Productive forces

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Marxian critique of political economy
Concepts Capitalist mode of production Capital Commodity Concrete and abstract labour Critique of political economy Means of production Mode of production Productive forces Relations of production Socially necessary labour time Socialization Wage labour Wage slavery Wertkritik Wertabspaltungskritik Value-form
Topics Crisis theory Imperialism Historical materialism Technological unemployment Falling profit-rate tendency
Works Outlines of a Critique of Political Economy Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844 Wage Labour and Capital A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy Grundrisse Das Kapital Theories of Surplus Value Value, Price and Profit
People Karl Marx Friedrich Engels Paul Lafargue Roman Rosdolsky Étienne Balibar Robert Kurz Mark Fisher Claus Peter Ortlieb Geoff Pilling Moishe Postone NML: Hans-Georg Backhaus Helmut Reichelt Hans-Jürgen Krahl
Journals Monthly Review New School Economic Review Crisis and Critique Historical Materialism Socialist register Capital & Class
Related topics Critique of political economy Economics Marxist sociology
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Productive forces, productive powers, or forces of production (German: Produktivkräfte) is a central idea in Marxism and historical materialism.

In Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels' own critique of political economy, it refers to the combination of the means of labor (tools, machinery, land, infrastructure, and so on) with human labour power. Marx and Engels probably derived the concept from Adam Smith's reference to the "productive powers of labour" (see e.g. chapter 8 of The Wealth of Nations (1776)), although the German political economist Friedrich List also mentions the concept of "productive powers" in The National System of Political Economy (1841).

All those forces which are applied by people in the production process (body and brain, tools and techniques, materials, resources, quality of workers' cooperation, and equipment) are encompassed by this concept, including those management and engineering functions technically indispensable for production (as contrasted with social control functions). Human knowledge can also be a productive force.

Together with the social and technical relations of production, the productive forces constitute a historically specific mode of production.