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A first version of this paper has been presented at the 11th Conference on Real Analysis and Measure Theory in Ischia (Italy, 2004). This version was presented at the Debreu Memorial Conference in Berkeley (USA, 2005) International audience This paper studies production economies in a commodity space that is an ordered locally convex space. We establish a general theorem on the existence of equilibrium without requiring that the commodity space or its dual be a vector lattice. Such commodity spaces arise in models of portfolio trading where the absence of some option usually means the absence of a vector lattice structure. The conditions on preferences and production sets are at least as general as those imposed in the literature dealing with vector lattice commodity spaces. The main assumption on the order structure is that the Riesz-Kantorovich functionals satisfy a uniform properness condition that can be formulated in terms of a duality property that is readily checked. This condition is satisfied in a vector lattice commodity space but there are many examples of other commodity spaces that satisfy the condition, which are not vector lattices, have no order unit, and do not have either the decomposition property or its approximate versions.

The newly reopened Volvo Uddevalla plant is the only automobile factory in the world where 'reflective production' system principles are put into practice. This article attempts to analyse the implementation of these principles in the plant. Reflective production reattributes both cognitive and cooperative dimensions of ordinary activity to industrial work. Applying it to automobile assembly has proven that it is not necessarily econoniic or practical to 'deconstruct/reconstruct' work into elementary operations with the final stage of combining them sequentially. Insofar as lean production is concerned (best observed at Toyota in 1992), it continues to rely on traditional principles of additivity and fluidity. When compared to the Uddevalla experience, the lean production system remains one which seeks to limit loss of time inherent in additive assembly line production, without recognizing the very origin of this problem as being the production method itself.

In industrial management, the 1980s marked the end of the twentieth century, an epoch dominated by US manufacturers, the alleged masters of mass production. This system has now been outstripped in several dynamic sectors by flexible/agile production. Increases in the pace of technological progress, training and aspirations have made the modern context so dynamic that firms which manage to harness the creativity and initiative of a good part of their workforce have an advantage over those that can only count on the input of their experts and managers. In sectors undergoing relatively broad and rapid change, twenty‐first century firms must adopt a more flexible and innovative type of organization to achieve manufacturing excellence.

This paper consists of a brief presentation of modes of production in class societies, highlighting the significance of household production in these. This is followed by a new approach to the conceptualization of the (non-class) communist mode of production and the place of household production in such a society.