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Instruments of production refers to things like the tools, machinery, and infrastructure that are required for work. People use the instruments of labor in order to create products. Together with the subjects of labor—the natural resources and raw materials needed for production—the instruments of production form the means of production.
Instruments of production Quotes in The Communist Manifesto
The The Communist Manifesto quotes below are all either spoken by Instruments of production or refer to Instruments of production. For each quote, you can also see the other terms and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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I. Bourgeois and Proletarians
Quotes
The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionising the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society […] Constant revolutionising of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones […] All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real conditions of life and his relations with his kind.
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II. Proletarians and Communists
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The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degrees, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralize all instruments of production in the hands of the State, i.e., of the proletariat organized as the ruling class; and to increase the total of productive forces as rapidly as possible.
Of course, in the beginning, this cannot be effected except by means of despotic inroads on the rights of property, and on the conditions of bourgeois production; by means of measures, therefore which appear economically insufficient and untenable, but which, in the course of the movement, outstrip themselves, necessitate further inroads upon the old social order, and are unavoidable as a means of entirely revolutionizing the mode of production.
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Instruments of production Term Timeline in The Communist Manifesto
The timeline below shows where the term Instruments of production appears in The Communist Manifesto. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
I. Bourgeois and Proletarians
The bourgeoisie has to constantly revolutionize the “ instruments of production ” in order to maintain its dominance. But in doing so, it changes everything about...
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...such instances are generally confined to local disputes. These rebels might attack their own “ instruments of production ”—by angrily destroying factory machinery, for example—but haven’t yet sought to overthrow the entire system...
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II. Proletarians and Communists
The bourgeoisie, continue Marx and Engels, even sees women as “mere instruments of production .” Communism is criticized for wanting to establish a “community of women,” which Marx and...
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...of power. Then, the proletariat must seize all capital from the bourgeoisie and centralize all instruments of production . Marx and Engels admit that in the beginning, some of these actions will seem...
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