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In the Marxist theory of historical materialism, a mode of production (German: Produktionsweise, "the way of producing") is a specific combination of the: . Productive forces: these include human labour power and means of production (tools, machinery, factory buildings, infrastructure, technical knowledge, raw materials, plants, animals, exploitable land).
Political economy in anthropology is the application of the theories and methods of historical materialism to the ... In the kin-ordered mode of production, social ...
In the kin-ordered mode of production, social labour is mobilized through kin relations (such as lineages), although his description makes its exact relations with tributary and capitalist modes unclear. The kin mode was further theorized by French structuralist Marxists in terms of 'articulated modes of production.'
That is, exchange in non-market societies is less about acquiring the means of production (whether land or tools) and more about the redistribution of finished goods throughout a community. These social relationships are largely kinship-based. His discussion of types of reciprocity is located within what he calls the "domestic mode of production."
Others, such as French Marxist anthropologist Claude Meillassoux, used the development of ranked kin redistribution from generalized reciprocity as the basis for a lineage mode of production found in western African chiefdoms and kingdoms.
The latter distribution, however, is a feature of the mode of production itself. The capitalist mode of production, for example, rests on the fact that the material conditions of production are in the hands of nonworkers in the form of property in capital and land, while the masses are only owners of the personal condition of production, of ...
Under the capitalist mode of production, workers do not own the means of production and must "voluntarily" enter into an exploitative work relationship with a capitalist to earn the necessities of life. The worker's entry into such employment is voluntary because they choose which capitalist to work for. However, the worker must work or starve.
Marx never provided a complete definition of the capitalist mode of production as a short summary, although in his manuscripts he sometimes attempted one. In a sense, it is Marx's three-volume work Capital (1867–1894; sometimes known by its German title, Das Kapital), as a whole that provides his "definition" of the capitalist mode of ...