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What if humanity changed... its mode of production ?
mardi 11 novembre 2025, par ,
What if humanity changed... its mode of production ?
Once again, humanity is forced to confront the problem of overturning the old mode of production and thus the capitalist exploitation of man.
Increasingly, the world seems to be grappling with intractable, unsolvable problems, problems with no possible answers, for which no one can claim to have real solutions, except to postpone the issue and exacerbate it : a crisis of productive investment, an economic crisis, a financial crisis, a social crisis, a crisis of the state, a crisis of power, a war crisis, a fascist crisis, a crisis of democracy, an ecological crisis, a health crisis, and so on. All of this stems from the so-called systemic crisis, that is, the limits reached and even exceeded by the capitalist mode of production, which necessitates a transition to a socialist mode of production. This limit was clearly marked during the global economic collapse of 2007-2008, and also during the wave of revolts and revolutions that began in 2010-2011 and continues, as seen in the global pandemic that resulted in a massacre and the wave of wars around the world. All of this points to the end of the system of domination that has governed the world for so long. However, is this end the beginning of something else ? That is the crucial question. The problem exists, but does it have a solution ?
Let us first ask ourselves what the fundamental problem currently facing humanity is, and then we will see if humanity has within itself the strength and means, the capacity and the awareness to solve it.
Let’s state right away that we consider the old socio-economic system, the old mode of production, completely dead, historically incapable of surviving, not due to accidents or bad government policies, nor to the individual misconduct of capitalists, nor to any flaws in humanity, but because of the success of capitalism, which thus exceeds the absorption capacity of the capitalist capital market. In short, there is too much capital relative to possible investments, and the longer the system persists thanks to the colossal efforts of the governments of the wealthiest nation-states and central banks, the more big capital grows, the more the problem worsens. All other problems—such as the collapse of states, social ruin, economic ruin, wars spreading everywhere, fascism and dictatorships likewise, ecological crisis, health crisis, etc.—all stem from the irremediable collapse of the system. It is not Netanyahu, Trump, Modi and other Putins who are causing the global crisis, their fascist policies are only a consequence of it.
Do we have solutions to the collapse of states, the collapse of economies, the humanitarian, social, and health catastrophe, and more fundamentally, the end of capitalism ? This, of course, means : can humanity carry within itself a new system, a new mode of production ?
Karl Marx, for his part, responded in his Preface to "The Contribution of the Critique of Political Economy" :
"Humanity only ever poses problems that it is capable of solving . "
Here is the passage from which this quote is taken :
“My research led to the conclusion that legal relations—as well as forms of the state—cannot be understood either in themselves or through the supposed general evolution of the human mind, but that, on the contrary, they are rooted in the material conditions of existence, which Hegel, following the example of the English and French of the 18th century, encompasses as a whole under the name of ‘civil society,’ and that the anatomy of civil society must in turn be sought in political economy. I had begun the study of the latter in Paris and continued it in Brussels, where I had emigrated following an expulsion order issued by Mr. Guizot.” The general result I arrived at, and which, once acquired, served as the guiding thread of my studies, can be briefly formulated as follows : in the social production of their existence, men enter into definite, necessary relations, independent of their will, relations of production that correspond to a definite stage of development of their material productive forces. The totality of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the concrete basis upon which a legal and political superstructure is erected, and to which definite forms of social consciousness correspond. The mode of production of material life conditions the process of social, political, and intellectual life in general. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being ; conversely, it is their social being that determines their consciousness. At a certain stage of their development, the material productive forces of society come into conflict with the existing relations of production, or, in their legal expression, with the property relations within which they had hitherto operated. From being forms of development of the productive forces, these relations become obstacles. Then begins an era of social revolution. The change in the economic base more or less rapidly overturns the entire enormous superstructure. When considering such upheavals, it is always necessary to distinguish between the material upheaval—which can be observed in a scientifically rigorous manner—of the economic conditions of production and the legal, political, religious, artistic, or philosophical forms—in short, the ideological forms—under which people become aware of this conflict and pursue it to its conclusion. Just as we do not judge an individual on the idea he has of himself, we cannot judge such an era of upheaval on its self-consciousness ; on the contrary, we must explain this consciousness by the contradictions of material life, by the conflict that exists between social productive forces and relations of production.A social formation never disappears before all the productive forces it is large enough to contain have been developed ; new and superior relations of production never replace it before the material conditions for the existence of these relations have emerged within the old society itself. This is why humanity never poses itself any problems other than those it can solve, for, on closer examination, it will always be found that the problem itself arises only where the material conditions for solving it already exist or are at least in the process of becoming so. Broadly speaking, the Asiatic, ancient, feudal, and modern bourgeois modes of production can be described as progressive epochs of socioeconomic formation. Bourgeois relations of production are the last contradictory form of the process of social production, contradictory not in the sense of an individual contradiction, but in the sense of a contradiction that arises from the social conditions of existence of individuals ; However, the productive forces that develop within bourgeois society simultaneously create the material conditions for resolving this contradiction. With this social formation, therefore, the prehistory of human society comes to an end.
