Modes of Production
Donald L Donham, University of California, Davis, CA, USA
Ó 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Abstract
Marxist social theory is often thought of as ‘materialist’ and ‘determinist.’ Just how misleading this characterization can be
emerged principally in the 1970s in a wide-ranging conversation about modes of production. This article attempts to
summarize the lasting contribution of this intervention by reviewing what modes of production are, how they are structured,
and why they change over world history.
Concepts in the social sciences often go through intense phases
of development followed by periods in which they take on
background status. In the latter times, ideas remain alive, but
they are no longer being extended or deepened. One example is
Karl Marx’s notion of modes of production. First developed in
the nineteenth century, the idea of modes of production
underwent a dramatic transformation in the late 1960s and
1970s as anthropologists, economists, historians, and philos-
ophers were drawn into a wide-ranging conversation. The
critical impulse was largely spent by the 1980s, but by that
point, aspects of Marx’s thought had been developed in strik-
ingly new directions. Some might even think that Marx had
been stood on his head.
This article is an attempt to set out some of the enduring
legacies of this discussion. It defines forces and relations of
production and describes how the first may be thought to
determine the second in the creation of distinctive ways or
modes of producing social life. Karl Marx’s term Pro-
duktionsweise is usually translated into English as ‘mode of
production,’ but it might be more simply rendered as ‘way of
producing.’ Never precisely defined in Marx’s work – yet argu-
ably at the center of it – Produktionsweise refers to both a form or
structure and a way of producing. One might say that Marx’s
object in Capital was to show how the first – a particular
structure of unequal power and wealth – was both the cause
and the result of the second, men, and women pursuing their
individual ends within capitalist cultural assumptions.
One notable aspect of the capitalist mode of production is,
according to Marx, its inherent instability. Crises are necessary,
built-in features of this way of producing; they are not
somehow accidents caused by factors outside it. As individuals
pursue their capitalist projects, there comes a point, finally,
when the entire social system can no longer be reproduced.
Then, social revolution appears on the horizon, and the mode
of production stands to be fundamentally transformed.
Even though Marx referred at times to other modes of
production – primitive communist, the ancient, Asiatic, feudal,
socialist, and finally modern communist – his only developed
work was on capitalism. On what would come after capitalism,
he offered only the vaguest of outlines; it would fall to Lenin
and others to construct actually existing socialisms. And
on what came ‘before,’ Marx sometimes reflected only the
European prejudices of the nineteenth century. For example, he
thought that the Asiatic mode of production was inherently
static and would waken to change only through the effects of
Western imperialism.
714 International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences, 2nd edition, Volume 15
The grand evolutionary teleology in Marx’s view of history –
the circular but progressive spiral from primitive to modern
communism – accounts for much of the political appeal of
Marx’s ideas. Ironically, that appeal was felt mainly in countries
on the periphery of capitalist development such as Russia in
1917, China in 1949, and Ethiopia in 1974; in such locations,
the notion of stages of history appeared to offer a road map to
a better future, a way to skip ahead to modernity. But this
aspect of Marx’s work also accounts for its ambivalent reception
among social scientists who, even if they identified with
progressive politics, distrusted apparent teleologies and grap-
pled with refractory evidence.
As Marxism began to provide the legitimating ideology of
socialist states in the twentieth century, it tended to stagnate
there. In the capitalist West, however, Marx’s ideas received
critique and development, principally during periods of crisis.
Dogmas of various sorts were questioned, and eventually
a more flexible version of Marxist theory took its place along-
side others in the social sciences.
In the field of anthropology this began after the upheavals
of 1968, particularly in France where, under the influence of
structuralist philosopher Louis Althusser, scholars such as
Claude Meillassoux, Pierre-Philippe Rey, Maurice Godelier,
and Emmanuel Terray attempted to extend the notion of
modes of production to so-called precapitalist societies. In this
article, I attempt to summarize the lasting legacy of this
conversation. I do so, not in the structuralist vocabulary of the
time, but in reference to what I regard as the clarifying, later
work of British analytical philosopher G.A. Cohen.
What, then, is a mode of production? Perhaps the simplest
answer is that it is a model of certain basic regularities that hold
across and therefore define historical epochs. At the heart of
these regularities is the interrelationship between technology in
some broad sense and forms of social inequality. According to
Marx, the first (Produktivkräfte, or productive forces) determines
the second (Produktionsverhältnisse, or relations of production).
These two constitute the base of a mode of production, which,
in turn, determines the superstructure.
Productive Forces
Productive forces are anything that can be used in productive
interaction with nature. On this reading, productive forces are
not simply raw materials or tools; more inclusively, they are
human skills, productive knowledge, and even the technical
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-08-097086-8.12110-5

aspects of human cooperation in the labor process. These
factors Marx considered as equally ‘material’ in that all can be
utilized to produce. But most current readers would probably
classify objects, knowledge, and the technical aspects of coop-
eration as, respectively, material, ideal, and social.
