Practicing Success

Target Exam

CUET

Subject

Sociology

Chapter

Indian Society: Market as a social Institution

Question:

Read the passage and answer the following question.

One of the founders of modern sociology, Karl Marx, was also a critic of modern capitalism. Marx understood capitalism as a system of commodity production, or production for the market, through the use of wage labour. As you have already learned, Marx wrote that all economic systems are also social systems. Each mode of production consists of particular relations of production, which in turn give rise to a specific class structure. He emphasised that the economy does not consist of things (goods circulating in the market), but is made up of relations between people who are connected to one another through the process of production. Under the capitalist mode of production, labour itself becomes a commodity, because workers must sell their labour power in the market to earn a wage. This gives rise to two basic classes - capitalists, who own the means of production (such as the factories), and workers, who sell their labour to the capitalists. The capitalist class is able to profit from this system by paying the workers less than the value of what they actually produce, and so extracting surplus value from their labour. Marx's theory of capitalist economy and society provided the inspiration for numerous theories and debates about the nature of capitalism throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Capital like technology, machinery, electricity, can be categorised under which concept out of the following?

Options:

Relations of Production

Commodification

Labour Power

Means of production

Correct Answer:

Means of production

Explanation:

Means of production are the resources that are used to produce goods and services. For example, factories, machines, and tools are all means of production.

In the context of the passage, capital is being used to refer to the means of production. This is because capital is typically used to purchase and maintain the means of production. Therefore, the answer is Means of production.