Also known as “means of labor”. All material means and material conditions used to change or affect the object of labor in the labor-process. Laborers exploit the mechanical, physical and chemical properties of these articles, using them as a means of exerting their power to change or affect the object of labor according to their own ends in order to produce products appropriate to man’s needs. The range of the instruments of labor is wide. The first and most important among the instruments of labor are the instruments of production, especially the mechanical instruments of production. In order to emphasize the important role played by this part of the instruments of labor in labor production, Marx had figuratively called them bone and muscles of production, and said that they offer much more decided characteristics of a given epoch of production, and sometimes also called them as “genuine material instruments”. They are the determining factor among the instruments of labor. The next are those which, like pipes, tubs, jars, etc., serve only to hold the materials for labor, which Marx called the vascular system of production. In addition, in a wider sense, the instruments of labor also include all the material conditions necessary in the process of labor in addition to objects of labor, such as workshops, roads, bridges, canals and so on. Although they do not enter directly into the process, without them it is either impossible for it to take place at all, or possible only to a partial extent. Once more we find earth to be an instrument of this sort, for it furnishes a field of employment for the activity of the laborer…
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