The New International Division of Labour: Structural Unemployment in Industrialised Countries and Industrialisation in Developing Countries

The main thesis of this study is that the world economy is undergoing a profound structural change that is forcing companies to reorganize their production on a global scale. This is being brought about both through the relocation of production to new industrial sites, increasingly in the developing countries, and through the accelerated rationalisation measures at the traditional sites of industrial manufacture. The authors have designated this structural movement as 'the new international division of labour', and argue that it has led to the crisis that can be observed in industrial countries, as well as to the first steps towards export-oriented manufacturing in the developing countries. They see these trends as being largely independent of the policies pursued by individual governments and the strategies for expansion adopted by individual firms, and argue that the conditions currently prevailing in the capitalist world economy mean that the efforts of individual countries to devise economic policies to reduce industrial unemployment in the industrialised countries or to accentuate a balanced process of industrialisation in the developing countries are doomed to failure.