Abstract: Marx’s understanding of productive forces has gone through a logical process of perceptual concreteness, concreteness to abstraction, and abstraction to concreteness. In his early writings, Marx examined the bourgeoisie’s means of developing productive forces and their exploitation of workers based on a humanistic framework. He summed up the various forms and basic properties of productivity in perceptual concrete materials. From “Theses on Feuerbach” to “The Poverty of Philosophy”, Marx recognized the subjectivity and constructivity of human beings in material activities, and confirmed the criteria for judging social systems and the driving force of historical development. In “Das Kapital” and its manuscripts, on the basis of analyzing labor, machinery and capital in detail, Marx revealed the main attributes of labor, materialized and objectified manifestations of productive forces, and the occurrence mechanism of their possession. At the specific level of thinking, he comprehensively analyzes the multiple natures of productive forces and their internal relations. Marx’s thought on productivity has important guiding value for stimulating the creativity of laborers, transforming labor methods and optimizing the economic system in contemporary China.