1-1-2 Means of production & Nature of Capitalism.txt

> **[Means of production & Nature of Capitalism]**
We're going to divide Human history into 5 stages: Primitive Communism, (Ancient) Slave society, (Medieval) Feudalism, (Modern) Capitalism, and Contemporary age. (The reason contemporary age doesn't have a label is because it is still ongoing. We will be able to name it only after looking back at it.) It is based on Karl Marx's Historical materialism.¢Ó He suggests that the history will go through these 5 stages with the fall of capitalism, then the era of communism will arrive. But the people in communist nation doesn't seem all that happy.
```
[5 stages of History]
1. Primitive Communism
2. Slave society
3. Feudalism
4. Modern Capitalism
5. Contemporary ?
```
The American political scientist Francis Fukuyama said in his 1992 book 'The End of History and the Last Man' that this is the end of the history. The end here doesn't mean apocalypse. It means the attitude towards current capitalism after the fall of communism. It seems like our history is at its end. At capitalism. It's more malleable than you think and sometimes self corrects itself that it seems to recover well. Is capitalism the perfect answer? But that's outside the scope of our journey.
We will divide them into two(2) groups: 'Primitive, ancient, medieval' and 'modern, contemporary'. The reason is because there's a difference in core concept.

From primitive to medieval period we will be centering around 'means of production'. These periods will change depending on 'Who has the means of production.' Let's say there are two people. Person A owns a bread factory worth a million dollars. Person B owns a huge amount of bread worth a million dollars.  You might wanna choose A because he seems more stable. Why? That's because even though it's a same million dollars, A has means of production, and B product. Even though we together call it 'wealth', the same wealth one can only consume, but the other infinitely produce.
```
      Wealth
     /      \
product   means of production 
```
Owning a means of production means economic strength, and economic strength means power. So we need an idea of means of production to divide the historic periods into two groups. Dividing by who has a means of production means we will categorize them by movement of power. Means of production doesn't just mean a way to produce goods, but we will talk about it later. But they're like factories and farms.
If the primitive to medieval period is about a means of production, then the core idea of modern and contemporary is about 'Capitalism'. To be concrete, it's how the nature of capitalism is 'Supply is always higher than demand.' So to understand this era we have to understand 'supply' and 'demand', because modern era and contemporary era are capitalistic era. They are dependent on the nature of capitalism.
```
History
¦§ (means of production)  : Primitive ~ Medieval
¦¦ (nature of capitalism): Modern ~ Contemporary
```
To summarize, we will look into history in two parts. First, primitive to medieval, then modern to contemporary. Each period will be explained by owning means of production and nature of capitalism.

¢Ó The popular structure (aka not amateur) I see on the internet is a bit different than what the author is going with.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_materialism#Trajectory_of_historical_development