feudal;
- capitalist;
- communist.
Primitive communal mode of production
It lasted from the beginning of the Stone Age until the emergence of class society (9th century BC). Initially based on an appropriating holding, i.e. man only used what nature gave. With the development of production relations and productive forces, with the emergence of certain skills and tools, the primitive communal method acquired the features of a mining economy.
Characteristic features of the system:
- economic equality, that is, the equal attitude of all members of society to the means of production and to the distribution of material goods;
- lack of private property;
- lack of exploitation.
Such an equal and collective nature of the relationship was based on the extremely low level of development of productive forces. The material wealth produced was mainly enough to sustain life. At this stage, an excess product did not yet exist. And only the subsequent development of productive forces ensured the appearance of excess product, which entailed new methods of distribution and the corresponding separation of the classes of society, the emergence of commodity exchange between neighboring tribes, the emergence of private property and the initial forms of exploitation.
Antique production method
It began in the 9th century BC. in Greece and lasted until the II - IV centuries A.D. At this stage, private property existed along with the communal one; cities with signs of statehood arose. Ownership of labor was based on ownership of land. Cities existed as a military defensive formation rather than a production one. The war was a great social work and a way to obtain material wealth. A distinctive feature of the relations of production of this period was the presence of slaves and slave labor - as a "consistent and necessary result" of the development of existing society.
Feudal production method
This is the period from the end of the 4th - beginning of the 5th centuries that developed after the slave system (in the countries of the Mediterranean, the Middle East and North Africa) or immediately after the primitive communal (in the Slavic territories).
This mode of production is based on the formation of classes of feudal lords and peasants, based on land ownership. The feudal lords were landowners, and the peasants fell into personal property, because they conducted their small private production on their land. For the right to use land, the peasants paid the landowners with their labor, natural products, or money.
In the early Middle Ages, peasants gained relative independence and independence, which led to a significant increase in productive forces, the development of crafts and progress in agriculture. Cities are developing and a new social layer is being formed - free citizens, and later the bourgeois.
At the beginning of the 15th century, in most countries of Western Europe, peasants received liberation from personal feudal dependence. Gradually, the beginnings of capitalist society arose, which were finally strengthened with the help of bourgeois revolutions at the end of the 18th century.
The capitalist mode of production
The basis of this mode of production is the relationship between wage labor and capital. Society, accordingly, is divided into two classes: capitalists â owners of the means of production and money capital, and proletarians who sell their labor power to capitalists. At the same time, the concept of surplus value arises - this is the profit from production that capitalists retain for themselves. Surplus value is actually the driving force of capitalist society.
During the period of the capitalist mode of production, productive forces received unprecedented development. Volumes of production, the level of development of tools have grown significantly. Moreover, the main benefits from the growth of social production were predominantly delivered to the capitalists.
At a certain stage of this system, production forces should outgrow private capitalist production relations, which, according to Marx, will inevitably lead to the formation of the next stages in the development of society â socialism and communism.
Communist mode of production
Property becomes public, and labor becomes public. At the same time, classiness is preserved, since property is divided into state and collective-farm cooperatives. Also, the problems of separation between physical and mental labor, distribution of material goods according to invested labor remain unresolved. The main psychological question of such a society: how to make labor a voluntary vital need for each person. Therefore, while the theory of Marx on the formation of a communist society remains a utopia. At present, we are witnessing the beginnings of a socialist society in a number of capitalist countries. But for more, as history has shown, it is too early to speak.