Industrialization and de-industrialization:

a conceptualization essay based on the Marxian economic theory

Abstract

This essay aims to define the concepts of industrialization and de-industrialization, based on the Marxian economic theory. Historically, although de-industrialization is observed in relevant national economies (parts), this is not a systemic phenomenon of the global economy (totality). Theoretically, capitalist industrialization is identified as the establishment of productive forces in the machinery stage at the national level and under the economic laws of the capitalist mode of production. In turn, capitalist de-industrialization is defined as the reduction and decline of the economic weight of manufacturing, as a result of capitalist laws, in the reproduction on an expanded scale of the social capital and, consequently, in the self-determination of the general law of accumulation in the national territory. Enabled by the level of capitalist development achieved by the productive forces, the structural changes in the core of the 1970s capitalist crisis of profitability were pointed out as the cause of capitalist de-industrialization.