Concluding Remarks: Breaking the Myth

Abstract

We live increasingly interdependent lives, not just in the advanced capitalist societies of Europe and the rest of the OECD but in the emerging and developing countries of the – no longer separate – ‘Third World’. The global trans-national corporations, operating on the basis of just-in-time management techniques, the optimal use of geographically disparate locations and the relative cheapness of transport, have established a highly complex mesh of production, distribution, consumption and servicing networks, linking all continents. As a result of global deregulation of financial markets and new communications technologies, capital no longer has strong territorial roots, but operates in large measure as an interlinked whole; indeed the drive to shed territorial restrictions has gone beyond even the lure of offshore locations for ‘portfolio management’ to generate the utterly bizarre (but apparently serious) notion of ‘off-planet banking’.¹