Capital, Means of Production, Factors Of Production, Productive Forces, etc.

[AK]

This shit confused me again. I can't tell what's what. Could someone differentiate between them and give me a simple explanation as to what each are?

[Muzk]

This shit confused me again. I can't tell what's what. Could someone differentiate between them and give me a simple explanation as to what each are?

Capital are the means of production which are not used up in the productionary process. Machinery, for example.

Some might say that money, furniture, hamburgers are capital too; but that's only the case because they have an exchange value, that means that a number x of hamburgers for example exchange to another number y of a machine. Now, noone will give you a machine for, say, 10000 hamburgers, you'll have to first use the market to transform your hamburgers into money, and then, buy a machine.

Means of production are exactly this, capital. But only capital in its pure form are means of production; machinery most of the time. While capital can be used to define just about every good with exchange-labour, means of production are nothing but the human-made machinery used as a part of the process of creating goods.

Productive forces
The means of production are the first part of the productive forces, the other half is human labour. They form a unit, a "force", of production. Together, but sadly, the human is nothing but a part of the machine... these days.

Factors of production
The elementary factors of production are work itself, human labour, then the objects given by nature which are supposed to be changed into something else(which, in their pure form, don't have any human labour embodied inside), I'll take the example of bread into hamburgers, and the last one, the means of production.

Imagine bread grows on trees(Nature). A worker then throws a stone at the bread(Labour), using a slingshot(Means of production), finally the bread turns into a hamburger.

So the factors of production can be summed up into 3 simple factors thrown together to create goods.

[bailey_187]

Means of production are what is used to produce. So this is machinary in most cases, but hammers etc are included (hence some Communists have a worker seizing a hammer i.e. seizing the means of production")

Productive forces are is the amount society can produce. So fuedalism had relativly low productive forces, but modern capitalism has very high productive forces. It is generally true that a society's productive forces are increasing, although sometimes relations of production can put restraints on the forces - and so there comes a social revolution.

Factors of production are what is required for production to take place. In general capitalist economics these are: Land, Labour, Capital (with some adding Entrepenuers as a factor, although that is contested). Within Capitalism, obviously this is true, but the only factors really that are needed for production is Land and Labour.

[bailey_187]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dh2cyOX8sCA

May be of some use