Productive forces, productive powers, or forces of production (
German
German(s) may refer to:
* Germany (of or related to)
**Germania (historical use)
* Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language
** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law
**Ge ...
: ''Produktivkräfte'') is a central idea in
Marxism
Marxism is a Left-wing politics, left-wing to Far-left politics, far-left method of socioeconomic analysis that uses a Materialism, materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to understand S ...
and
historical materialism
Historical materialism is the term used to describe Karl Marx's theory of history. Marx locates historical change in the rise of class societies and the way humans labor together to make their livelihoods. For Marx and his lifetime collaborat ...
.
In
Karl Marx
Karl Heinrich Marx (; 5 May 1818 – 14 March 1883) was a German philosopher, economist, historian, sociologist, political theorist, journalist, critic of political economy, and socialist revolutionary. His best-known titles are the 1848 ...
Adam Smith
Adam Smith (baptized 1723 – 17 July 1790) was a Scottish economist and philosopher who was a pioneer in the thinking of political economy and key figure during the Scottish Enlightenment. Seen by some as "The Father of Economics"——� ...
's reference to the "productive powers of labour" (see e.g. chapter 8 of ''
The Wealth of Nations
''An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations'', generally referred to by its shortened title ''The Wealth of Nations'', is the '' magnum opus'' of the Scottish economist and moral philosopher Adam Smith. First published in ...
'' (1776)), although the German political economist Friedrich List also mentions the concept of "productive powers" in ''The National System of Political Economy'' (1841).
All those forces which are applied by people in the production process (body and brain, tools and techniques, materials, resources, quality of workers' cooperation, and equipment) are encompassed by this concept, including those management and engineering functions technically indispensable for production (as contrasted with social control functions). Human
knowledge
Knowledge can be defined as awareness of facts or as practical skills, and may also refer to familiarity with objects or situations. Knowledge of facts, also called propositional knowledge, is often defined as true belief that is distin ...
can also be a productive force.
Together with the social and technical
relations of production
Relations of production (german: Produktionsverhältnisse, links=no) is a concept frequently used by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in their theory of historical materialism and in ''Das Kapital''. It is first explicitly used in Marx's publish ...
, the productive forces constitute a historically specific mode of production.
Labor
Karl Marx
Karl Heinrich Marx (; 5 May 1818 – 14 March 1883) was a German philosopher, economist, historian, sociologist, political theorist, journalist, critic of political economy, and socialist revolutionary. His best-known titles are the 1848 ...
emphasized that with few exceptions means of labour are not a productive force unless they are actually operated, maintained and conserved by living human labour. Without applying living human labour, their physical condition and value would deteriorate, depreciate, or be destroyed (an example would be a
ghost town
Ghost Town(s) or Ghosttown may refer to:
* Ghost town, a town that has been abandoned
Film and television
* ''Ghost Town'' (1936 film), an American Western film by Harry L. Fraser
* ''Ghost Town'' (1956 film), an American Western film by All ...
or capital depreciation due to
strike action
Strike action, also called labor strike, labour strike, or simply strike, is a work stoppage caused by the mass refusal of employees to work. A strike usually takes place in response to employee grievances. Strikes became common during the ...
).
Capital itself, being one of the factors of production, comes to be viewed in capitalist society as a productive force in its own right, independent from labour, a subject with "a life of its own". Indeed, Marx sees the essence of what he calls "the capital relation" as being summarised by the circumstance that "capital buys labour", i.e. the power of property ownership to command human energy and labour-time, and thus of inanimate "things" to exert an autonomous power over people. What disappears from view is that the power of capital depends in the last instance on human cooperation.
The productive power of cooperation comes to be viewed as the productive power of capital, because it is capital which forcibly organises people, rather than people organising capital. Marx regarded this as a supreme reification.
