Mode of production

A mode of production is the general method of obtaining the means of life (food, clothing, shelter, tools of production, and the like) necessary for people, and for the existence and development of society. One side of the mode of production consists of the productive forces, in which are reflected the relationship of man to those objects and forces of nature which he must utilize to create the material necessities of life. The other side is the production relations, that is, the relations between people in the process of material production, relations in terms of which we may answer the question: Who possesses the means of production and under what conditions. Each historically determined mode of production (primitive-communal, slave-holding, feudal, etc.) is an interdependent combination of productive forces and corresponding production relations. The productive system lies at the basis and determines the character of the social order. Each new productive system marks a higher stage in the history of man.

This means that the history of development of society is above all the history of the development of production, the history of the modes of production which succeed each other in the course of centuries, the history of the development of productive forces and people’s relations of production.

— Joseph Stalin, Dialectical and Historical Materialism, p. 30

See also

• Base and superstructure