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Relations of production (German: ''Produktionsverhaltnisse'') is a concept frequently used by Karl Marx in his theory of Historical Materialism and in Das Kapital . Beyond examining specific cases, Marx never defined the general Concept exactly however. It is evident though that it refers to all kinds of Social and Technical Human interconnections involved in the social production and reproduction of Material life. " Social " denotes belonging, group membership and co-operative activity (in Latin, 'socius' means comrade, companion or associate). "Technical" refers here to a relationship between producers and objects worked upon. DEFINITIONS A Social Relation can be defined, in the first instance, as
The Group could be an Ethnic or Kinship group, a social Institution or Organisation , a Social Class , a Nation or Gender etc. A social relation is therefore not simply identical with an interpersonal relation or an individual relation, although all these types of relations presuppose each other. A social relation refers to a common social characteristic of a group of people. '' Society '' for Marx is ''the sum total of social relations connecting its members''. Social ''relations of production'' in Marx's sense refer to
The totality of social relations of production constitute the social structure of the economy, which according to Marx determine how incomes, products and assets will be distributed. ILLUSTRATION In Das Kapital , Marx illustrates the concept of relations of production with reference to Edward Gibbon Wakefield's theory of colonisation: SOCIAL/TECHNICAL DISTINCTION AND REIFICATION Combined with the Productive Forces , the relations of production constitute a historically specific Mode Of Production . Karl Marx contrasts the Social Relations of production with the Technical relations of production; in the former case, it is people (subjects) who are related, in the latter case, the relation is between people and objects in the physical world they inhabit (those objects are, in the context of production, what Marx calls the "means of labor" or Means Of Production . However, Marx argues that with the rise of Market Economy , this distinction is increasingly obscured and distorted. In particular, a cash economy makes it possible to define, symbolise and manipulate relationships between things that people make in abstraction from the social & technical relations involved. Marx says this leads to the Reification (thingification or ''Verdinglichung'') of economic relations, of which Commodity Fetishism is a prime example. The marketplace seems to be a place where all people have free and equal access and freely negotiate and bargain over deals and prices on the basis of civil equality. People will buy and sell goods without really knowing where they originated or who made them. They know that objectively they depend on producers and consumers somewhere else, that this social dependency exists, but they do not know who specifically those people are or what their activities are. Market forces seem to regulate everything, but what is really behind those market forces has become obscured, because the social relationship between people or their relation with nature is expressed as a commercial relationship between things (money, commodities, capital). Some social relations of production therefore exist in an objective, mind-independent way, not simply because they are a natural necessity for human groups, but because of the mediation of social and technical relations by commerce. In addition to creating new social and technical relations, commerce introduces a proliferation of relationships between tradeable 'things'. Not only do relationships between 'things' (commodities, prices etc.) begin to indicate and express social and technical relations, the commercial relations also begin to govern and regulate the pattern of human contact and technique. The fact therefore that particular social relations of production acquire an objective, mind-independent existence may not be due to any natural exchange objectifies Social Relations to the point where they escape from conscious human control, and exist such that they can be recognised only by abstract thought. RELATIONS OF PRODUCTION AND RELATIONS OF DISTRIBUTION One of the theoretical problems in Marxian Economics is to distinguish exactly between ''relations of production'' and ''relations of distribution'', determining the significance of each in the allocation of resources. According to the crudest and most vulgar interpretations of Das Kapital , Exploitation occurs only at the point of production. Marx himself obviously did not assert this at all, he only postulated the command over the Surplus Labour of others as the basis of the existence of Capital and its Economic Power . Marx discusses the theoretical problem in two main places: the introduction to the ''Grundrisse'' manuscript and in chapter 51 of Das Kapital . In the ''Grundrisse'', where he defines the total Economy to include production, circulation, distribution and consumption, he raises the following question: He answers his own question negatively: Disagreeing with David Ricardo , who regarded ''distribution'' as the proper object of study for economics, Marx argues that the Mode Of Production largely ''determines'' the mode of distribution: the ''source'' of income & products in production, and their ''distribution'' among the population must be analysed within one framework: In the last chapters of Das Kapital Vol 3, he develops the argument, defining relations of distribution as the "forms" which "express the relationships in which the total value newly produced is distributed among the owners of the various agents of production" (as income and products). His critique of political economy in this regard was(1) that relations of production or distribution are posited as "natural and eternal" rather than as historically specific relations, (2) that forms of distribution of income and products are crucially determined by Property relations pertaining to productive assets; (3) that by constantly reproducing the relations of production, the Mode Of Production of capital also reproduces the relations of distribution corresponding to it. CRITICISM OF MARX'S CONCEPT It is frequently objected by sociologists in the tradition of Max Weber that Marx paid insufficient attention to the ''intersubjective'' dimension of Social Relations , i.e. the meanings consciously attached by people to their social interactions. However, Marx's argument is that these subjective or intersubjective meanings permit of infinite variations, and therefore cannot be the foundation for a genuine science of society. Rather, one must begin with understanding those objective interdependencies which by necessity shape and socialise human beings, i.e. those social relations which people as social beings must enter into, regardless of what they may think or wish. In this context, the young Vladimir Lenin commented:
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