Means of Production (Marx)

The means of production are the facilities, tools, infrastructure, resources, and assets used to produce goods and services in an economy. They include factories, machinery, technology, land, raw materials, transportation, and any other equipment or infrastructure that goes into production.

Things That DO Count as Means of Production

The means of production are the material elements that the labourer acts upon and with, in order to create a new product.

When functioning as capital, these material elements are generally referred to as constant capital because their value is merely transferred to the final product, rather than expanded.

The primary components of the means of production fall into two categories:

1. Instruments of Labour

These are the things the labourer interposes between himself and the subject of his labour, acting as the conductor of his activity.

These items retain their original shape throughout their useful life, entering the labour process as a whole, but transferring their value only piecemeal through wear and tear.

Specific examples include:

• Tools and Implements: Simple tools are included in this category.
• Machines and Machinery: Factories and machines are critical means of production, especially in capitalist society. In modern industry, machinery is the characteristic instrument of labour.
• Infrastructure and Buildings: Workshops, canals, roads, and similar items are instrumental objects resulting from previous labour that are necessary for carrying on the labour-process, even though they do not directly enter into the process.
• Vessels and Accessories: Things like pipes, tubs, baskets, jars, and other objects used to hold materials, though they do not directly transfer labour to the subject, are included among the instruments of labour in a wider sense.

2. Subjects of Labour (Raw Materials)

This category includes the material upon which labour is exerted. They transfer their entire value to the product as they lose their original use-value by changing form.

Specific examples include:

• Raw Materials: Materials that have been “filtered through previous labour,” such as extracted ore, cotton, yarn, wool, and seed.
• Auxiliary Substances/Materials: Items consumed by the instruments of labour (like coal under a boiler or oil for a wheel), or mixed with the raw material (like dye-stuff or chlorine).
• Land/Soil: While often provided by nature, land can act as a subject of labour (if virgin soil is being broken up), or as a universal instrument of labour, furnishing a space for the labourer. Land, along with other items, constitutes income-producing property.
• Money (when functioning as capital): Money advanced by the capitalist is converted into the material means of production.

3. Means of Subsistence (Context-Dependent)

Products that serve as use-values can indirectly be considered means of production for later processes, or in the context of capital reproduction:

Products ready for consumption (e.g., grapes) can serve as raw material for a further product (e.g., wine).

The means of subsistence necessary for the labourer’s reproduction are commodities that constitute the value of labour-power.

For capital, these means of subsistence are necessary for the existence and reproduction of the working class, which is a condition for the reproduction of capital.

Why is Ownership Important to Marx?

The legal ownership of the means of production is recognized as a source of immense power and forms the foundation of class stratification in sociological conflict theory.

Basis of Class Conflict

Karl Marx stressed that in capitalistic societies, a continuous clash exists between the owners of the means of production and the workers.

This relationship is characterized by two distinct social classes:

• The Capitalist Class (Bourgeoisie): This ruling class consists of those with great wealth who own the means of production – such as land, capital, factories, and machines. Those who own and control the means of production (the economic base) dominate the economic sphere and can translate this power into political and ideological control.
• The Working Class (Proletariat): The working class, or proletariat, consists of the majority who do not own the means of production and must sell their labour-power (the capacity to work) to the owners to earn a livelihood and survive.

This stark division creates an automatic and unavoidable conflict of interest between the two great classes:

The bourgeoisie is interested in maintaining its position at the top, while the proletariat’s interest lies in rising up from the bottom.

The entire social system is seen as an ongoing struggle between the “haves” and the “have nots.

Enabling Exploitation and Surplus Value Extraction

For Marx, ownership is the prerequisite for the capitalist process of exploitation, whereby the capitalist legally extracts value created by the worker.

• Appropriation of Unpaid Labor: The product generated through the labour process becomes the property of the capitalist and not the labourer, the immediate producer. Ownership grants the capitalist the right to appropriate the unpaid labour of others or its product.
• Mechanism of Profit: Exploitation occurs because capitalists maximize profits by paying workers less than the resale value of what they produce but do not own. The wealth created by the working class is appropriated privately by the bourgeoisie in the form of profits.
• The Double Freedom of the Worker: The worker must be a free individual who can sell their capacity for labour (labour-power) as a commodity, but simultaneously must be free of all the objects needed for the realization of his or her labour-power. This lack of ownership leaves the worker with no alternative but to sell their capacity to work to the owner of capital.

Alienation

How does the worker become alienated from the product of their labor when they don’t own the tools or factory?

