I cant find an explanation that I understand
In: Economics
“The means of production” typically refers to anything that goes into producing goods.
So it covers factories (the building) the machines in the factory, the tools in the factory, the raw materials that are used to make the product, the mine/other factories the materials for the product came from, and in some cases like with food the land that the product was grown on (like wheat for bread). it covers pretty much everything.
This phrase stemmed from the feeling that back when the industrial revolution was starting, factories and industrial fields were awful if not deadly places to work, but men needed to work to feed their families. So these men worked long hours for low wages and often lived in poverty. All while the few men that owned the factory and never did any of the awful work were getting rich. This drove some people to want to take the factory over from the owner and have it enrich everyone/work for the good of everyone.
It’s anything that lets one make money. As I understand it’s another term similar to “capital” in economics but is applied to the big picture rather than specific things. Real estate, machines, trade secrets, trained personnel, basically all the parts of business or industry that you can use to create revenue. Various economic models differ in who should control the means of production and who should decide what to do with the value generated.
EDIT: Are the downvotes because I said “make money” instead of “producing goods and services”? Okay I suppose the term is a bit loaded to mean profits instead of abstracted value, but otherwise my answer isn’t all that different from the one above.
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