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means of production

British  

plural noun

  1. (in Marxist theory) the raw materials and means of labour (tools, machines, etc) employed in the production process

"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

For smaller players, owning their real estate and means of production can be a boon.

From The Wall Street Journal

A direct public offering ā€œis a way of offering the means of production to the worker,ā€ Karp told MarketWatch earlier this month.

From MarketWatch

Galbraith and Herbert Simon who were writing about the world of industry as if we were in a new period where ā€œcapitalism versus socialismā€ was no longer particularly relevant, because the modern industrial world was controlled by a techno-structure, and the people who were now interesting to look at were not the capital owners, the bourgeoisie and the investors, they were the managers, soldiers and civil servants who were the people who actually controlled the means of production in the world.

From Salon

"So I think what this administration is saying is we want both. We want the means of production and we want the research and development intellectual property generation."

From BBC

Eisenberg-Guyot coauthored a chapter on capitalism’s mental health impacts in the 2022 Oxford Textbook of Social Psychiatry, defining capitalism as ā€œa socioeconomic system characterized by the private ownership of the means of production and the exploitation and domination of wage labor for profit.ā€

From Salon