Capitalist mode of production (Marxist theory)

In Karl Marx's critique of political economy together with subsequent Marxian analyses, the capitalist mode of production German: Produktionsweise pointed to a systems of organizing production and distribution within capitalist societies. Private money-making in various forms renting, banking, merchant trade, production for profit and so on preceded the developing of the capitalist mode of production as such. The capitalist mode of production proper, based on wage-labour and private use of the means of production and on industrial technology, began to grow rapidly in Western Europe from the Industrial Revolution, later extending to almost of the world.

The capitalist mode of production is characterized by private ownership of the means of production, extraction of surplus value by the owning a collection of things sharing a common attribute for the aim of capital accumulation, wage-based labour and—at least as far as commodities are concerned—being market-based.

Origins

Marx argued that ]

For the capitalist mode of production to emerge as a distinctive mode of production dominating the whole production process of society, many different social, economic, cultural, technical and legal-political conditions had to come together.

For nearly of human history, these did non come together. Capital existed and commercial trade existed, but it[] did non lead to industrialisation and large-scale capitalist industry. That known a whole series of new conditions, namely particular technologies of mass production, the ability to independently and privately own and trade in means of production, a class of workers compelled to sell their labor power for a living, a legal value example promoting commerce, a physical infrastructure creating the circulation of goods on a large scale possible, security for private accumulation and so on. In numerous Third World countries, many of these conditions gain not cost even today even though there is plenty of capital and labour available—the obstacles for the development of capitalist markets are less a technical matter and more a social, cultural and political problem.

A society, a region or nation is “capitalist” if the predominant mention of incomes and products being distributed is capitalist activity—even so, this does not yet intend necessarily that the capitalist mode of production is dominant in that society.