The worker’s alienation from the product of their labour stems directly from the fact that they do not own the means of production (tools, factories, etc.) and are compelled to participate in the capitalist process, which is fundamentally structured around the capitalist’s right of ownership and appropriation.

This alienation, specifically the alienation from the product of one’s labour, occurs through a series of legal, economic, and technical separations inherent to the capitalist mode of production.

1. The Separation of Labour-Power and Ownership

The core precondition for alienation is the complete separation of the labourer from all property in the means of production.

This separation necessitates the worker entering the market to sell their only remaining commodity: their capacity to work, or labour-power.

• The Capitalist’s Purchase: The capitalist, who owns the means of production, purchases the worker’s labour-power for a definite period, such as a day or a week. Once the capitalist has purchased this labour-power, the use-value of that power—the actual labour expended—belongs to the capitalist.
• The Worker’s Legal Status: The worker is “free” in the double sense that they are an untrammeled owner of their person, able to sell their labour-power as their own commodity, but they are simultaneously free of all the objects needed for the realization of their labour-power.
  
  This second freedom (the lack of ownership of tools/factories) is what forces them into the first position (selling their labour-power).
• Incorporation into Capital: Once the worker steps into the workshop, they cease to belong to themselves; their labour-power is converted from a mere capacity into living labour in action, which is immediately incorporated with the capital of the owner. As members of the production organism, they become “special modes of existence of capital”.

2. Appropriation of the Product by the Capitalist

Because the capitalist legally owns all the factors of production (raw material, machines, and the consumed labour-power), the resulting product is exclusively the property of the capitalist, not the labourer, its immediate producer.

• Property Rights: The process starts in accordance with the laws of exchange, where the worker receives the value of their commodity (wages) and alienates its use-value (labour) to the buyer.
  
  The means of production, already belonging to the capitalist, are then transformed by the aid of labour that also belongs to him, into a new product that is likewise lawfully his.
• Surplus Value: The final product is appropriated by the capitalist, and its value includes not only the value of the materials and the equivalent of the value of the labour-power (wages), but also a surplus-value (unpaid labour) which costs the worker labour but costs the capitalist nothing. This entire product, including the surplus-value, becomes the legitimate property of the capitalist.

The worker, by selling their labour-power, renounces all claim to a share in the product.

The resulting alienation from the product means the individual does not have the opportunity to relate to the product he labors on.

3. The Technical and Intellectual Alienation

Alienation is deepened by the technical organisation of capitalist production, particularly through the division of labour and the introduction of machinery.

• Loss of Individual Character (Division of Labour): The extensive division of labour means that the work of the proletarians has lost all individual character and charm.
  
  The detail labourer produces no commodities; only the common product of all detail labourers becomes a commodity, making it impossible for the worker to seize any part of it. Instead of training for years as a watchmaker, the worker simply performs a monotonous task, not knowing or caring what final product they are contributing to.
• Domination by the Instrument: The worker is reduced to being a mere living appendage of an objective, purely objective productive organism—the machinery system—which now dictates the conditions of production.
  
  In handicrafts, the workman uses a tool; in the factory, the machine makes use of him. The instrument of labour, converted into an automaton, confronts the labourer as capital, of dead labour, that dominates, and pumps dry, living labour-power.
• Intellectual Separation (Reification): The intellectual powers of production (knowledge, judgment, and will) required for the whole process are alienated from the individual labourer and concentrated in the capital that employs them, becoming the property of the capitalist.

This material structure ensures that the product the worker creates is constantly converted into capital, an alien power that dominates and exploits him.

The worker views their own productive output as an opus alienum (a strange facticity) over which they have no control, rather than as the opus proprium (their own product).

This specific form of alienation contributes to the overall reification of social reality, where the products of human activity are apprehended as if they were things separate from, or even superior to, human activity itself.

Things That Do NOT Count as Means of Production

The items that do not count as means of production are typically either non-material, non-ownable legal entities, natural elements lacking incorporated human labour, or the subjective factor of the labour process itself.

1. Labour/Labour-Power (Crucial Exclusion)

Labour and labour-power are definitively not means of production in capitalist society.

• Labour-Power (Capacity for Labour): This refers to the aggregate of mental and physical capabilities existing in a human being. It is the commodity the worker sells to the capitalist.
  
