The Theory of Two Kinds of Production

Theory on the production of material means, the production of human beings themselves and their role and relationship in the development of society.

The production of material means is the production of material means of life for man to satisfy his needs. In The German Ideology, Marx and Engels elaborated the determining part played by the production of material means in the development of society, and formed a new materialist conception of history. This conception of history holds that men themselves begin to distinguish themselves from animals as soon as they begin to produce their means of life. This conception of history elaborated the actual production process, starting out from the material production of immediate life, and comprehends the economic relations of society connected with the mode of production as the basis of all history, starting from which the whole society, the State and ideology can be comprehended. In 1859, when Marx outlined his conception of history in the Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, he made a clear formulation: “The mode of production of material life conditions the general process of social, political and intellectual life.” In dealing with the basic ideas that constitute the core of The Communist Manifesto, Engels pointed out that in every historical epoch, the prevailing mode of economic production and exchange, and the social organization necessarily following from it, form the basis upon which is built up, and from which alone can be explained the political and intellectual history of that epoch.

The production of human beings themselves is the propagation of the human species itself. It is achieved through people’s marital and family relations and the process of procreation. In the 1880s, based on the findings of Lewis Henry Morgan’s Ancient Society and Marx’s extensive extracts and critical notes of the book, Engels wrote The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, Engels delved into and studied the history of the early stages of the development of human society, and has written The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State. This work has revealed the origin of the family and explained the development of the production of human beings themselves and the part played by it in the development of society. The preface to the first edition of the book in 1884 has put forth the theory of two kinds of production. Engels said: “According to the materialistic conception, the determining factor in history is, in the final instance, the production and reproduction of the immediate essentials of life. This, again, is of a twofold character. On the one side, the production of the means of existence, of articles of food and clothing, dwellings, and of the tools necessary for that production; on the other side, the production of human beings themselves, the propagation of the species. The social organization under which the people of a particular historical epoch and a particular country live is determined by both kinds of production: by the stage of development of labor on the one hand and of the family on the other.”

The two kinds of production have different status and role in different stages of the development of society. In the early stages of human society, the lower the development of labor and the more limited the amount of its products, and consequently, the more limited also the wealth of the society, the more the social order is found to be dominated by the production of human beings themselves and kinship groups. With the development of production and the increase in the productivity of labor, after the emergence of private property, the old society founded on kinship groups was replaced by a new society organized into the State. Engels said: “A society in which the system of the family is completely dominated by the system of property.”

The two kinds of production are interdependent and interact with each other. The production of material means is the most fundamental practical activity of mankind, the basis for the existence and development of human society, and the factor that determines all other activities. Marx said: “A nation which ceased to work, I will not say for a year, but even for a few weeks, would perish.” The production of material means determines the development of society and the image of the social life as a whole, and also plays a determining part in the production of human beings themselves. It determines not only the social form of the production of human beings themselves, namely marital and family relations, but also the law of population and the state of the production of human beings themselves, i.e., the quantity, quality, structure, density, and growth rate of population. The production of human beings themselves has an important influence on the production of material means and on the existence and development of society. A certain amount of population is the first premise for the production of material means, and the existence of living individuals is the first premise for the whole history of mankind. The quantity, quality, structure, density, and growth rate of population directly affect the production of material means and the development of society. The development of society requires a mutual coordination of the two kinds of production and the implementation of a conscious regulation of the two kinds of production and their relationship.