Concept

Productive forces

Overview

Productive forces, productive powers, or forces of production (German: Produktivkräfte) is a central idea in Marxism and historical materialism.

In Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels' own critique of political economy, it refers to the combination of the means of labor (tools, machinery, land, infrastructure, and so on) with human relationship between energy in work. Marx and Engels probably derived the concept from Adam Smith's reference to the "productive powers of labour" (see e.g. chapter 8 of The Wealth of Nations (1776)), although the German political economist Friedrich List also mentions the concept of "productive powers" in The National System of Political Economy (1841).

All those forces which are applied by people in the production process (body and brain, tools and techniques, materials, resources, quality of workers' cooperation, and equipment) are encompassed by this concept, including those management and engineering functions technically indispensable for production (as contrasted with social control functions). Human knowledge (General intellect) can also be a productive force.

Together with the social and technical relations of production, the productive forces constitute a historically specific mode of production.

Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).

In the original texts

Passages from public-domain books where Productive forces is discussed.

1. The workers remain wage-workers--proletarians. The capitalist relation is not done away with. It is rather brought to a head. But, brought to a head, it topples over. State-ownership of the productive forces is not the solution of the conflict, but concealed within it are the technical conditions that form the elements of that solution.

   Friedrich Engels, Socialism, Utopian and Scientific

   states what it is; names the idea; author linked in the graph; opens on it

   Read the chapter · Open in the reader

2. At a certain stage in the development of these means of production and of exchange, the conditions under which feudal society produced and exchanged, the feudal organization of agriculture and manufacturing industry, in one word, the feudal relations of property, became no longer compatible with the already developed productive forces; they became so many fetters. They had to be burst asunder. Into their place…

   Karl Marx, Manifesto of the Communist Party

   names the idea; author linked in the graph; opens on it

   Read the chapter · Open in the reader

3. In other words it has come about that the productive forces of the modern capitalistic mode of production as well as the system of distribution based upon it are in glaring contradiction to the mode of production itself and to such a degree that a revolution in the modes of production and distribution must take place which will abolish all class differences or the whole of modern society will fall. It is in these…

   Friedrich Engels, Landmarks of Scientific Socialism

   names the idea; author linked in the graph

   Read the chapter · Open in the reader

4. For many a decade past the history of industry and commerce is but the history of the revolt of modern productive forces against modern conditions of production, against the property relations that are the conditions for the existence of the bourgeoisie and of its rule. It is enough to mention the commercial crises that by their periodical return put on its trial, each time more threateningly, the existence of the…

   Karl Marx, The Communist Manifesto

   names the idea; author linked in the graph

   Read the chapter · Open in the reader

5. The greatest improvements in the productive powers of labour, and the greater part of the skill, dexterity, and judgment, with which it is anywhere directed, or applied, seem to have been the effects of the division of labour. The effects of the division of labour, in the general business of society, will be more easily understood, by considering in what manner it operates in some particular manufactures. It is…

   Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations

   author linked in the graph

   Read the chapter · Open in the reader

Philosophers who discussed Productive forces

• Friedrich Engels
• Louis Althusser

Related ideas

• German language
• Karl Marx
• Adam Smith
• Columbia University Press
• Marxism
• Postmodernism
• Knowledge
• Social class
• Relations of production
• Marxian economics
• Historical materialism
• Friedrich Engels
• Means of production
• Taylor & Francis
• The Wealth of Nations

Opposing perspectives

• Economic system
• Communism
• Primitive communism

Place in the tradition

Part of Communism.

Explore Productive forces in the interactive graph →