The most striking aspect of productive forces has been their
tendency to expand over human history. In the most general
sense, the anterior cause of this tendency appears to be located
in human nature itself. Humans everywhere develop their
powers and skills in a continuous dialectic with nature, and
when presented with a choice between more or less efficient
means of production, humans everywhere (with certain limited
exceptions) choose the first.
If productive forces have tended to expand, this fact can be
established only at the world level. Some individual societies
have stagnated; some have even experienced local declines in
the level of productive powers. As will become clear in this
article, relations of production can prevent technical develop-
ment beyond a certain point. For any particular society in stasis,
there is no reason to believe that new social relations
compatible with the further expansion of forces must develop.
In fact, technical knowledge tends to diffuse from place to
place, and typically the most ‘advanced’ societies are not the
ones that give rise to the next development. Rather, peripheral
groups that are the recipients of the productive knowledge of
their more ‘advanced’ neighbors often leapfrog ahead.
Just what determines the level of development of productive
forces should be considered. A society’s mass of productive
forces is determined by two factors: the first is the average
productivity of labor, and the second is population. The
product of these two factors yields the level of productive
forces. In this formulation, population itself is not a productive
force, yet it enters into the determination of the level of
productive powers.
Relations of Production
Relations of production are not, as the English phrase suggests,
simply the social relationships formed in the actual process of
production. Rather, they are the de facto power relationships that
both underlie and are the result of the division of the fruits of
a society’s total labor. Household head versus dependents, chief
versus subjects, master versus slaves, feudal lord versus peasants,
and capitalist versus workers – relations of production are basic
asymmetries of power grounded in the organization of material
life. In capitalism, relations of production rest upon actual
control over productive forces in the process of production, but
in other modes of production, as anthropologists and historians
eventually showed, this is not necessarily the case.
In relation to the last point, consider the contrast between
capitalism and precolonial chiefdoms in Africa. Capitalists put
the production process into motion; they or their representa-
tives oversee and supervise in order to ensure that a profit is
produced at the end of the work cycle. In many chiefdoms,
chiefs did not control the production process itself. Yet, having
produced, subjects brought tribute, the fruits of their own
labors, to the chief. This contrast illustrates the fact that rela-
tions of production, by definition, correspond to the basic
structures of power in a society, however that power is
Modes of Production 715
constituted – whether by economic, coercive, or religious
means (or some mix of these). This makes the reformed notion
of modes of production quite different from what is often
assumed of Marxism; most particularly, it is not a form of
economic reductionism.
Why do productive inequalities occupy a central place in
Marx’s thought? The answer is that they locate the basic divi-
sions within any society, the lines of potential opposition – of
contradiction. Marx saw these as the potential fault lines along
which tensions tend to build up are routinely dissipated by
small readjustments, and are sometimes violently resolved by
radical realignments. These fault lines are structural; they do
not necessarily lead to actual struggle and conflict (indeed, the
function of the superstructure is precisely to prevent such
occurrences). Nevertheless, contradictions always exist as
potentialities; they lie just below the surface.
Forces Determine Relations
Ordinarily, if a factor X is said to determine factor Y, then X is
taken to cause Y. Given X, Y is uniquely specified. Transferred to
Marx’s scheme given here, this understanding of determination
yields what has been called ‘vulgar Marxism.’ Such an inter-
pretation can be supported by some of Marx’s own, more
incautious summary statements: “The handmill gives you
society with the feudal lord; the steam mill society with the
industrial capitalist.” Empirically, it is clear that the same
technology can exist in different modes of production.
A great deal of effort has been expended by commentators
to explicate Marx’s notion of determination – from examina-
tion of dialectics to, in Engels’ phrase, determination only ‘in
the last instance.’ Probably the best way to clarify Marx’s claims
is to note that they are forms of functional, not causal, expla-
nation. Immediately, a distinction needs to be drawn between
functional explanations and the theoretical school known as
functionalism in sociology and anthropology: Marx used
functionalist explanations, but he was not a ‘functionalist’ in
the second sense.
Functional explanations have a distinct logical form in
which the effects of a trait enter into the explanation of the
presence of that trait: for example, when Y’s presence is partly
explained by some positive consequence Y has for X. In such
a case, X can be said to determine or ‘select’ Y because of Y’s
effect on X.
Marx believed that the level of productive forces selects
relations of production. For any given level of development of
forces, there is only a limited set of relations possible –
namely, those that are compatible with and in fact promote
the further development of forces. Here, X hardly causes Y in
a one-way pattern of determination. Rather, the reverse is
closer to the truth: it is Y’s effect on X that is paramount.
Particular relations cause expansion in the forces. Herein lies
the rub, however. As forces expand, they reach a level that is
no longer compatible with the existing relations of produc-
tion. At that point, according to Marx, revolution becomes
a possibility. In this way, continuous incremental change
(in forces) is mapped onto occasionally discontinuous revo-
lutionary change (in relations) in the base of modes of
production.
716 Modes of Production
Bases Determine Superstructures
One of the important contributions of G.A. Cohen was
a clarification of the notion of superstructure. If Marx claims
that the base or, more precisely, relations of production
determine the superstructure, then a definition of relations
and superstructure must be found in which the two are clearly
distinguished. The difficulty is that power as we find it in any
social formation is inevitably encased in particular cultural
and legal concepts (i.e., superstructural notions). It was for
this reason that Cohen defined relations of production as the
de facto distribution of power. Every culturally encoded right,
he argued, can be matched with a de facto power. And it is de
facto power that determines culturally specific notions, rather
than the reverse.