Engels added :
“Socially active forces behave exactly like the forces of nature : blind, violent, and destructive as long as we do not know them and do not reckon with them. But once we have recognized them, once we have grasped their activity, direction, and effects, it depends entirely on us to increasingly subject them to our will and achieve our goals through them. And this is especially true of the enormous productive forces of today. As long as we obstinately refuse to understand their nature and character—and it is against this understanding that the capitalist mode of production and its defenders rebel—these forces produce their full effect despite us, against us ; they dominate us, as we have explained in detail. But once grasped in their nature, they can, in the hands of associated producers, be transformed from demonic mistresses into docile servants.” This is the difference between the destructive force of electricity in a lightning bolt and the tamed electricity of the telegraph and the electric arc, the difference between conflagration and fire acting in the service of humankind. By treating current productive forces in the same way, after finally recognizing their nature, we see the social anarchy of production replaced by a socially planned regulation of production, according to the needs of the community as well as each individual ; thus, the capitalist mode of appropriation, in which the product first enslaves the producer, then the appropriator himself, is replaced by the mode of appropriation of products based on the nature of the modern means of production themselves : on the one hand, direct social appropriation as a means of maintaining and developing production, and on the other hand, direct individual appropriation as a means of subsistence and enjoyment.
By increasingly transforming the vast majority of the population into proletarians, the capitalist mode of production creates the power that, under penalty of perishing, is compelled to carry out this upheaval. By increasingly pushing for the transformation of the major socialized means of production into state property, it itself shows the way to achieve this upheaval. The proletariat seizes state power and transforms the means of production first into state property. But in doing so, it abolishes itself as a proletariat, it abolishes all class differences and class oppositions, and also the state as a state. The previous society, evolving within class oppositions, needed the state, that is to say, in each case, an organization of the exploiting class to maintain its external conditions of production, and therefore, above all, to maintain the exploited class by force in the conditions of oppression imposed by the existing mode of production (slavery, serfdom, wage labor). The state was the official representative of the whole of society, its synthesis in a visible body, but this was only so insofar as it was the state of the class that, for its time, itself represented the whole of society : in antiquity, the state of the slave-owning citizens ; in the Middle Ages, of the feudal nobility ; in our time, of the bourgeoisie. When it finally becomes effectively the representative of the whole of society, it renders itself superfluous. As soon as there is no longer a social class to keep in oppression ; as soon as, along with class domination and the struggle for individual existence motivated by the former anarchy of production, the resulting clashes and excesses are also eliminated, there is nothing left to repress that necessitates a power of repression, a state. The first act in which the state truly appears as the representative of the whole of society—the taking possession of the means of production in the name of society—is at the same time its last proper act as a state. The intervention of state power in social relations becomes superfluous in one area after another, and thus naturally falls into dormancy. The government of people gives way to the administration of things and the direction of production operations. The state is not “abolished,” it dies out. This allows us to judge the hollow phrase about the “free people’s state [7],” both from the point of view of its temporary justification as a means of agitation and from the point of view of its definitive inadequacy as a scientific idea ; to judge also the demand of those called anarchists, according to which the state must be abolished overnight.
