Social classes and feudal mode of production in West Africa

Abstract

The mode of production, the means of production are in the hands of the lord who plays the “role of organizer and master of the process of production and of the whole process of social life. In this mode of production, there is a coexistence of two systems of ownership: the lord’s feudal ownership of the land and the peasant’s ownership of the individual instruments of production, with the hereditary usufruct of his tenure. The feudal mode of production is based on the following relations of production, the lord’s ownership of the land and the lord's limited ownership of the peasant.