  Because it is a legal entity that cannot be permanently sold, it is excluded from the means of production. The employer buys only the ability to use an employee’s labour. The sale of labour-power is what enables the capitalist to start the labour process by converting the labourer into “labour-power in action”.
• Labour (Work): Labour itself, which is the use-value of labour-power, is the value-creating substance embodied in commodities. Labour is the substance and immanent measure of value, but it has no value itself and thus cannot be a commodity in the same sense as MOP.
  
  Human labour in motion creates value but is not itself value; it only becomes value in its congealed state when embodied in an object.
• Variable Capital: The portion of capital laid out upon labour-power is called variable capital. This is distinct from constant capital (the MOP), because it undergoes a quantitative alteration of value (creating surplus-value).

Historical Exception: The only historical instance where workers themselves are considered part of the means of production is in slave societies.

2. Natural Resources Without Incorporated Labour

If an object’s utility to man is not due to human labour, it can be a use-value but possesses no value.

These spontaneously supplied natural resources, while potentially factors in production, transfer no value to the product and are thus typically excluded from the strict economic definition of MOP (constant capital).

Examples include:

• Air.
• Virgin soil and natural meadows.
• Water, wind, and metals in situ (before extraction).
• Timber in virgin forests.
• Uncaught fish.
• Natural forces like wind, water, steam, and electricity when appropriated for productive processes, cost nothing, although apparatuses (like a water-wheel) must be built to exploit them.

3. Non-Material and Abstract Elements

These elements are part of the broader forces of production but cannot be legally owned, or do not constitute a tangible asset whose value is transferred.

• Knowledge/Science/Technology: Knowledge (scientific/technical and the like) is part of the Forces of production but is explicitly noted as not being among the parts that can be legally owned as means of production. Science becomes a productive force distinct from labour, but once discovered, the law of a physical phenomenon costs never a penny.
• Use Value (Utility): While necessary for a commodity to have value, use-value (utility) is a quality, not the economic category of the MOP itself, and its existence is independent of the amount of labour required to appropriate useful qualities.

In summary:

The means of production are analogous to the physical assets that make up a factory’s inventory and infrastructure – the building, the machines, and the raw materials – all of which are legally owned and transfer their pre-existing value to the final product.

Conversely, labour-power is the engine that uses those assets to create new value, and since this capacity cannot be permanently owned in a capitalist society, it is conceptually segregated from the means of production.

References

Engels, F. (1974). The German ideology, Part One: with selections from Parts Two and Three, together with Marx”s” Introduction to a critique of political economy”. Lawrence & Wishart.

Gates, H. (1996). China’s Motor: a thousand years of petty capitalism. Cornell University Press.

Jessop, R. (1990). Mode of production. In Marxian economics (pp. 289-296). Palgrave Macmillan, London.

Marx, K. (1967). The Communist Manfesto, trans. Samuel Moore and Engels.

Marx, K., Cohen, J., & Hobsbawm, E. J. (1966). Pre-capitalist economic formations. Science and Society, 30(3).

Marx, K., Engels, F. (1847). Manifesto of the communist party.

Modes and Means of Production. (2021, July 22). https://socialsci.libretexts.org/@go/page/56423

Wolf, E. R. (1982). Europe and the People without History. Univ of California Press.

Resnick, S. A., & Wolff, R. D. (2013). Marxism. Rethinking Marxism, 25(2), 152-162.

Wolpe, H. (1980). The Articulation of Modes of Production: Essays from Economy and Society. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.

Wolf, E. R. (1982). Europe and the People without History. Univ of California Press.

Summary Table

Category	Example	Status as Means of Production	Reason/Context
Instruments of Labour	Machines, tools, factories, workshops, canals, oil (consumed by a machine)	DO count (Constant Capital, c)	Legally owned, material elements that transfer their value (wear and tear) to the product.
Subjects of Labour	Raw cotton, extracted ore, seed, dye-stuff	DO count (Constant Capital, c)	Legally owned, material elements upon which labour is exerted and which transfer their whole value to the product.
Labour-Power	The worker’s capacity to work (their skills, muscles, nerves)	DO NOT count (Variable Capital, v)	Cannot be legally owned by the capitalist; it is the commodity the worker sells. It is the sole source of new value.
Knowledge/Science	Technical knowledge, scientific laws, chemistry	DO NOT count	Non-material elements of the Forces of Production that cannot be legally owned.
Natural Forces	Wind, water, metals in situ, timber in virgin forests, uncaught fish	DO NOT count	Supplied by Nature without human labour; they help create use-value but transfer no exchange-value to the product.
The Worker (Slave)	The labourer’s person	DO count (Historically)	Only in slave societies are workers considered part of the means of production.