The means of production, which include the objects and means of labor, are used only for productive consumption. Consumer goods, which are used only for personal consumption, satisfy people’s natural needs for food, clothing, and housing, as well as their cultural and intellectual needs. Material goods satisfy the needs of man and society directly, as means of subsistence and as consumer goods, and indirectly, as means of production.
The products of material production are material goods-a combination of a natural substance and labor. The content of production determines the process of labor, which presupposes three aspects: a purposeful activity, or labor itself an object of labor, or something at which purposeful human activity is directed and the means of labor, especially the instruments of labor-the machines, equipment, and tools by which man transforms the objects of labor, adapting them to satisfy his needs. Production, which is a natural condition of human life and the material basis for other types of activity, exists in all the stages of development of human society. (material production), the process of creating the material goods necessary for the existence and development of society the transformation and “acquisition of the objects of nature by an individual within the limits of and by means of a certain social form” (K. Through computerized instructions, the design and manufacture of many mass-produced products can easily be modified to suit the needs of the individual customer. Computerization has made assembly lines faster and more accurate and has given them more flexibility.
In order to meet the great expenses of mass production, particularly the capital necessary in most industries, groups of speculators often take on the risks of production, and the individual entrepreneur has become less significant.Īnother late 20th-century trend has been toward greater computerization of the production process increasingly, computers are not only being integrated into the machinery of production but are replacing much of the human labor as well. Since under capitalism production is for a market, an important function of the entrepreneur is to anticipate as accurately as possible the economic demands for goods and to produce the kind and quantity of goods that will meet that demand. To these three primary factors of production is sometimes added a fourth: the entrepreneur who organizes the forces of production and assumes the risks. Equally essential are land and its natural resources, from which the raw materials are obtained, and labor, which, with the aid of capital, extracts and transforms the raw materials. Hence, mass production often took the form of an assembly line, in which a continuous flow of products moves steadily forward toward completion.įor most kinds of production in modern society, large amounts of capital in the form of machinery are required.
Increasing automation, with attendant increases in the division of labor, allowed manufacturers to hire unskilled or semiskilled labor, which would repeatedly perform small tasks in the ultimate production of a commodity. The mass production method, generally involving the piecing together of standardized, interchangeable parts by a number of workers, reached its apex in the automobile manufacturing of the early 20th cent. Many historians place the beginnings of mass production around 1800, with Eli Whitney's firearms factory approximating the labor process of modern industrial production. Today, the prevailing mode of production is called mass production, with cottage industry accounting for only a minor portion of the market in most areas of the world. Production was the major thrust of industry until at least the beginning of the 20th cent., when sales and marketing began to be considered equally important in the transference of commodities from producers to consumers. The farmer who grows wheat, the miller who grinds the wheat into flour, and the baker who transforms flour into bread are examples of producers who, each in his own way, impart utility to a natural or partially processed material. Production, in economics, all those activities that have to do with the creation of commodities, by imparting to raw materials utility, added value, or the ability to satisfy human wants.
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