Means of Production

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Means of production (abbreviated MoP; German: Produktionsmittel), refers to physical, non-human, inputs used in production including factories, machines, and tools; along with both infrastructural capital and natural capital. This includes the classical factors of production minus financial capital and minus human capital.[1] They include two broad categories of objects: instruments of labour (tools, factories, infrastructure, etc.) and subjects of labour (natural resources and raw materials). People operate on the subjects of labour, using the instruments of labour, to create a product; or, stated another way, labour acting on the means of production creates a product.[2]

The term can be simply and picturesquely described in an agrarian society as the soil and the shovel; in an industrial society, the mines and the factories. -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Means_of_production


The MoP for the "Information" part of our society includes such things as the computers, wires, buildings to hold those things and the external infrastructure of the internet such as under-sea cable, satellites, etc. all needed to Host that activity.


  1. ^ http://www.economicexpert.com/a/Means:of:production.htm
  2. ^ Michael Evans, Karl Marx, London, England, 1975. Part II, Chap. 2, sect. a; page 63.

Related: Physical Sources