Production, the process whereby the material benefits necessary for the existence and development of society are created. Material production is the foundation of the life of human society. It creates material wealth indispensable for people’s life and ultimately conditions the social structure 287 of society, its ideas and institutions, as well as its development from a lower stage to a higher. Production implies the following factors: 1) labour as purposeful activity; 2) the object of labour, and 3) the means of labour (see Means of ProductionImplements of Labour). Labour always assumes certain definite social forms, expressing the process of man’s interaction with nature. As they interact with nature, people enter into social relationships with one another irrespective of their will and consciousness. Correspondingly, social production has two aspects: the productive forces, which express society’s relation to the natural forces and objects by mastering which people obtain material benefits, and relations of production, which characterise people’s relationships to one another in the process of production. Production, considered as the unity of the productive forces and production relations, constitutes the mode of production of material wealth. Production determines the mode and social features of distribution, exchange and consumption. These three, in turn, produce a certain impact on production. Production develops in accordance with objective economic laws, whose principal and determining element is the basic economic law of the given mode of production. Capitalist production, based on the private ownership of the means of production and on exploitation of labour by capital, develops in accordance with spontaneous economic laws. It is subordinated to the aim of the extraction of profit by the exploiters, and is periodically interrupted by the economic crises of overproduction. In socialist society production develops continuously, according to plan and at high growth rates, and is oriented towards meeting the constantly growing requirements of society and all of its members.