Unlike British classical economics,
Marxian economics
Marxian economics, or the Marxian school of economics, is a heterodox school of political economic thought. Its foundations can be traced back to Karl Marx's critique of political economy. However, unlike critics of political economy, Marxian ...
classifies financial capital as being an element of the relations of production, rather than the factors or forces of production ("not a thing, but a social relation between persons, established by the instrumentality of things").Marx, Karl ''Das_Kapital '',_Vol._I,_Ch._33.html" ;"title="Das Kapital">''Das Kapital '', Vol. I, Ch. 33">Das Kapital">''Das Kapital '', Vol. I, Ch. 33 courtesy of www.marxists.org.
Destructive forces
Marx and Engels did not believe that human history featured a continuous growth of the productive forces. Rather, the development of the productive forces was characterised by social conflicts. Some productive forces destroyed other productive forces, sometimes productive techniques were lost or destroyed, and sometimes productive forces could be turned into destructive forces:
Marxist–Leninist definition in the Soviet Union
The Institute of Economics of the Academy of Sciences of the U.S.S.R., textbook (1957, p xiv) says that "[t]he productive forces reflect the ''relationship'' of people to the objects and forces of nature used for the production of material wealth." (italics added) While productive forces are a ''human'' activity, the concept of ''productive forces'' includes the concept that technology mediates the human-nature relationship. Productive forces do ''not'' include the
subject of labor
Subject of labor, or object of labor, is a concept in Marxist political economy that refers to "everything to which man's labor is applied". The subject of labor may be materials provided directly by nature like timber or coal, or materials that h ...
(the raw materials or materials from nature being worked on). Productive forces are not the same thing as the
means of production
The means of production is a term which describes land, labor and capital that can be used to produce products (such as goods or services); however, the term can also refer to anything that is used to produce products. It can also be used as a ...
. Marx identified three components of production: human labor, subject of labor, and means of labor (1967, p 174). Productive forces are the union of human labor and the means of labor; ''means of production'' are the union of the subject of labor and the means of labor. (Institute of Economics of the Academy of Sciences of the U.S.S.R., 1957, p xiii).
On the other hand, The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1969-1978) states:
According to this, productive forces have such structure:
* People (human labour power)
* Means (the material elements of the productive forces)
** Means of production
*** Means of labour
**** Instruments of labour
*** Objects of labour (also known as Subject of labour)
** Means of consumption
Marxism in USSR served as core philosophical paradigm or platform, and had been developing as a science. So different views, hypotheses and approaches were widely discussed, tested and refined with time.
Determinism
:''See article:
Theory of productive forces
The theory of the productive forces, sometimes referred to as productive force determinism, is a variation of historical materialism and Marxism that places primary emphasis on technical advances as the basis for advances and changes in the soci ...
''
Reification of technology
Other interpretations, sometimes influenced by
postmodernism
Postmodernism is an intellectual stance or mode of discourseNuyen, A.T., 1992. The Role of Rhetorical Devices in Postmodernist Discourse. Philosophy & Rhetoric, pp.183–194. characterized by skepticism toward the " grand narratives" of modern ...
and the concept of commodity fetishism have by contrast emphasized the reification of the powers of technology, said to occur by the separation of technique from the producers, and by falsely imputing human powers to technology as autonomous force, the effect being a perspective of inevitable and unstoppable technological progress operating beyond any human control, and impervious to human choices.
In turn, this is said to have the effect of naturalising and legitimating social arrangements produced by people, by asserting that they are technically inevitable. The error here seems to be that social relations between people are confused and conflated with technical relations between people and things, and object relations between things; but this error is said to be a spontaneous result of the operation of a universal market and the process of
commercialization
Commercialization or commercialisation is the process of introducing a new product or production method into commerce—making it available on the market. The term often connotes especially entry into the mass market (as opposed to entry into ...
.
Productivity
Marx's concept of productive forces also has some relevance for discussions in economics about the meaning and measurement of productivity.
Modern economics theorises productivity in terms of the marginal product of the factors of production. Marx theorises productivity within the capitalist mode of production in terms of the social and technical
relations of production
Relations of production (german: Produktionsverhältnisse, links=no) is a concept frequently used by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in their theory of historical materialism and in ''Das Kapital''. It is first explicitly used in Marx's publish ...
