Relations of production

Relations of production referred to as concept of Marxist economic theory, the social relationships that people for the purpose of satisfying needs or as goods enter into each other in the production, exchange, in the distribution and consumption of products.

An important feature here are the ownership, ie who owns the social (not individual! ) Is the means of production or the legal or de facto veto power over has. While the free individual Schuster, for example, the means of production such as tools, leather etc. even belong to him, and thus includes the product of his labor, the shoemaker has a factory in neither control over the means of production nor the product, the shoes, and must itself use his labor according to specifications. The production is a social and not an individual more. The development of the productive forces, such as mechanization of shoe-making, so it can change the relations of production: the artisan shoemaker will perish mainly as artisans and must hire themselves out as a double free wage laborers in factories. This development happens without deliberate planning or the will of a party, to achieve this goal.

These relations of production and property relations, since the production or business is essential for the continued existence of a society, the essential basis for the distribution of power, the belief or ideology as well as aspects of the superstructure such as law or religion in a given society. Therefore, the primitive society with stone-age hordes of the slave society, feudalism, capitalism, socialism or communism is different.

Marx himself formulated this highly complex conditions in the Foreword " to the Critique of Political Economy " as:

The importance that received people " of their will, regardless ," these relations of production, evidenced by the fact has no one to introduce feudalism or capitalism as a social system or to abolish it planned, but as it were spontaneously, lawful even without the will of the people - indeed often has developed against the will of the people. Even with knowledge of such laws or existing motivation to change production or social relations, people are not the driving force for social revolutions or upheavals, according to Marx. In the preface to his major work "Das Kapital" he speaks of the knowledge of these laws only to the role of an obstetrician. In this sense, it is the changes and relationships at the material base and the relations of production, which cause changes in the superstructure. This is a dialectical process in the sense of the dialectical development, which can lead to gradual reforms or a revolution.

According to the Historical Materialism can then, if the relations of production to shackles of development of the productive forces, revolutions arise, which lead to a new social mode of production with possibly new relations of production.

Relations of production are always a number of different conditions that interact systematically with the prevalent mode of production in the economy. To the relations of production include:

• Ownership,
• Power relations,
• Employment,
• Of distribution,
• Circulation conditions,
• Conditions of consumption.