The productive forces They are the activities and jobs that people put into the production process. For example, the body, the brain, tools and techniques, materials, resources, equipment and cooperation between workers.
Human knowledge can also be a productive force. The notion of productive forces encompasses a reality with a great diversity of factors and elements, which includes the division of labor and even certain elements of nature, such as population growth..
Therefore, it is considered that the productive forces are composed of all the factors that contribute to the productive activity of human beings.
Tools and machines are productive forces, as are factories, means of transport and communications, technology and science..
The productive forces also include the concentration of production in large factories and the social division of labor, which allows more intensive use of machines..
Marx defines the concept of productive forces empirically. He describes it in economic and historical terms, referring to a specific mode of production, and not in general sociological terms. It does not do it with the purpose of theoretical knowledge, but with a vision towards social action.
Thus, the productive forces as conceived by Marx are much more than a simple philosophical concept. They form, together with the relations of production with which they function, what is called the mode of production. Before Marx no one used the term that way.
In principle, Marx points out that a productive force is nothing more than the actual labor power of the workers. With certain means of production and within a defined form of social cooperation, human beings produce the material means to satisfy their social needs..
In Marx and Engels's critique of political economy they refer to the productive forces as the combination of the means of production (tools, machinery, land, infrastructure, etc.) with the human labor force..
They probably arrived at this concept taking as a reference the economic work of Adam Smith, who emphasized the proportional increase of the "productive powers of labor", when the division of labor was created under the conditions of modern industry..
Marx emphasized that the means of production are not a productive force unless they are actually operated, maintained and preserved by human labor..
Without the application of human labor, the physical condition and value of the same would deteriorate, depreciate or be destroyed, just like a ghost town.
In an even more important second meaning, Marx indicates that a productive force is anything that increases the productive effect of human labor power..
In this sense, the progress of technology and science, as well as the social forces created by cooperation and the division of labor, belong to the productive forces..
That is why the development of the productive forces basically consists in increasing the productivity of labor or, in other words, the fact that society has reached the point where it can produce the same amount of goods with a lesser amount. of work.
Capital, being one of the factors of production, is seen in capitalist society as a productive force in itself independent of labor; a subject with a life of its own.
In fact, Marx sees the essence of what he calls the "capital relation" summarized by the fact that capital buys labor; that is, property power controls human energy and its working time.
Finally, on the subject of the productive forces we come to yet another characteristic of capitalism: its increasing transformation into destructive forces..
Marx explained how these productive forces received a unilateral development under the private property system and became destructive forces..
The term productive forces is integral. It does not mean only labor, raw materials or capital. Productive force will be called accumulated work, tools, land and everything that directly or indirectly helps production.
Consciousness and the power of human ingenuity enrich the productive forces, as do the instruments used for production..
The political philosopher Gerald Cohen, in his famous work Karl Marx's Theory of History, gives us a very simple formula of the concept of productive forces: the productive forces represent the means of production. These forces include:
These terms are related by the fact that each one is used by the producing agents to manufacture the products..
The instruments of production refer to what they work with. Raw materials respond to what they work for, and labor power is what allows them to work with the instruments on raw materials..
The productive forces are only one aspect of the mode of production. The other aspect is the production relations.
By producing material goods, people interact not only with nature, but also with each other. In the production process, certain relationships necessarily arise between people; these are called production relations.
For production to be possible, a relationship between people and the media is necessary. Cohen says that people and productive forces are the only terms linked by the relations of production.
All relations of production are between a person (or group of people) and another person (or group of people), or between a person and the productive force. In other words, the relations of production unite at least one person and, at most, one productive force..
Marx writes: “In production, men not only act on nature, but also on each other. They only produce by cooperating in a certain way and mutually exchanging their activities.
To produce they establish certain connections and relationships, and only within these social connections and relationships is their action on nature carried out ".
The novel aspect of Marx's theory of the materialist conception of history is that he calls all kinds of production as social production, and also that it is a social process. All of society, including its past and present, is closely related to the production process.
It is the relations of production that tell us if a worker is a slave, a wage earner or if the machine serves as a means to exploit the worker or vice versa. Production relations are economic relations.
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