, with the concept of the organic composition of capital and the value product. He suggests there is no completely neutral view of productivity possible; how productivity is defined depends on the values and interests people have. Thus, different
social class
A social class is a grouping of people into a set of hierarchical social categories, the most common being the upper, middle and lower classes. Membership in a social class can for example be dependent on education, wealth, occupation, inc ...
es have different notions of productivity reflecting their own station in life, and giving rise to different notions of
productive and unproductive labour
Productive and unproductive labour are concepts that were used in classical political economy mainly in the 18th and 19th centuries, which survive today to some extent in modern management discussions, economic sociology and Marxist or Marxian ...
.
Critique of technology
In the Romantic or ecological critique of technology, technical progress boosting productivity often does not mean human progress at all. The design of production technologies may not be suited to human needs or human health, or technologies may be used in ways which do more harm than good. In that case, productive forces are transformed into destructive forces.
Sometimes this view leads to cultural pessimism or a theory of "
Small is beautiful
''Small Is Beautiful: A Study of Economics As If People Mattered'' is a collection of essays published in 1973 by German-born British economist E. F. Schumacher. The title "Small Is Beautiful" came from a principle espoused by Schumach ...
" as proposed by E. F. Schumacher. Ideas about alternative technology are also proposed. All of this suggests that the technologies we have, are only ''options'' which have been chosen from different technical possibilities existing at the time, and that the same technologies can be used for good or for ill, in different contexts.
A technology may be chosen because it is profitable, and once adopted on a mass scale, it may be difficult to create alternatives to it, particularly because it becomes integrated with other technologies and a whole "life style" (e.g. petrol-fueled cars). Yet that may not mean that the technology is ultimately desirable for human life on earth.
Productive force determinism is then criticised on the ground that whatever technologies are adopted, these are the result of human
choices
A choice is the range of different things from which a being can choose. The arrival at a choice may incorporate motivators and models. For example, a traveler might choose a route for a journey based on the preference of arriving at a give ...
between technical alternatives, influenced by the human interests and stakes existing at the time. What may be presented as a pre-determined "technical necessity" may in reality have more to do with considerations of
political
Politics (from , ) is the set of activities that are associated with making decisions in groups, or other forms of power relations among individuals, such as the distribution of resources or status. The branch of social science that studi ...
economic power
Economic power refers to the ability of countries, businesses or individuals to improve living standards. It increases their ability to make decisions on their own that benefit them. Scholars of international relations also refer to the economic p ...
.
Advocates of technological progress however argue that even if admittedly "progress may have its price", without technical innovation there would be no progress at all; the same people who criticize technology also depend on it for their everyday existence.
G. A. Cohen
Gerald Allan Cohen, ( ; 14 April 1941 – 5 August 2009) was a Canadian political philosopher who held the positions of Quain Professor of Jurisprudence, University College London and Chichele Professor of Social and Political Theory, All So ...
, ''Karl Marx's Theory of History: A Defence''.
* Perry Anderson, ''Arguments within English Marxism''.
* Isaac I. Rubin, ''Essays on Marx's Theory of value''.
* Bertell Ollman, ''Alienation: Marx's Conception of Man in Capitalist Society''.
* Kostas Axelos, ''Alienation, Praxis and Techne in the Thought of Karl Marx''.
* Peter L. Berger, ''Pyramids of Sacrifice''.
* John Kenneth Galbraith, ''The New Industrial State''.
* Jacques Ellul, ''The Technological Society''.
* Leo Kofler, ''Technologische Rationalität im Spätkapitalismus''.
* Anwar Shaikh, "Laws of Production and Laws of Algebra: The Humbug Production Function", in ''The Review of Economics and Statistics'', Volume 56(1), February 1974, pp. 115–120.
* Francisco Louça and Christopher Freeman, ''As Time Goes By; From the Industrial Revolutions to the Information Revolution''.
* David F. Noble, ''Progress Without People: In Defense of Luddism''
* Institute of Economics of the Academy of Sciences of the U.S.S.R. (1957). ''Political Economy: A Textbook''. London: Lawrence and Wishart.
* Marx, Karl (1867 , 1967). ''Capital'' Vol. I. New York: International Publishers.
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