Means of Production
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See: Economic System, Private Ownership, Public Ownership.
References
2013
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Means_of_production
- Means of production refers to physical, non-human inputs used in production — the factories, machines, and tools used to produce wealth[1] — along with both infrastructural capital and natural capital. This includes the classical factors of production minus financial capital and minus human capital. They include two broad categories of objects: instruments of labour (tools, factories, infrastructure, etc.) and subjects of labour (natural resources and raw materials). If creating a good, people operate on the subjects of labour, using the instruments of labour, to create a product; or, stated another way, labour acting on the means of production creates a good.[2] When used in the broad sense, the "means of production" includes the "means of distribution" which includes stores, banks, the internet and railroads.[3]
The term can be simply and picturesquely described in an agrarian society as the soil and the shovel; in an industrial society, the mines and the factories; and in a knowledge economy, offices and computers.
- Means of production refers to physical, non-human inputs used in production — the factories, machines, and tools used to produce wealth[1] — along with both infrastructural capital and natural capital. This includes the classical factors of production minus financial capital and minus human capital. They include two broad categories of objects: instruments of labour (tools, factories, infrastructure, etc.) and subjects of labour (natural resources and raw materials). If creating a good, people operate on the subjects of labour, using the instruments of labour, to create a product; or, stated another way, labour acting on the means of production creates a good.[2] When used in the broad sense, the "means of production" includes the "means of distribution" which includes stores, banks, the internet and railroads.[3]
- ↑ James M. Henslin (2002). Essentials of Sociology. Taylor & Francis US. p. 159. http://books.google.com/books?id=852vjh_IwusC&pg=PA159.
- ↑ Michael Evans, Karl Marx, London, England, 1975. Part II, Chap. 2, sect. a; page 63.
- ↑ Flower, B.O. The Arena, Volume 37. The Arena Pub. Co, originally from Princeton University. p. 9