Since the historical emergence of the capitalist mode of production, the acquisition of all the means of production by society has often hovered, more or less vaguely, before the eyes of both individuals and entire sects, as a future ideal. But it could only become possible, become a historical necessity, once the material conditions for its realization were established. Like any other social progress, it becomes feasible not through the acquired understanding that the existence of classes contradicts justice, equality, and so on, not through the simple will to abolish these classes, but through certain new economic conditions. The division of society into an exploiting class and an exploited class, into a ruling class and an oppressed class, was a necessary consequence of the limited development of production in the past. As long as the total labor of society yields only a yield barely exceeding what is strictly necessary to ensure everyone’s subsistence, as long as labor therefore demands all or almost all of the time of the vast majority of society’s members, society is necessarily divided into classes. Alongside this vast majority, exclusively devoted to the drudgery of labor, there arises a class freed from directly productive work, which takes charge of the common affairs of society : the management of labor, political affairs, justice, science, fine arts, etc. It is therefore the law of the division of labor that is at the basis of the division into classes. This does not, however, prevent this division into classes from having been accomplished through violence and theft, cunning and fraud, and from the fact that the ruling class, once in power, has never failed to consolidate its domination at the expense of the working class and to transform social management into the exploitation of the masses.
https://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.php?article5349
What the old modes of production were like before capitalism….
https://www.marxists.org/francais/marx/works/1857/00/km18570000.htm
https://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.php?article5406
This means that the class struggle can only address the problem of abolishing an old mode of production once that mode has exhausted its potential. The determining basis of social struggles is the objective situation of society, not only that of the exploited class but first and foremost that of the exploiting class.
To answer the question "are we, the proletariat, capable of solving the problem ?", we must first thoroughly discuss this one : "what is the problem facing humanity today ?"
This is not a problem posed by any national government, posed in a single country or region of the world, posed to a single category or social class, but to all of humanity…
"Humanity only ever sets itself problems that it is capable of solving," Karl Marx asserted. But what should we think of that today ?
https://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.php?article3102
We wrote above :
Certainly, the oppressed do not see themselves as capable of great historical transformations, fear being caught up in bloody events, and cannot imagine their class brethren as leaders of a new society. Working-class activists are constantly confronted with this level of class consciousness, which does not spontaneously rise above the reformist level. Without objective events, without the necessary conditions for a crisis of class domination, it would be impossible for the exploited to play their historical role. There is no need to worry, Karl Marx writes, because when the time comes for the proletariat to seize revolutionary ideas, the social and political conditions for a different society will be ripe.
It is also pointless for revolutionary communists to adapt, even momentarily, to the prevailing reformism or to feel the weight of reactionary ideas, which inevitably influence the working class as well. This type of reasoning can only set back the reasoning and questioning of revolutionaries.
Marx proposes a different approach : to focus on finding the meaning of historical necessity, the foundations of the crisis of capitalist class domination in the contradictions of the system of exploitation, and to defend a future politics that corresponds to a challenge to this society.
"Bourgeois relations of production are the last contradictory form of the social production process, contradictory not in the sense of an individual contradiction, but of a contradiction that arises from the social conditions of existence of individuals ; however, the productive forces that develop within bourgeois society simultaneously create the material conditions for resolving this contradiction. With this social formation, therefore, the prehistory of human society comes to an end," wrote Karl Marx.
How can we be sure that the capitalist mode of production is dead ? Many people will answer no, it still functions because the capitalist class still holds state power everywhere and is capable of crushing us militarily. But this is false. A system that has been superseded by history can cling to power for a while. However, humanity can only transition to a superior mode of production if the old mode of production is historically obsolete.
To answer the question of whether the system is sustainable or not, we must examine not the point of view of the exploited but that of the exploiters. Do the latter trust in the future of productive investments ? If they did, would speculation on "subprime" type debt, cryptocurrencies (fake currencies based solely on the hope that people will buy more and more of them), and other crazy speculations skyrocket ? Would the value of gold also be constantly rising ? Would national and central banks have to constantly intervene in the economy to save trusts, banks and financial institutions, as well as stock exchanges and insurance companies ?
https://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.php?article8286
Why does the fact that big capital is diverting an increasing share of capital away from the productive sphere signify a death knell for the system ? Here is the answer from a Marxist economist.
What does it mean to say that "capitalism is dead" ?
https://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.php?article1975
This means that it has been so successful that it now exceeds its own capacity to absorb such financial resources produced…
https://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.php?article7478
This means that its success leads us to absolutely have to move to socialism or fall into the worst kind of barbarity which would destroy all the economic means produced previously.
