Industry

:For other uses of this term, see Industry (disambiguation)

Marxism and industry

Control of industry became a key point of Marxist theory. The labor theory of value holds that the worth of a given object exists only because of the work that somebody has exerted to set it into its current state or form. Unimproved, natural objects such as trees and rocks generally have little value; but if wood is carved into a piano, or rocks are built into a house, then the resulting object suddenly has value because of this labor.

Related Topics:
Marxist theory - Labor theory of value

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Marxists hold that the relationship between the bourgeois capitalist class—those wealthy enough to invest significant capital in industry—and the proletarian laborers who work for them is fundamentally parasitic; that the capitalists, in essence, receive free money far beyond their original investment by paying workers far less than the full value of the objects that their labor produces. Marxists therefore advocate that the workers themselves should own the means of production—capital assets such as factories and equipment used for production. In Leninist countries such as the Soviet Union, this plan was implemented by making all capital assets owned by the state collective—theoretically, by the workers themselves.

Related Topics:
Bourgeois - Capitalist - Proletarian - Labor - Money - Means of production - Capital asset - Leninist - Soviet Union

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Maoism, the economic philosophies of Chinese Communist leader Mao Zedong, agrees with previous Marxist thought on industry, but prescribes a different solution. Instead of workers or the collective owning the factories, Maoism advocates a resettlement of the populace into rural areas and a return to a decentralized agrarian way of life.

Related Topics:
Maoism - Chinese - Communist - Mao Zedong - Rural - Agrarian

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Stalin forced a rapid industrialization of the (then mostly agrarian) Soviet Union in the years before World War II with his Five Year Plans.

Related Topics:
Stalin - Industrialization - World War II - Five Year Plan

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