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Productive Forces
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 labour power. 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 co ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
German Language
German ( ) is a West Germanic language mainly spoken in Central Europe. It is the most widely spoken and official or co-official language in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, and the Italian province of South Tyrol. It is also a co-official language of Luxembourg and Belgium, as well as a national language in Namibia. Outside Germany, it is also spoken by German communities in France (Bas-Rhin), Czech Republic (North Bohemia), Poland (Upper Silesia), Slovakia (Bratislava Region), and Hungary (Sopron). German is most similar to other languages within the West Germanic language branch, including Afrikaans, Dutch, English, the Frisian languages, Low German, Luxembourgish, Scots, and Yiddish. It also contains close similarities in vocabulary to some languages in the North Germanic group, such as Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish. German is the second most widely spoken Germanic language after English, which is also a West Germanic language. German is one of the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Reification (Marxism)
In Marxism, reification (german: Verdinglichung, ) is the process by which social relations are perceived as inherent attributes of the people involved in them, or attributes of some product of the relation, such as a traded commodity. This concept specifies the dialectical relationship between social existence and social consciousness – that is, between objective social relations and the subjective apprehension of those relations – in a society dominated by commodity production. This implies that objects are transformed into subjects and subjects are turned into objects, with the result that subjects are rendered passive or determined, while objects are rendered as the active, determining factor. Hypostatization refers to an effect of reification which results from supposing that whatever can be named, or conceived abstractly, must actually exist, an ontological and epistemological fallacy. The concept is related to but different from Marx's theories of alienation and comm ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Commercialization
Commercialization or commercialisation is the process of introducing a new product or production method into commerce—making it available on the market. The term often connotes especially entry into the mass market (as opposed to entry into earlier niche markets), but it also includes a move from the laboratory into (even limited) commerce. Many technologies begin in a research and development laboratory or in an inventor's workshop and may not be practical for commercial use in their infancy (as prototypes). The "development" segment of the " research and development" spectrum requires time and money as systems are engineered with a view to making the product or method a paying commercial proposition. The product launch of a new product is the final stage of new product development - at this point advertising, sales promotion, and other marketing efforts encourage commercial adoption of the product or method. Beyond commercialization (in which technologies enter the b ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Market (economics)
In economics, a market is a composition of systems, institutions, procedures, social relations or infrastructures whereby parties engage in exchange. While parties may exchange goods and services by barter, most markets rely on sellers offering their goods or services (including labour power) to buyers in exchange for money. It can be said that a market is the process by which the prices of goods and services are established. Markets facilitate trade and enable the distribution and allocation of resources in a society. Markets allow any tradeable item to be evaluated and priced. A market emerges more or less spontaneously or may be constructed deliberately by human interaction in order to enable the exchange of rights (cf. ownership) of services and goods. Markets generally supplant gift economies and are often held in place through rules and customs, such as a booth fee, competitive pricing, and source of goods for sale (local produce or stock registration). Markets can ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Social Relations
A social relation or also described as a social interaction or social experience is the fundamental unit of analysis within the social sciences, and describes any voluntary or involuntary interpersonal relationship between two or more individuals within and/or between groups. The group can be a language or kinship group, a social institution or organization, an economic class, a nation, or gender. Social relations are derived from human behavioral ecology, and, as an aggregate, form a coherent social structure whose constituent parts are best understood relative to each other and to the ecosystem as a whole. Fundamental inquiries into the nature of social relations feature in the work of sociologists such as Max Weber in his theory of social action. Social relationships are composed of both positive (affiliative) and negative (agonistic) interactions, representing opposing effects. Categorizing social interactions enables observational and other social research, such as Gemeinsc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Technological Progress
Technology is the application of knowledge to reach practical goals in a specifiable and reproducible way. The word ''technology'' may also mean the product of such an endeavor. The use of technology is widely prevalent in medicine, science, industry, communication, transportation, and daily life. Technologies include physical objects like utensils or machines and intangible tools such as software. Many technological advancements have led to societal changes. The earliest known technology is the stone tool, used in the prehistoric era, followed by fire use, which contributed to the growth of the human brain and the development of language in the Ice Age. The invention of the wheel in the Bronze Age enabled wider travel and the creation of more complex machines. Recent technological developments, including the printing press, the telephone, and the Internet have lowered communication barriers and ushered in the knowledge economy. While technology contributes to economi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Reification (Marxism)
