Means of Production

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

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.