86 SOCIAL SCIENTIST labour and capital between them which traditional neo-classical economics speaks of. In fact one can argue that the existing institutions of resource allocation in these countries will tend to inhibit the realization of such economies even in the event of a liberalization of trade and factor movements. The operations of multinational corporations which essentially integrate., both vertically and horizontally, activities involving segments of the economies of a large number of different countries within the frontiers of a single decision-making machinery, may tend to conceal the extent to which one developing country participates in the development of another. For example,, resources of one region may reach the the other in a more finished form via processing plants in an advanced capitalist country. However, it is clear that, as Girvan and Jefferson observe, ^Intra-corporate commodity transfers between plants located within different countries may satisfy the formal criteria of international trade but so far as resource allocation is concrerned, the flows are of an internal character within frontiers which are institutionally, not politically defined."A Moreover to the extent that there exists a certain rigidity in product and factor flows between multinationals producing similar sets of commodities, '^corporate integration can, and often does, result in regional fragmentation.9'2 This is not to deny that, as the national economies ofthedevelop-ng countries make progress and strengthen through appropriate socio-economic transformations, they stand to gain from integration with one another. But the strivings of monopoly capital, to play the leading role of 'integrator'of the developing countries, and 10 use regional integration to subordinate them to the interests of extending and consolidating foreign capital in the integrating associations, are clearly observable tendencies representative of neocolonial policies being pursued by contemporary capitalism and should not be considered lightly. Sindhwani's study has neglected the analysis of the role of production relations and mode in shaping the motive forces behind economic integration. It does not go beyond classic bourgeois ideas about the international division of labour and foreign trade.regarding the capitalist market as a^self-adjusting process" developing purely under the influence of elemental forces of competition. This study which is purely empirical in nature, dbes not distinguish between the impulses for economic integration in different socioeconomic systems, leave alone its specific concrete causes in the developing countries. ANIL RAI ' N Girvan and 0 Tefferson, "CSorporate v. Caribbean Integration^' in H Bernstein (ed.) Underdevelopment and Development: The Third World Today, Penguin, 1973, p 351. a Ibid.