An instrument of labour is a thing, or a complex of things, which the labourer interposes between himself and the subject of his labour and which serves as the conductor of his activity. He makes use of the mechanical, physical, and chemical properties of some substances in order to make other substances subservient to his aims.
Instruments of labour not only supply a standard of the degree of development to which human labour has attained, but they are also indicators of the social conditions under which that labour is carried on. Among the instruments of labour, those of a mechanical nature, which, taken as a whole, we may call the bone and muscles of production, offer much more decided characteristics of a given epoch of production, than those which, like pipes, tubs, baskets, jars, &c., serve only to hold the materials for labour, which latter class, we may in a general way, call the vascular system of production. The latter first begins to play an important part in the chemical industries.
So, in the labour-process a man with the help of the instruments of labour changes the subjects of labour and produce a new product - nature’s material adapted by a change of form to the wants of man. Labour has incorporated itself with its subject: the former is materialised, the latter transformed.
If we examine the whole process from the point of view of its result, the product is the result of labour process, and both the instruments and the subject of labour are means of production.
So, means of production – its unity of the instruments and the subject of labour.