In Marxism, reification (german: Verdinglichung, ) is the process by which social relations are perceived as inherent attributes of the people involved in them, or attributes of some product of the relation, such as a traded commodity. This concept specifies the dialectical relationship between social existence and social consciousness – that is, between objective social relations and the subjective apprehension of those relations – in a society dominated by commodity production. This implies that objects are transformed into subjects and subjects are turned into objects, with the result that subjects are rendered passive or determined, while objects are rendered as the active, determining factor. Hypostatization refers to an effect of reification which results from supposing that whatever can be named, or conceived abstractly, must actually exist, an ontological and epistemological fallacy. The concept is related to but different from Marx's theories of alienation and comm ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Commodity Fetishism
In Marxist philosophy, the term commodity fetishism describes the economic relationships of production and exchange as being social relationships that exist among things (money and merchandise) and not as relationships that exist among people. As a form of reification, commodity fetishism presents economic value as inherent to the commodities, and not as arising from the workforce, from the human relations that produced the commodity, the goods and the services. In the first chapter of '' Capital: Critique of Political Economy'' (1867) commodity fetishism explicates that the social organization of labour occurs through the buying and selling of commodities (goods and services); therefore, in the marketplace, capitalist social relations among people—who makes what, who works for whom, the production-time for a commodity, etc.—are social relations among ''objects'', not among individual persons. At market, the commodities appear in a depersonalized form, as material goods ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Postmodernism
Postmodernism is an intellectual stance or mode of discourseNuyen, A.T., 1992. The Role of Rhetorical Devices in Postmodernist Discourse. Philosophy & Rhetoric, pp.183–194. characterized by skepticism toward the " grand narratives" of modernism, opposition to epistemic certainty or stability of meaning, and emphasis on ideology as a means of maintaining political power. Claims to objective fact are dismissed as naïve realism, with attention drawn to the conditional nature of knowledge claims within particular historical, political, and cultural discourses. The postmodern outlook is characterized by self-referentiality, epistemological relativism, moral relativism, pluralism, irony, irreverence, and eclecticism; it rejects the "universal validity" of binary oppositions, stable identity, hierarchy, and categorization. Initially emerging from a mode of literary criticism, postmodernism developed in the mid-twentieth century as a rejection of modernism and has been obse ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Theory Of Productive Forces
The theory of the productive forces, sometimes referred to as productive force determinism, is a variation of historical materialism and Marxism that places primary emphasis on technical advances as the basis for advances and changes in the social structure and culture of a given civilization. The relative strength assigned to the role of technical or technological progress in impacting society and social advancement differs among different schools of Marxist thinkers. A related concept is technological determinism. On a prescriptive level, this view places a strong emphasis on the necessity of strengthening the productive forces of the economy as a precondition for the realization of socialism, and within a nominally socialist economy, essential to achieving communism. This theory was held by many orthodox Marxists as well as Marxist–Leninists, playing a crucial role in informing the economic policies of current and former socialist states. Empirical support The most in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Means Of Production
The means of production is a term which describes land, labor and capital that can be used to produce products (such as goods or services); however, the term can also refer to anything that is used to produce products. It can also be used as an abbreviation of the "means of production and distribution" which additionally includes the logistical distribution and delivery of products, generally through distributors, or as an abbreviation of the "means of production, distribution, and exchange" which further includes the exchange of distributed products, generally to consumers. This concept is used throughout fields of study including politics, economics, and sociology to discuss, broadly, the relationship between anything that can have productive use, its ownership, and the constituent social parts needed to produce it. Industrial production From the perspective of a firm, a firm uses its capital goods, which are also known as tangible assets as they are physical in natu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Subject Of Labor
Subject of labor, or object of labor, is a concept in Marxist political economy that refers to "everything to which man's labor is applied". The subject of labor may be materials provided directly by nature like timber or coal, or materials that have been modified by labor. In the latter case, the subject of labor (e.g., yarn in a textile mill or semi-conductor chips in a computer assembly factory) are called "raw materials". This usage of the term "raw materials" is given in, for instance, in ''Capital'', Part III. The “subject of labor” is one of three basic factors of the production process, along with "human labor" and the "means of labor" (tools and infrastructure used to transform the subject of labor). The subject of labor and the means of labor comprise the means of production The means of production is a term which describes land, labor and capital that can be used to produce products (such as goods or services); however, the term can also refer to anything th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
