p What is the role and place of the two main groups of countries (industrially developed and developing) in the changing ’balance of forces’ between heavy and light industries in the postwar period? The answer to that calls first of all for a comparison of the long-term trends in their industrial growth. The comparison leads to the following summary estimates.

p Thf, annual growth rates of the light industry of industrially backward countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America was 4.7 per cent in 1960-80, and of heavy industry more than 7.5 per cent. The same indicators were patently lower for the whole group of developed capitalist countries, being respectively 3.2 and 4.8 per cent. As a consequence the physical volume of light industry increased in developing countries (in comparable prices) by almost 160 per cent, and in developed countries by 170 per cent. The same tendency was to be seen in heavy industry on an ever bigger scale. The volume of production rose almost fivefold in the first group, and fourfold in the second. The crisis fall in production in the industrial centres in the mid-70s and early 80s enhanced the effect of this trend (see Table 23). The 1981 physical volume of the
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Table 23 Comparative Indices of the Heavy and Light Industries of Capitalist and Developing Countries (annual averages, in percentages) Branch of industry 1960-1981 1960-1973 1973-1981* Heavy Light Capitalist countries 4.8 3.2 6.7 4.6 1.7 1.1 Heavy Light Developing countries 7.7 4.7 9.6 5.7 5.2 3.8 * Estimated Sources: Statistical Yearbook, 1978; UN Monthly Bulletin of Statittics, 1982, 8, 231
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output of both their heavy and their light industries was less than 15 per cent above the level of 1973. In the same years production in the developing countries continued to expand though at slower rates: by approximately 50 per cent in heavy industry and by nearly a third in light industry.  [231•1 

p In the first postwar years manufacturing was still growing at higher rates on the whole in the industrial centres than in the periphery of the world capitalist economy; later, however, another trend gained the ascendency. Since roughly the middle of the 50s a more or less steady rise in the growth rates of both light and heavy industries in the periphery has become a distinguishing feature reflecting the break-up of this economy’s colonial structure.

p Factors of two kinds have to be taken into account from the very start when we are characterising this process. In the first place there is the very low initial level of the industrial potential of most countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, since only a little more than 8 per cent of all the manufactures of the non-socialist world had been produced in them at the turn to the 50s.

p The most impressive shifts in the ratio of the production of light and heavy industry, as regards their scale, occurred in the industrial centres. As already noted above, the output of light industry greatly predominated in the total value of their manufactures at the beginning of the century. At the end of the 1930s a certain equilibrium had been established: roughly half of U.S. industrial output came from light industry, and correspondingly around 49 per cent in West ern Europe. But by the mid-50s heavy industry already occupied a leading position, its share of the total value of manufactures being almost 60 per cent higher than that of light industry (in North America twice as high, and in Western Europe 50 per cent higher).  [231•2 ,’

p There has been a further development of this trend in recent years. In the early 60s the ratio of the light and heavy 232 industries of all developed capitalist countries was estimated at roughly 1 : 1.6, and in the early 80s already at 1 : 2.1, West European production having come close to American iii this regard. This reflects the levelling process inherent in modern capitalism (sec Table 24). The quickening
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Table 24 Weight of Heavy and Light Industries in Capitalist Countries’ Total Manufactures (in percentages; 1975 prices) Tiranch of Industry 1960-1961 1970-1971 1980-1981* All capitalist countries 100 100 100 Heavy (I) 61 66 68 Light (II) 39 34 32 Ratio of I to II 1.6: 1 1.9: 1 2.1: 1 North America 100 100 100 Heavy (I) 66 68 69 Light (II) 34 32 31 Ratio of I to II 1.9:1 2.1:1 2.3:1 Western Europe 100 100 100 Heavy (I) 61 65 66 Light (II) 39 35 34 Ratio of I to II 1.6:1 1.8:1 1.9:1 * Estimated Sources: as Tor Table 2:i.
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of the growth of heavy industry compared with light is also being manifested more or less intensely in the other developed capitalist countries. Thus, whereas light industry produced rather more (in value terms) than heavy in Oceania (Australia and New Zealand) in the mid-50s. the ratio had readied 1 : 1.6 in favour of heavy industry a quarter of a century later. As for Japan the ratio there had come close to the average for Western Europe at the beginning of the 80s.

