66 SOCIAL SCIENTIST becoming more important with the expansion of the developing countries' manufactures export. The author thus argues that most studies of intra-firm trade, based as they are on the above data, tend to grossly underestimate its extent. Nor do they reflect the increasing importance of non-US firms in intra-firm US imports. The data on US "related party" -imports, a "related party" being one where 5 per cent or more of the voting stock of one party is owned by the other party to the transaction, is more appropriate. The data show that in 1977, an enormous 48.4 per cent of US imports was by "related parties". The proportion in different sub-groups increases as one proceeds from non-petroleum primary products (23.5 per cent) to semi-manufactures (32.6 per cent) to manufactures (53.6 per cent). The proportion is higher for OECD imports (53. 7 per cent) than for developing countries imports (43. 4 per cent overall and 28.1 per cent on excluding petroleum). However, the data do not reflect the internationalization of production alone since related party trade can be for resale or "distributional". Related party imports from the OECD countries are largely by non-US firms engaged primarily in wholesale trade whereas US firms engaged in-international production account for the bulk from the developing countries. The rapid growth of international sub-contracting further reinforced the increasing importance of intra-firm trade. While indications are that its importance is of a similar order in the case of US exports as well the trade of other developed countries, we must await detailed analysis for these as the author has done for US imports. In recent years primary commodity producers have attempted to arrive at international agreements to stabilize prices by maintaining buffer stocks and by arriving at long-term contracts. These attempts have invited scorn in orthodox academic circles in the West as misguided attempts to interfere with the free play of market forces which should be left to determine the "appropriate" prices, production and sales. This book exposes this illusion of the free market by showing that international trade in many primary commodities is largely trade between different branches of TNCs and world prices, especially in minerals, reflect the internal price management of TNCs. Giant TNCs relate their short-term market behaviour to their long-term investment objectives in order to avoid rival producers or substitutes. They stockpile inventories in order to be able to meet sudden fluctuations in demand through inventory adjustment rather than by unstable price fluctuations. What the neo-classicals are really objecting to is not interference with the free market per se but interference by the developing countries in their interest, and to hide this they take refuge in the mystical mantra of laissez faire. The most interesting and controversial argument in the book relates intra-firm trade to the development of manufacturing in the