Mode of production

The mode of production relates to the way in which the factors of production are treated to lead to a product or service available for the applicants.

Although the field is primarily technical, various sociological and philosophical considerations, of nature often more normative than descriptive, were introduced with the wire of time into this concept, making it more obscure.

Marxist approach

Karl Marx names mode of production the combination of the two following factors:

Antagonisms between the two condition in its vision the passage of a mode of production to another. He thus intends to define the history of humanity like that of his modes of production during the ages.

He distinguishes the following:

  • Asian (great investments + subordination to the State);

  • ancient (craft industry + Slavery);
  • feudal (agriculture + Serfdom);
  • capitalist (industry + Proletariat);
  • communist (socialist production + company without Social classes, without Wage-earning, State), mode of production which is not occurred yet.

Evolution and complexification of the concept

We witness a complexification of the mode of production by coexistence of forces and reports/ratios various

To take an example among others, some are focused on the emergence of a sixth mode of production neither envisaged by Marx nor foreseeable at its time: that consisted the couple:

Internet + voluntary contributors

who did not receive a name (it yet could be one of the elements of the phenomenon much broader and various of the age post-industrialist .

He is with work in achievements like the projects GNU, Linux, SETI@home, SourceForge, Généthon, Slashdot and Wikipedia, to quote only them. He does not replace not the capitalist mode of production, and does not have vocation to do it, but is sometimes harmoniously juxtaposed with him (use of Linux by IBM) and between sometimes in open conflict with him on certain crenels:

  • increasing competition of Linux with the variations “waiter” of the system Windows
  • diffusion by the systems P2P vs. majors of the disc,
  • etc

According to Howard Rheingold, this kind of skirmish at the borders of the two systems will grow short-term.

  • Howard Rheingold : Smart mobs: the next social revolution (2001)

See too

Random links:Scye | Fiji out of world cup of Rugby 2003 | Pierre Desrochers (type-setter) | Claude Mangin | Rosa willmottiae | Comté_à_noyau_libre,_le_Texas