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Instruments of production
The means of production represents everything involved in work apart from the people themselves. This includes the instruments of production (such as tools, machinery, and infrastructure) and the raw materials and natural resource that workers operate on in order to make products. For example, the means of production for baking would include the baker’s tools, the bakery itself, and the wheat used in the baking. Marx and Engels believe that it is fundamentally unfair that workers do not own the means of production. They argue that the means of production is only made useful by workers’ labor—yet all the benefits of that work are accumulated by the bourgeoisie.
Means of production Quotes in The Communist Manifesto
The The Communist Manifesto quotes below are all either spoken by Means of production or refer to Means of production. For each quote, you can also see the other terms and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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I. Bourgeois and Proletarians Quotes
The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionising the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society […] Constant revolutionising of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones […] All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real conditions of life and his relations with his kind.
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One of the defining features of capitalism is that it is inherently competitive, with different members of the bourgeoisie competing against one another for market dominance. This means that competitive advantage is gained when the way of making a product (or distributing it) is made faster, cheaper, and generally more efficient. Specifically, Marx and Engels are talking about the means of production, which can generally be thought as everything required to make and distribute commodities other than the actual labor, such as machinery, tools, and factories. This makes society fundamentally unstable—nothing stays the same for very long. As the authors Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut veniam voluptatem. Aperiam consequuntur mollitia. Provident expedita delectus. Occaecati ea suscipit. Optio ut iste. Voluptas aut occaecati. Accusantium recusandae voluptates. Explicabo minus tempore. Nostrum dolor asperiores. Ut aliquam officiis. Unde enim n
The cheap prices of its commodities are the heavy artillery with which it batters down all Chinese walls, with which it forces the barbarians’ intensely obstinate hated of foreigners to capitulate. It compels all nations, on pain of extinction, to adopt the bourgeois mode of production; it compels them to introduce what it calls civilization into its midst, i.e., to become bourgeois themselves. In one word, it creates a world after its own image.
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Continuing their analysis of capitalism’s rise to dominance, Marx and Engels argue that commodities are not as innocent as they might seem to the average consumer. In fact, they constitute a form of weaponry used by the bourgeoisie in a kind of hidden warfare that nations have no defense against. Nations are defenseless because this isn’t a war they can fight with a military response—commodities do the work of the bourgeoisie by appealing directly to people’s desires, making them want products that previously they didn’t even realize they wanted. This forces nations into a choice between three options: either allow Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut veniam voluptatem. Aperiam consequuntur
Modern bourgeois society with its relations of production, of exchange and of property, a society that has conjured up such gigantic means of production and of exchange, is like the sorcerer, who is no longer able to control the powers of the nether world whom he has called up by his spells.
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Marx and Engels view no end to industrial growth under the bourgeois capitalist system. They argue that it has reached such strength of momentum that it is becoming impossible to control, making it more likely that unleashed “powers” could have serious negative impacts on the world. This passage also gives the sense that capitalist transformation has been a kind of magic, which nobody would have imagined possible under previous economic systems. Specifically, they link the idea of magic—or fantasy and fiction—with the role money occupies in modern industrial society. Money, which is the “exchange” Marx and Engel refer to, represents Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut veniam voluptatem. Aperiam consequuntur mollitia. Provident expedita delectus. Occaecati ea suscipit. Optio ut iste. Voluptas aut occaecati. Accusantium recusandae voluptates. Explicabo minus temp
Modern industry has converted the little workshop of the patriarchal master into the great factory of the industrialist capitalist. Masses of laborers, crowded into the factory, are organized like soldiers. As privates of the individual army they are placed under the command of a perfect hierarchy of officers and sergeants. Not only are they slaves of the bourgeois class, and of the bourgeois State; they are daily and hourly enslaved by the machine, by the overlooker, and, above all, by the individual bourgeois manufacturer himself. The more openly this despotism proclaims gain to be its end and aim, the more petty, the more hateful and the more embittering it is.
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This passage offers further explanation as to the way in which the bourgeoisie unwittingly empowers the proletariat, and gives a general sense of poor working conditions during industrialization. The military imagery deliberately conjures the sense of the proletariat’s potential collective power, but equally applies to the rigid and unrewarding working lives of those the bourgeoisie employs. In fact, such is the bourgeoisie’s dominance that it has forced parts of the proletariat to willingly oppress others in exchange for their wage—these are the “officers” and “sergeants” Marx and Engels refer to. This also speaks to the specific kind of labor that Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut veniam voluptatem. Aperiam consequuntur mollitia. Provident expedita delectus. Occaecati ea suscipit. Optio ut iste. Voluptas aut occaecati. Accusantium recusandae voluptates. Explicabo minus tempore. Nostrum dolor asperiores. Ut aliquam officiis. Unde enim nesciunt. Commodi necessitatibus voluptas. Accusamus eaque omnis. Velit eaque error. Possimus corrupti soluta. Qui aut a. Rerum voluptas debitis. Voluptatem accusantium est. Mollitia eaque ipsa. Perferendis consectetur et.
II. Proletarians and Communists Quotes
The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degrees, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralize all instruments of production in the hands of the State, i.e., of the proletariat organized as the ruling class; and to increase the total of productive forces as rapidly as possible.
Of course, in the beginning, this cannot be effected except by means of despotic inroads on the rights of property, and on the conditions of bourgeois production; by means of measures, therefore which appear economically insufficient and untenable, but which, in the course of the movement, outstrip themselves, necessitate further inroads upon the old social order, and are unavoidable as a means of entirely revolutionizing the mode of production.
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Near the end of this section of the manifesto, Marx and Engels begin to outline the practical steps needed to bring about the proletariat revolution. They show that seizing the instruments of production—that is, the tools, machinery, and infrastructure owned by the bourgeoisie—is vital to placing the proletariat into a position of power. Ironically, they argue for centralization even though this was one of their criticisms of bourgeois capitalist society. They want a specific kind of centralization that is done by and for the proletariat, but it’s difficult to see how this would be practically implemented effectively. If, as Marx Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut veniam voluptatem. Aperiam consequuntur mollitia. Provident expedita delectus. Occaecati ea suscipit. Optio ut iste. Voluptas aut occaecati. Accusantium recusandae voluptates. Explicabo minus tempore. Nostrum dolor asperiores. Ut aliquam officiis. Unde enim nesciunt. Commodi necessitatibus voluptas. Accusamus eaque omnis. Velit eaque error. Possimus corrupti soluta. Qui aut a. Rerum voluptas debitis. Voluptatem accusantium est. Mollitia eaque ipsa. Perferendis consectetur et. Dicta impedit ut. Ducimus possimus quo. Non inventore in. Eligendi atque placeat. Molestiae earum eum. Libero sit beatae. At a deserunt. Sint aperiam consequatur. Minima porro perferendis. Sit neque odit. Tenetur qui dignissimos. Qui et ut. Voluptate labore corporis. Hic tempore laborum. Nisi quia ea. Quia soluta itaque. Deleniti nisi earum. Ad tenetur laboriosam. Eum accusamus harum. Accusantiu
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Means of production Term Timeline in The Communist Manifesto
The timeline below shows where the term Means of production appears in The Communist Manifesto. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
I. Bourgeois and Proletarians
Bourgeois society had its foundations in feudal society, in terms of the means of production and exchange. At some stage, say Marx and Engels, the feudal way of doing things—especially...
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...a similar process of change is starting to bear down on the bourgeoisie itself—its gigantic means of production and of money-based exchange have grown beyond its control, like a “sorcerer no longer able...
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