We know that most people are completely unaware that humanity is currently hampered by a fundamental problem within the capitalist system called "overaccumulation of capital," but widespread ignorance doesn’t make it true. The population is unaware that capitalism is dead as a dynamic system (as the average person says, everything keeps working because I keep drinking my coffee), but the system is nonetheless... dead.
https://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.php?article2431
The dynamics of capitalism run up against their own limits : its success itself is stifled by the limits of private ownership of the means of production.
https://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.php?article3250
Do capitalists recognize that there is a dramatic overaccumulation of big capital which is no longer a simple cyclical phenomenon linked to temporary recessions but permanent and constantly increasing ?
Did Marx and Engels say that capitalism could not destroy itself ?
https://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.php?article3413
Of course, the collapse of capitalism will not automatically lead to a superior system. The fall of the Roman Empire was not followed by a superior society… Most collapses of civilizations have been followed by destruction more often than by historical progress.
But it’s not simply a question of whether or not humanity can progress. It’s a matter of life or death. Power to the workers and socialism are vital necessities for humanity.
https://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.php?article8073
Many false revolutionaries are capable of saying that capitalism will (one day) have to be overthrown without saying what the objective conditions are that make this possible and even necessary, indispensable, vital…
https://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.php?article7617
Yes ! We will inevitably experience the final collapse of capitalism, but let us also strive to experience the establishment of power to the workers, a dictatorship of the proletariat organized into soviets, indispensable as a transition to socialism.
https://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.php?article6960
https://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.php?article8277
The number one objective of revolutionary workers is, more than ever, the soviets and their seizure of power !
https://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.php?article8277
In this respect, we remain the heirs of Barta (unlike Lutte Ouvrière).
https://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.php?article6005
https://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.php?article7513
"We remain true to the slogan : SOVIETS EVERYWHERE !"
Barta, November 1943
https://www.marxists.org/francais/barta/1943/11/ldc20_112143.htm
"Factory and neighborhood action committees, workers’ militias, and arming the workers—that is the only government of the people by the people themselves !"
Barta, December 1944
https://www.marxists.org/francais/barta/1944/12/tract_120144.htm
Yes, socialism is a solution to all the problems posed by the collapse of capitalism !
https://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.php?article4924
Yes, investments that are unprofitable from a capitalist perspective may be profitable from a proletarian or socialist class perspective. And vice versa !
Yes, to eliminate war, the best way is to eliminate the standing armies of the capitalist state !
Yes, to put an end to the destruction of the Earth’s ecology, we must put an end to the exploitation of the Earth from a capitalist point of view !
Yes, a socialist society will eliminate nationalism, whether it be warlike or not, fascist or not, will eliminate racism, will eliminate the opposition between men and women, will eliminate the exploitation of men, women and children.
Yes, humanity has solutions to solve its problems !
Even if men are not yet aware of it, the social revolution to overthrow capitalism is on the agenda !
https://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.php?article4687
https://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.php?article4440
https://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.php?article3412
Messages
1. What if humanity changed... its mode of production ? October 30, 5:52 AM , by Florent
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Yes indeed ! This is not a simple recession, it is not even the famous stagflation, it is not a classic crisis of capitalism from which we could emerge stronger by moving towards a new recovery and massive new productive investments, it is not the temporary fall of profits in the productive sector and investments in this sector, it is not a momentary rise in the speculative sector, it is none of these things that is hitting capitalism !
This old system is simply overwhelmed by... its own success. It cannot bear the consequences of its own results, that is, the sheer volume of capital it has managed to accumulate. It cannot simply destroy a little of it in a crisis only to restart stronger than ever, as it has done in previous crises.
The system has been so successful that it must... give way to socialism !
https://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.php?article8073
2. What if humanity changed... its mode of production ? November 2, 5:20 AM , by Laurence
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Yes indeed ! The entire mode of production is now obsolete due to historical factors…
https://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.php?article7478
https://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.php?article5914
What is the capitalist mode of production ?
https://www.marxists.org/francais/marx/works/1867/Capital-inedit/kmcapI-6-2G.htm
What does it mean to change the mode of production ?
https://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.php?article6490
In what ways is the system outdated ?
https://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.php?article707
What essential aspects of capitalism does this eliminate ?
The contradiction between productive forces and social relations of production !