Industrialization in the World

Industrialization requires the formation of an industrial system, a process that demands high investments and enables changes in the organization of geographic space. The industrial dynamics also promote changes in the social, economic, and cultural areas, since society industrializes.

The way this process occurred was not homogeneous in all industrialized countries.

Classic industrialization

England was the pioneer in the industrialization process, with France and the United States following it. Because of the pioneering role of these countries, they belong under classical industrialization.

The three countries have some characteristics in common. The first is that the industrialization in these spaces was preceded by revolutionary movements, which transformed their political systems and ended absolutist or authoritarian governments.

England had experienced the Puritan and Glorious Revolutions in the 17th century, which limited the power of the crown and gave greater authority to parliament. The French Revolution, which took place in 1789, put an end to the monarchy and established a republic. The United States, in turn, fought for independence from England, freeing itself from colonial rule in 1776.

Once these three countries industrialized, their productivity became much higher than that of the rest of the world, giving them advantages in the formation of the former International Division of Labor (ILO). While they sold industrialized products with high value-added, the other countries exported mainly raw materials and foodstuffs with low value-added.

Planned industrialization

Another path to industrialization was created by the extinct Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), beginning in the 1920s. And is known as planned industrialization.

After a troubled period of Russian history that had been through a revolution, civil war, and the attempt to resume economic organization, this model of industrialization began to be implemented by Josef Stalin in 1925.

In the model implemented by Stalin, there was no private ownership of the means of production. All factories and farms were transferred to state ownership. There was also no market economy because there was only one owner, the State. Therefore competition or the laws of supply and demand didn't exist. Wage labor and the search for profit remained but in a new form.

The population was forced to work for the state-owned enterprises and received salaries set by the Stalinist dictatorship. The companies made profits, which, decided by the State in plans created every five years,  were destined for industrialization. It is because of this that this model is called planned industrialization.

This model was also adopted by other socialist economies allied to the Soviet Union, such as East Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, and China.

Peripheral Industrialization

After the Second World War, with the deepening of the globalization process, multinational companies began to set up branches in non-industrialized countries, but that had some advantageous conditions for receiving manufacturing units. This displacement of industrial investment initiated the process known as late or peripheral industrialization.

Industrialization is late because it occurred well after the classic industrializations. And it is peripheral because it took place on the periphery of the world capitalist system.

Another distinctive feature of this model was national developmentalism, in which the government made the necessary investments to create base industries energy, transport, and communications infrastructures, which were absent in these countries until then.

The model was adopted in countries like Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, South Africa, and Turkey, which provided strong economic growth until the mid-1970s when the oil crisis and the rise of neoliberalism put the national developmentism into question.

The peripheral industrialization process can be divided into two types: import substitution industrialization. And the one where countries have become export platforms.