The Author
30th July 2008, 00:27
CHAPTER IX
Production and Reproduction
If it is to live and develop, society must produce material wealth. It cannot stop producing, as it cannot stop consuming.
From day to day and year to year people consume bread, meat and other foodstuffs, and wear out clothes and footwear but at the same time fresh masses of bread, meat, cloth footwear and other products are being produced by human labour. Coal is being burnt in stoves and furnaces but at the same time fresh masses of coal are being drawn from the bowels of the earth. Machine-tools gradually wear out, locomotives sooner or later become decrepit, but fresh machine-tools are being built in the factories and fresh locomotives are being made. Under any system of social relations the process production must continually be renewed.
This continued renewal and ceaseless repetition of the production-process is reproduction. “When viewed, therefore, as a connected whole, and as flowing on with incessant renewal, every social process of production is at the same time a process of reproduction.” (Marx, Capital, Kerr edition, vol. 1, p. 620.) Whatever the conditions of production are, so also are the conditions of reproduction. If production is capitalist in form, then reproduction takes this form too.
The process of reproduction consists not only in people making ever fresh masses of products in place of, and in excess of, those consumed, but also in the fact that the corresponding production-relations in society are constantly being renewed.
Two types of reproduction must be distinguished: simple and extended.
Simple reproduction means repetition of the production-process on the same scale as before, the newly-produced products merely replacing the means of production and consumer goods which have been expended.
Extended reproduction means repetition of the production-process on an enlarged scale, when society does not merely replace the material wealth which has been consumed but also produces additional means of production and consumer goods over and above this.
Before the rise of capitalism the productive forces developed very slowly. The dimensions of social production changed little from year to year and from decade to decade. Under capitalism the former scarcely-moving, stagnant state of social production gave place to a much more rapid development of productive forces. Typical of the capitalist mode of production is extended reproduction which is interrupted by economic crises, when production falls off.http://www.kibristasosyalistgercek.net/english/polecon/chapter_ix.htm (http://www.kibristasosyalistgercek.net/english/polecon/FrmIntIndex1.htm)
Well, this is an interesting subject: production and reproduction. What is it in detail? How is such a matter to be considered in socialism and communism? What problems emerge in the transition? Discuss.
Production and Reproduction
If it is to live and develop, society must produce material wealth. It cannot stop producing, as it cannot stop consuming.
From day to day and year to year people consume bread, meat and other foodstuffs, and wear out clothes and footwear but at the same time fresh masses of bread, meat, cloth footwear and other products are being produced by human labour. Coal is being burnt in stoves and furnaces but at the same time fresh masses of coal are being drawn from the bowels of the earth. Machine-tools gradually wear out, locomotives sooner or later become decrepit, but fresh machine-tools are being built in the factories and fresh locomotives are being made. Under any system of social relations the process production must continually be renewed.
This continued renewal and ceaseless repetition of the production-process is reproduction. “When viewed, therefore, as a connected whole, and as flowing on with incessant renewal, every social process of production is at the same time a process of reproduction.” (Marx, Capital, Kerr edition, vol. 1, p. 620.) Whatever the conditions of production are, so also are the conditions of reproduction. If production is capitalist in form, then reproduction takes this form too.
The process of reproduction consists not only in people making ever fresh masses of products in place of, and in excess of, those consumed, but also in the fact that the corresponding production-relations in society are constantly being renewed.
Two types of reproduction must be distinguished: simple and extended.
Simple reproduction means repetition of the production-process on the same scale as before, the newly-produced products merely replacing the means of production and consumer goods which have been expended.
Extended reproduction means repetition of the production-process on an enlarged scale, when society does not merely replace the material wealth which has been consumed but also produces additional means of production and consumer goods over and above this.
Before the rise of capitalism the productive forces developed very slowly. The dimensions of social production changed little from year to year and from decade to decade. Under capitalism the former scarcely-moving, stagnant state of social production gave place to a much more rapid development of productive forces. Typical of the capitalist mode of production is extended reproduction which is interrupted by economic crises, when production falls off.http://www.kibristasosyalistgercek.net/english/polecon/chapter_ix.htm (http://www.kibristasosyalistgercek.net/english/polecon/FrmIntIndex1.htm)
Well, this is an interesting subject: production and reproduction. What is it in detail? How is such a matter to be considered in socialism and communism? What problems emerge in the transition? Discuss.