Final answer:
Modes of Production involve how societies produce necessities and organize labor and technology. They range from gathering-hunting to industrialism, significantly impacting social structures. Industrialism introduced wage labor and mass production, changing workers' relationship to production.
Step-by-step explanation:
Modes of Production
Modes of Production refer to the various ways through which societies harness resources from the environment to fulfill their basic needs such as food, shelter, and clothing, and organize labor and technologies to process these materials. Throughout human history, these have included gathering-hunting, pastoralism, plant cultivation, and industrialism/post-industrialism. Modes of Production not only define the material generation aspects of a society but also shape its social structures, divisions of labor, and circulation of goods.
In traditional societies, most of the work is carried out by extended family groups, often within the household, and is regulated based on the family's needs and strategies. The introduction of industrialism in 18th-century Britain marked a shift where wage labor, machines, and chemical processes began to mass-produce commodities, with workers having limited control over their labor and no ownership of the products they made. The Theory of Production illustrates the relationship between the factors of production (land, labor, capital, entrepreneur) and the goods and services produced.
All societies must decide on the allocation of resources - what should be produced, how it should be produced, and for whom it should be produced. These decisions are closely linked to the prevalent Mode of Subsistence, which reflects a society's level of technology, economic systems, and social structures in meeting the needs of its members and in its methods of distributing resources.