Capitalist mode of production (Marxist theory)

In Karl Marx's critique of political economy and subsequent Marxian analyses, the capitalist mode of production refers to the systems of organizing production and distribution within capitalist societies. Private money-making in various forms (renting, banking, merchant trade, production for profit, etc.) preceded the development of the capitalist mode of production as such. The capitalist mode of production proper, based on wage-labour and private ownership of the means of production, and on industrial technology, began to grow rapidly in Western Europe from the industrial revolution, later extending to most of the world.

The capitalist mode of production is characterized by private ownership of the means of production, extraction of surplus value by the owning class for the purpose of capital accumulation, wage-based labour, and, at least as far as commodities are concerned, being market-based.

A "mode of production" (in German: Produktionsweise) means simply "the distinctive way of producing," which could be defined in terms of how it is socially organized and what kinds of technologies and tools are used. Under the capitalist mode of production

The capitalist mode of production may exist within societies with differing political systems (e.g. liberal democracy, Social democracy, fascism, Communist state, Czarism), and alongside different social structures such as tribalism, the caste system, an agrarian-based peasant society, urban industrial society and post-industrialism. Although capitalism has existed in the form of merchant activity, banking, renting land, and small-scale manufactures in previous stages of history, it was usually a relatively minor activity and secondary to the dominant forms of social organization and production with the prevailing property system keeping commerce within clear limits.

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