Modes of Production Throughout History
Primitive Society
The earliest form of human organization was the primitive community. Using crude tools of stone, wood, horn, and bone, they gradually developed new tools like the bow and arrow and pottery. This development improved their productive capacity, including livestock farming. Production was based on communal ownership. The first major social division of labor emerged: agriculture and livestock, followed by crafts.
Increased efficiency led to family units becoming owners of production means. Surplus production allowed some to control this excess, exploiting others and enriching themselves.
Slave Society
Metal tools replaced older tools, and the division of labor expanded. Cities emerged, and trade flourished. Production relations were based on slave ownership, where slaves were property and their production belonged to their owners.
Feudal Society
New tools and mechanisms improved existing instruments, particularly in textile production with inventions like the mechanic spindle and the loom tape. Trade expanded, and cities grew. Agriculture also progressed.
Feudal ownership of production means, especially land, shaped productive forces. Feudal lords held power over serfs, forcing them to work but not owning their lives. Peasants and artisans had personal property and could exploit it after fulfilling obligations to the lord. The late fifteenth century’s geographical discoveries increased demand for goods, exceeding craft production capacity, leading to the rise of factories and capitalism.
Capitalist Society
Capitalism’s productive forces are characterized by large-scale machinery replacing artisan workshops. Bourgeois private property replaced feudal property, driving rapid development. The pursuit of profit motivated production increases and technological advancements. While millions work in large companies, profits belong to a small group of owners—a fundamental contradiction of capitalism.
A key concept is surplus value, the capitalist’s profit. Marx distinguishes between use value (an object’s ability to satisfy a need) and exchange value (an object’s market value). In capitalism, labor itself becomes a commodity. Like other goods, its price is subject to market forces. However, unlike other commodities, labor produces other goods.
Labor has an exchange value (wages) and a use value (its ability to produce). Goods created by labor have both use and exchange value. Their exchange value exceeds the labor’s exchange value, even after accounting for other costs. This difference is the surplus value, the capitalist’s profit.
In terms of worker-hours, a portion of the workday covers the worker’s wages, while the remaining portion generates the surplus value for the employer. Marxism proposes the elimination of surplus value, either through sharing profits among workers (cooperative socialism) or through state redistribution of benefits (statist socialism).
Socialist Society
Based on social ownership, socialism opposes capitalist exploitation. It can emerge within capitalism, similar to capitalism’s emergence within feudalism. The working class drives the establishment of socialism. Socialist revolution ends private property, exploitation, and oppression.
Socialized industry, agriculture, transport, and media constitute the productive forces. Large-scale machine industry forms the technical foundation. Socialist public ownership takes two forms: state ownership and cooperative ownership.