This chapter examines the argument that deindustrialization does not necessarily matter. There are a number of versions of this argument as we shall see, but ultimately the case rests on the contention that there is no need to be concerned if the proportion of the workforce employed in manufacturing falls, and in some respects, this decline should be welcomed. Sometimes the argument is made that there is nothing special about the manufacturing sector, and what is more important is specialization in competitive sectors, be they manufacturing or services, or even agriculture. But even some who argue that manufacturing does matter, go on to suggest that recent declines in manufacturing do not necessarily matter. This is because it shows both a healthy increase in productivity in manufacturing, and consequently less reliance on employing so many workers in that sector, and an upgrading in work to a post- industrial service economy, sometimes described as the knowledge economy. This account is usually applied specifically to the Global North, but this optimistic argument is often extended to the Global South, albeit to support specialization of manufacturing as part of a progressive process of development. The argument then is that the era of globalization has seen the rise of a new international division of labour, in which the North focuses on services, and the South on manufacturing. While much of this may initially be in low- value, labour- intensive work, the optimistic scenario presented is that countries of the South will eventually upgrade to higher- value manufacturing production, just as the North did so in the past.

This chapter examines these arguments and partly challenges them. It does so first by examining in depth the extent of deindustrialization in the Global North, something that is of great relevance for all of the chapters that follow. It then moves specifically to the argument that deindustrialization does not necessarily matter, by first looking again at positive and negative manifestations of the phenomenon. It then moves on to consider the argument for positive deindustrialization in more detail, and how this links to claims made for the rise of a post- industrial service economy in the North, and a new international division of labour in the era of globaliza-tion. This section briefly examines arguments made in the UK for positive deindustrialization by Third Way politicians in the 1990s and of advocates of Global Britain in the 2000s.