This seminal and original study of contemporary imperialism should be on every militant’s bookshelf, not least because it is tightly argued, exhaustively researched and unashamedly Marxist throughout.

John Smith’s central argument is that the decline in manufacturing in the Western industrialised countries, and its rise in the so-called Third World, are part of a deliberate strategy by transnational corporations to exploit low wages, underpinned by appalling working conditions, in order to realise super profits.

Growth rates in many areas of the Global South would certainly seem to indicate that such a shift has taken place, as do the growing numbers working in industry. Yet that level is nowhere near high enough to absorb the millions continuing to be driven out of the countryside and into the towns and cities.