(MNCs of multinational corporations) can operate `geocentrically', planning the location of their production and the pattern of their investment according to the balance of advantage across the whole capitalist world economy. For example, in the short-term these geocentric MNCs have the ability to increase the level of production in one country at the expense of another and in the longer term they could even shift the entire balance of their production between countries.

`new international division of labor' (NIDL) developed by Frobel (1980). NIDL draws attention to the impact of MNCs, but its specific purpose is to point to the development of a world market in which manufacturing production can be divided up into fragments and located in any industrialized or less developed part of the world, depending on where the most profitable combination of labour and capital can he obtained.

Though this analysis is strong on contemporary empirical...