Karl Marx and The Relationships of Production

Karl Marx's seemingly favorite buzz word is "production." For Marx, life is at the most basic level dependent upon man's ability to produce materials for survival. Unlike animals, Marx says, we produce our own means of subsistence, and in doing so we indirectly produce material life. Essentially, humans are what they produce and how they produce it.

From this starting point, Marx describes the (somewhat Aristotelian?) evolution of social relationships by means of production. He lays out three different scenarios in which the roles of production are played out by owners and slaves. The most rudimentary of the three is the tribal system, wherein the social structure of the society is essentially an extension of the family system (its hierarchy being chieftains, tribe members, and, at the bottom, slaves). The roles of production are underdeveloped; the main tasks preformed are hunting and growing food. Nevertheless, we still see a distinct social relationship arise between the tribe and its slaves.

The second form of ownership comes in the form of communal or state ownership. For Marx, this is an expansion of the tribal system by the union of several tribes by agreement or conquest. Land is still held in common, but at this point we begin to see the emergence of private property. Nevertheless, the relationship between the citizens of this new group or city hold a communal power over the slaves.

Lastly, Marx presents the feudal form, wherein hierarchical structure of land ownership has arisen to give these owners power over serfs. The relationship differs from that in a communal society because it is established under different conditions than the communal state. This form of ownership also takes place in cities where guilds exploited journeymen and apprentices for production.

Marx argues later that such division of production is bad because it conflicts with the interests of the individual. His activity in production is not voluntary; his hand is forced by a tribal leader, a feudal lord, or even the capitalist world market. In a communist society, man may do whatever he wishes to be accomplished in. He may be a writer or a hunter. There are no longer owners and slaves. Men are able to exchange their products freely and control their social relationships. This seems like a pleasant idea, but I have a hard time believing that a system that allows every man to produce what he wants would succeed. What if, for an extreme example, everyone wanted to be a clown, leaving no one to hunt for food? Would they all go hungry? Odds are that some would defect and hunt for themselves and the rest, but isn't this decision involuntary as well? Is Marx's ideal form of communism practical at all, or is he merely creating his own Platonic Republic?