Talk:Productive forces
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>Produktivkraefte< are not Productive forces. Using the German and the English Capital, the used term is "productivity of labour" (original writing). Cf. i.e. Marx (1976): 13 and Marx (1986): 54
Marx, Karl (1976): Capital. A Critique of Political Economy, Vol. 1, London Marx, Karl (1986): Das Kapital. Kritik der Politischen Ökonomie. Der Produktionsprozess des Kapitals, Bd. 1, Berlin
You have yet to defend why the Theory of Productive Forces should be in the same article as the Marxist analysis of productive forces. (Not that it really matters that much; no one reads these explanatory things anyway, as evidenced by you and me being the only ones to pay attention to them.) 71.125.171.8 19:00, 12 April 2006 (UTC)
I don't think the terms in this article (or in the means of production article either) are used correctly. Per Marx (Capital Vol. I, p 174 in the 1967 International Publishers edition), "The elementary factors of the labour-process are 1, the personal activity of man, i.e. work itself, 2, the subject of that work, and 3, its instruments." Sheptulin (1978, Marxist-Leninist Philosophy, Moscow: Progress Publishers), rewords these as:
1. Purposeful activity 2. Object of labor 3. Means of labor
Purposeful activity is the live human part. The object of labor is the material being worked on or transformed, e.g., the raw materials. The means of labor are the tools, facilities, infrastructure and other necessary conditions for production to take place. The instruments of labor are a part of the means of labor, they are the tools or machinery that directly apply human labor to the object of labor.
In Political Economy: A textbook issued by the Institute of Economics of the Academy of Sciences of the U.S.S.R. (published by Lawrence and Wishart, London, 1957), the "object of labor" is referred to as the "subject of labor", as in "the subject I wish to discuss is..." (i.e., similar usage as the Marx translation above). In the Textbook, the three components are stated as: human labor, subject of labor, and means of labor. And the productive forces are narrowed somewhat to instruments of production and people: "The instruments of production, by means of which material wealth is produced, and the people who set these instruments in motion and accomplish the production of material values, thanks to the production experience and habits of work which they possess, constitute the productive forces of society. The working masses are the basic productive force of human society in all stages of its development." (p xiv, italics in original)
The section continues, "The productive forces reflect the relationship of people to the objects and forces of nature used for the production of material wealth." (italics added) The word relationship I think is important, because it relates to the concept of how technology mediates the human-nature relationship (which provides a jumping off point to Marshall McLuhan). Raymond Williams discusses this idea of productive forces as a dialectical relationship of human beings and technology in Marxism and Literature.
To summarize then:
The productive forces are the combination of human activity, including the skills, and the means of labor.
The means of production are the means of labor and the object of labor. Again, Marx: "it is plain that both the instruments and the subject of labor are means of production" (p 176)
The article is correct in saying that the union of the productive forces and productive relations constitutes the mode of production.
These definitions, as outlined here, are consistent with Marx's famous formulation about the productive forces coming into conflict with the productive relations (in the Preface to a Contribution to a Critique of Political Economy). He was describing the dynamic aspect of human skills and knowledge and the tools used to apply human purpose. Adding in the raw materials there doesn't make sense.
To say "means of production are not a productive force unless they are actually operated" does not make sense if the definition is corrected as above (one does not operate iron ore or lumber). A correct statement is: "the instruments of production are not a productive force unless they are actually operated".
More important, to say "the productive forces take the form of, or appear as, capital i.e. tradeable assets that earn money" is not accurate, because living human labor power (a part of productive forces) is not capital. It only becomes capital after it becomes "dead labor", i.e. is expended in the production process, bound up in commodities, etc. etc. The means of production (the raw materials/object of labor plus the means of labor) are capital. So the correct formulation would be "the means of production take the form of, or appear as, capital i.e. tradeable assets that earn money"; but in which case it doesn't really belong in this article.
Sync555 00:51, 20 January 2007 (UTC)
I have separated out the Soviet Marxist-Leninist stuff out into a separate section, because what Marx & Engels said and thought themselves should be clearly separated from Marxism-Leninism and Soviet interpretations. User:Jurriaan 1 May 2007
