Law of the conformity of the relations of production with the character of the productive forces

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The law of the conformity of the relations of production with the character of the productive forces is a fundamental theorem of Marxism-Leninism . According to this doctrine, it forms the general law of development of human society and leads to the historical higher development of humanity in the succession of economic social formations . It also works within the social formations and forms the economic cause of economic crises and wars in capitalism .

Essence

The dialectical contradiction of the mode of production has two sides, the productive forces and the production relations, which are thus closely interrelated. The development of the productive forces forms the determining side of this dialectical contradiction. A change in the mode of production always changes in a qualitative way as soon as sufficient quantitative development has taken place in the area of ​​the productive forces. The historically, as a rule, continuous, and only in exceptional cases discontinuous, development of the productive forces contributes to the fact that the mode of production experiences social upheaval at certain intervals. So this contradiction is resolved by the qualitative leap in the relations of production being adapted to the productive forces, or the productive forces being torn down to a level at which the old mode of production can still prevail (precisely those social shocks). For example, the final qualitative leap into the capitalist mode of production came with the industrial revolution ; Although some characteristics of capitalism had already been found in feudal societies (including changes of a quantitative nature), up until then feudalism was the dominant mode of production.

The most important element of the relations of production are the relations of property . Hence the contradiction between the productive forces and the relations of production in the antagonistic class societies leads to a struggle between the ruling class, which defends the outlived relations of production, and the progressive class, which struggles to abolish them. In the revolution the unity between productive forces and the relations of production is restored.

practice

Soviet authors attribute the significantly higher output of Soviet industry to tanks and aircraft in World War II , although Soviet industry, measured in terms of steel and coal production, was smaller than German industry, to the unity of production relations and productive forces under the conditions of socialism .

According to the Marxist view, the development of the financial oligarchy temporarily resolves the contradiction between the relations of production and productive forces in the form of the contradiction between the development of monopoly capitalism and the general milieu of commodity production.

literature

• FW Konstantinow : About the law of the unconditional correspondence of the relations of production with the character of the productive forces . Berlin 1955.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ A. Gurow : The war economic theories of West German imperialism . Berlin 1961, p. 78 ff.
2. ^ Fritz Kumpf : Problems of Dialectics in Lenin's Analysis of Imperialism, Berlin 1968, p. 137 f.