SOSC 1140 Chapter Notes - Chapter 9: Productive Forces, Loom, Bourgeoisie
17 Nov 2018
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Reading Notes
7. Contradictions in Capitalism Engels. “Theoretical.” (Kit #9)
•The materialistic conception of history states from the principle of production, and with production the exchange of
its products, is the basis of every social order; that in every society which has appeared in history the distribution of
the products, and with it the division of society into classes, is determined by what is produced and how it is
produced, and how the product is exchanged.
•The cause of all social changes and political revolutions is due to changes in the mode of production and exchange.
Not in philosophy, but in the economics.
•The existing social order is the creation of the present ruling class: the bourgeoisie. According to Marx, their mode
of production is the capitalist mode of production.
•The bourgeoise took over the feudal system. Their social order allowed free competition, freedom of movement,
equal rights for commodity owners.
•The transformation of the former manufacture into large-scale industry evolved under bourgeois direction.
•The new forces of production have already outgrown the bourgeois form of using them; and this conflict between
productive forces and mode of production is not a conflict that has risen in mens heads, but it exists in the facts.
•The working class is suffering under modern socialism.
•PRE-CAPITALISM:
•Small-scale production was general, on the basis of the private ownership by the workers of their means of
production.
•Land, agriculture, the workshop and tools were the instruments of labour of individuals, intended only for individual
use. As a rule, what was produced belonged to the producer himself.
•Marx gives a detailed account of how, since the 15th century, they have been able to enlarge their limited means of
production into large-scale production. This process has developed historically through the three stages: co-
operation, manufacture, and large-scale industry.
•Marx stated that the bourgeoisie was unable to transform this limited means of production into mighty productive
forces except by transforming them from individual means of production into social means of production, which
could only be used by a body of men as a whole.
•ex. the hand loom has been replaced and the factory, making the co-operation of hundreds and thousands of
workers necessary, took the place of the individual work-room.
•Production changed from a series of individual operations into a series of social acts, and the products
from the producers of individuals into social products.
•No individual can no longer say that they own a product.
•Products now take the form of commodities. This is the mutual exchange, purchase and sale which allows
individual procurers to satisfy their needs.
•Plan-less vs planned division of labour. Alongside individual production, social production then began to appear.
The products of both were sold on the same market for around the same price. However, the planned organization
was stronger than the natural division of labour. This was because the factories in which labour was socially
organized produced their commodities more cheaply than the separate small producers.
•Individual production disappeared and social production revolutionized the whole former mode of
production.
•In commodity production, there was no concern of who should be the owner of the product. The individual producer
would produce it, as a rule, from raw material which belonged to him and was often produced by himself, with his
own tools, and by his own manual labour or of his family. His ownership of the product was based upon his own
labour.
•The came the concentration of the means of production in large workshops and factories, the transformation into
social production began. However, the social means of production and the social products were still treated as the
products of individuals as in the past. pg.295
•Product appropriation
