John Hardly:

The "means of production" are all of the capital property necessary to produce goods, both the direct production and support functions.

Thus, farm land is part of the means of production. Factories are part of the means of production. Those are easy.

Then the stores and warehouses to distribute goods.

But the trains and busses to get the workers to work are part of the means of production, as are the highways on which they run, and the trains and roadbeds ditto. Obviously utilities such as water and gas and electric and sewers are "means of production". Even more importantly, in the USSR, the distilleries to make vodka, a necessity of life.

Essentially, at least as far as the Soviet interpretation went, "the means of production" was anything that produced or facilitated any of the goods or amenities of life.

Aunt Olga's garden was, I suppose, technically part of the means of production, but it was tolerated, and even her private selling of her beets she'd raised was tolerated partly because of the difficulty of policing on that detailed level and partly because the officially controlled economy stank as far as "producing" and distributing goods to the populace.

In effect, as applied, "the means of production" was everything economic beyond the most personal activities.

Dave Oesterreich