Paul,
Sorry, seemed to have forgotten to include the last paragraph of message. Here it is:
If the subject of your paper is not “production in general,” then what is it? A quick take of the four elements should help to clarify matters:
¬ Worker: The subject that makes products through labor action and the means of production. Here it appears to me that you are focusing on how the worker’s labour is reproduced as a part of the productive system.
¬ Tools: clearly the more generalized “means of production;” the combination of instruments and subjects of production that together with labour create products. Here your discussion targets those means of production that produce the productive process. For example,
¬ Object: If I understand you correctly you are actually discussing the productive process itself, both as a system for making products and as a system for making productive processes.
¬ Community: If the productive process is the functional object of the system you describe, the community appears to be its formal object, i.e. the complex of related parts that constitutes a producing mechanism. Can this be anything other than the “forces of production?”
It appears that you focus on production, but hardly elementary or general production. This is a model for the reflexive production of production – a subject that Marx really did not discuss directly. On the other hand, Historical Materialism leaves that option open insofar as it recognizes that the means of production are themselves products and are necessary conditions for labor. Could we then describe the system you’ve presented as a reflexive version of the elementary system of production? Like this?
Reflexive production: Reproduction of labor> Means of production >Production> Forces of production
And here's the system of elementary production for comparison:
Elementary production: Labor (human activity)> Instruments of production> Subjects of production> Product
Regards,
Victor
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