Relations of Production
Simple commodity production is compatible with many different relations of production, ranging from self-employment where the producer owns his means of production, and family labour, to forms of slavery, peonage, indentured labour, and serfdom. The simple commodity producer could aim just to trade his products for others with an equivalent value, or he could aim to realise a profit.
That is to say, simple commodity production is not specific to any particular mode of production, and might be found in many different modes of production, with various degrees of sophistication. It does not necessarily imply that all inputs or outputs of productive activity are commodities traded in markets. Thus, for example, simple commodity producers could produce some products for their own use on their own land, while trading another part of their products. They might buy or trade some tools and equipment, but also make some themselves.
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Famous quotes containing the words relations and/or production:
“Words are but symbols for the relations of things to one another and to us; nowhere do they touch upon absolute truth.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“From the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.”
—Charles Darwin (1809–1882)