p There were quite considerable changes as well in the structure of manufacturing in developing countries. At the beginning of the monopoly stage of world capitalism, as we know, only light industries had developed to a certain extent in some of them (food and drink, textiles, primary processing of raw materials). And only individual countries came al all close in output of these industries to such less developed 233 capitalist powers (economically speaking) as Japan.  [233•1  On the whole countries that are now counted as developing produced around one-ninth of the output of capitalist light industry on the eve of World War II. Its faster growth in these countries in the 50s, 60s, and 70s compared with the developed capitalist countries was the reason for their share rising from one-eighth in the mid-60s up to one-sixth at the end of the 70s, and almost to one-fifth in the early 80s.

p Our analysis of these trends gives grounds for suggesting that there is a real possibility of the weight of developing countries in the total output of light industry rising further to a quarter by the end of the 80s, with a corresponding fall in the proportion of the developed capitalist countries. But for all that the gap in the per capita output of light industry between the two groups of countries remains immense.  [233•2 

p An even great, gap was formed in the colonial period in the sphere of heavy industry. Before World War II all its leading industries were almost wholly concentrated in a few centres. In most countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America there were, to all intents and purposes, no enterprises of this branch of industry. In only a few of them (India, Mexico, Argentina) had the first weak shoots of heavy industry, planted mainly by expatriate monopoly capital, appeared; the leading branches, however, like engineering, chemicals, etc., did not exist at all. At the beginning of World War II only around one-twentieth of all the output of capitalist heavy industry, and one-tenth of that of light industry, was produced in all the primary commodity producing countries of Asia, Africa, and Latin America.

p As the colonial basis of imperialism was overthrown in many of these countries individual heavy industry plants began to be built. That was not just the result of their fight for economic independence, however; it also manifested 234 a quite important consequence of the postwar economic strategy of neocolonialism, viz., the line taken by the monopolies of several capitalist countries of establishing some of the most labour-intensive manufacturing industries, and industries harmful to the environment (basic metals, petrochemicals, etc.) in the Third World. There has consequently been a tendency since the mid-50s toward a certain strengthening of the role of developing countries in heavy industry, and although it had not led, by the beginning of the last quarter of the century, to any really serious changes in the geographical structure of the distribution of heavy industry, it calls for close attention.

p The real volume of the output of heavy industry rose in developing countries by 150 per cent (in constant prices) in 1963-73 alone, and by almost 50 per cent again between 1973 and 1981. The same indices for the developed capitalist countries were respectively 80 and 19 per cent, so that the proportion of the developing countries increased in this period from 4 per cent to 12 per cent. The process presents special interest as a starting point for analysis of the outlook for a break-up of the former colonial structure of the international division of labour established in the world economy during the imperialist powers’ unlimited domination.

p There are many facts witnessing that in the postwar years in spite of every kind of effort by the neocolonialists, a considerable part of the heavy and light enterprises earlier existing in developing countries, or newly built in them, are outside the control of expatriate monopoly capital. The public sector and indigenous national capital of these countries are becoming more and more significant in the guidance and determination of the perspectives of national industrial development.  [234•1 

The most general structural shifts in manufacturing have been considered here in respect of its two main spheres of production. They undoubtedly call for a comparative description of the development of the individual heavy and light industries, but they focus attention on many features of the present stage of the growth of the capitalist world’s productive forces and so of the home markets of most capitalist and developing countries. In addition to these features, 235 however, the objective needs of the development of the world market, and the patterns of the further expansion within it of internntionalisation of social production and development of the international division of labour, are being more and more manifested in thorn.