Exploring the Connotation and Development Path of New Quality Productive Forces: A Perspective based on Marx’s Elements of Productive Forces

Abstract

This paper explores the connotation, opportunities and challenges, and development path of new quality productive forces from the perspective of Marx’s elements of productive forces. New quality productive forces represent a leap and upgrade of productive forces in the new era, and their connotation can be explained from three dimensions: the laborer, the object of labor, and the means of production, with new characteristics emerging. High-quality and innovative talents have become the core driving force, with laborers needing to possess innovative thinking, digital skills, and high efficiency; data, information, and knowledge have become important resources; and new-generation information technologies have become the key support, promoting the intelligent, digital, and networked transformation of production tools and methods. These three elements are interdependent and mutually reinforcing, jointly driving the improvement of productive forces and providing strong impetus for high-quality economic development. In developing new quality productive forces, China faces both significant opportunities, such as breakthroughs in core technologies, rapid development of the digital economy, and accelerated construction of new infrastructure, and challenges, including “bottlenecks” in core technologies, regional digital divides, and institutional and systemic barriers. Based on this, this paper proposes to use talent as the engine, technology as the support, institutions as the safeguard, and industry as the carrier, and to promote China’s economy to a new stage of higher quality, more efficient, and more sustainable development through comprehensive collaborative innovation, in line with Marx’s theory of productive forces.