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Regional secretary with the National Education Union
What are the ‘forces,’ ‘relations’ and ‘modes’ of production?
What is made, how it’s made, who it’s made by and who for define not just those involved in the process but entire eras of human civilisation, explains the MARX MEMORIAL LIBRARY

LET’S start with the “production” bit first. In common with other animals, people need food and shelter to survive.

But unlike most other animals, even in the earliest human societies many of the necessities of life couldn’t be found ready-made in nature. They had to be made — “produced.”

Material production has always been the basis of human existence without which everything else in society — ideas, knowledge, science, religion, even language — would not exist.

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