One important effect of this definitional move is to place
the long-term dynamic of a mode of production outside of
culture itself. Eventually, culture corresponds to de facto power
rather than the reverse. But in the short term, it places culture at
the very center of the analysis of modes of production, for it is
precisely the superstructure that defines and stabilizes relations
of production. Once again, the logic of functional explanation
turns the ordinary expectations about Marxism upside-down. If
something is described as having a base and a superstructure,
we think of the base as a foundation. It supports the super-
structure; without the foundation, the superstructure would fall
to the ground. Yet, the logic of functional explanation requires
the opposite: it is the superstructure that defines the base.
To adapt a visual image from Cohen (1978), consider the
following: Four pieces of wood of the same length are driven
a little way into the ground. They stand, but they are easily
blown over by a strong wind. A top is attached to the four struts
such that the whole becomes a table. The struts, now legs, stand
solidly upright. They do not wobble in the wind. Of the
tabletop, one can say that (1) it is supported by the legs, and
(2) its very existence is required for the legs to be legs. Without
the top, the legs would not be legs – only sticks of wood of
such-and-such a length. Here, we have a building whose base
and superstructure relate in the proper way.
The conclusion to this line of thought (heretical to some
Marxists) is that Capital is an analysis of the capitalist super-
structure – the set of culturally specific and legally encoded
meanings and practices that tend to stabilize capitalist relations
of production. In a comparative sense, this conclusion is crucial
since it sets capitalism on the same analytical plane as any other
mode of production. On this view, the analysis of modes of
production becomes a matter of locating effective power
difference over material production as they are reflected in
differential control over the total social product and analyzing
the meanings and practices that tend to reproduce such powers
– what Antonio Gramsci called hegemonic culture. It goes
without saying that it is always misleading to import the
cultural logic of one mode of production (such as capitalism)
into the understanding of others.
Functional Alternatives
If this reading of Marx’s notion of determination solves many
conceptual problems, it also creates others in the application of
D
Relations
C
B
A
Forces
Figure 1 A possible set of forces and relations of production when
functional alternatives exist.
Marx’s ideas. Carl Hempel and others have called attention to the
difficulties of actually carrying out functional explanations. Not
the least of these stem from the problem of functional alterna-
tives. That is, there is often more than one Y (Y1, Y2, Y3, .) that
can fulfill any given function. That being so, the particular pres-
ence of Y1, say, cannot be explained simply by referring to its
function, for Y2 or Y3 could have served the same need.
The critical question becomes “What is the size of the set of
functional alternatives?” Implicitly, Marx appears to have
believed that alternatives are quite limited – typically to the set
of one. Consider such a limiting case. For each level of devel-
opment of productive forces, there is only one set of relations
possible. History therefore proceeds in a series of discrete steps
from A to B to C. Both the past and the future are specified –
socialism is inevitable because it is supposedly the only
economic system consistent with highly developed forces.
A different story emerges if the number of functional
alternatives is even moderately few. If several different sets of
relations of production are compatible with any given level of
forces, then the grand design of world history becomes
considerably more complex. One possible trajectory in
Figure 1, for example, would be A to C to B to D. In this
reading, the future looks considerably more open. There may
indeed be functional alternatives to socialism – if indeed
socialism as we have known it is compatible with developed
forces.
Conclusion
The notion of a mode of production is a deliberate simplifi-
cation. It provides a model of certain central relationships that
define epochal forms. As such, the analysis of modes of
production cannot substitute for the examination of particular
cases in specific spatial and temporal contexts. In this sense,
mode-of-production analyses do not constitute historical
explanations.
In a larger sense, however, the concept of ways of producing
furnishes the necessary scaffolding without which local
historical explanation would be impossible. Comparison and
contrast, whether explicitly or implicitly carried out, depend
upon an overarching framework. This is what Marx’s notion of
modes of production provides: a way of understanding society
and history in the broadest terms.

The present is once again a moment of deep crisis in world
capitalism. Accordingly, it would not be surprising if the
social sciences produced another efflorescence of Marxist-
inspired ideas, but if so, it will unlikely do so in reference to
a comparative analysis of modes of production. After the
disintegration of the Soviet Union and the elimination of
socialism as a world model, nothing remains but capitalism.
In 1968, it was possible at least to imagine large parts of the
earth as ‘noncapitalist,’ but now there is, for the first time in
human history, one truly globalized world capitalist system.
Deepening the analysis of the present will require taking into
account what was learned in the 1970s: namely, that capi-
talism is no more ‘economic’ than other modes of production
and no less dependent upon a series of culturally peculiar
ideas. Once the analysis of modes of production is truly
leveled in this respect, we will have a more powerful
approach to capitalism itself, one that does not naturalize
capitalist culture.
Modes of Production 717
See also: Marx, Karl (1818–83).
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