p Productive forces are not the only factors in material production. People can only produce jointly by organising in a society. That is why labour is and always has been social in character. “In order to produce,” Marx wrote, “they [people—V. A.] enter into definite connections and relations with one another and only within these social connections and relations does their action with nature, does production take place.”  [197•* 

p People were connected by labour at the dawn of primitive society. In nomad hunting tribes, for example, this connection was that of fellow-hunters. As the productive forces and the division of labour grew, the relations between people became more and more diverse. Connections were established between crop growers and herdsmen, peasants and craftsmen, craftsmen and merchants, etc. With the development of the machine industry, the connections between the producers became especially diverse and manysided.

p People’s relations in the production process constitute relations of production, which are an integral part of material production. A certain historical mode of production, therefore, appears as the unbreakable unity between the 198 productive forces and the corresponding relations of production.

p Relations of production are based on the form of ownership, i.e., the relation of people to the means of production—the land, its mineral resources, forests, waters, raw materials, factory buildings, instruments of labour and so on. On the form of ownership depends the dominating or subordinate position of various social groups in production, their relations in the production process or, as Marx put it, the mutual exchange of their activity. If property is publicly owned (if the means of production belong to the working people), relations of production assume the nature of cooperation and mutual assistance between workers free of exploitation, as is the case under socialism. If property is privately owned (if the means of production belong to the exploiting minority) the relations of production are relations of domination, subordination and exploitation characteristic, for example, of capitalism. Since the working people in an antagonistic class society are deprived of the means of production they are forced to work for the exploiters who own these means.

p The form of distribution also depends on the nature of the ownership of the means of production. Private capitalist ownership determines the extremely unjust distribution of society’s material wealth under capitalism. The owner of the means of production appropriates most of the wealth produced, although he himself does not take a direct part in production. Public ownership in socialist society ensures the principle of distribution according to work, which meets the interests of all the working people. Under socialism all the material wealth produced belongs to the people.

p The sphere of production relations encompasses the forms of ownership of the means of production and also the consequent position of the various social groups in production and the forms of distribution of material wealth.

p Relations of production are formed objectively, independent of people’s will and desire, on the basis of the development of the productive forces.

The mode of production develops by virtue of its own causes, its intrinsic dialectics. Let us examine these causes, and the internal dialectics of the development of production.