An explanation of geography of industrial requires a robust framework [51; 60]. Such a framework must be able to explain the relationships between changes within various parts of the capitalist system as a whole, e.g., the interconnectedness of changes in financial, commercial, and productive capital. The framework must also be able to explain the relationship of changes in the capitalist system at an international scale to those in various parts of its geographical subsystems. Historical materialism provides such an explanatory framework, although spatial theory remains little developed [35, p. 337]. In this paper an historical materialist perspective is used to develop an hypothesis regarding the industrial reorganization taking place today at a global scale and reorganization in a specific subsystem, the manufacturing branch of the Australian economy. A theory of transition within the capitalist mode of production helps to explain the geography of industrial reorganization, for it suggests that capitalist activities, like retailing, wholesaling, and manufacturing, enter periodic restructuring crises when one variant of capitalism becomes subordinated by, or evolves into, a newer capitalist variant [31]. The category we employ to differentiate variants of capitalism is the submode of production. A submode is an historically specific articulation of capital-labor and capital-capital relations defined by a unique lever of exploitation and type of surplus appropriation. We have posited, elsewhere, four types of submode: the transitional, competitive, monopoly, and global submodes of production [30; 31].1 Historically, capitalist manufacturing industry has taken forms of the transitional, competitive, and monopoly submodes of production.2 Each variant form of industry has been associated with a dominant and historically specific geographical structuring and locational rationale. The transition within an industry, from one submode to another, is characterized by changes in the labor process, the technology employed, inter-capitalist fraction relations (those between production, commercial, and banking capitals), and changes in relations with the state and other ideological apparatuses. The sum of these changes constitutes what has been termed a restructuring crisis.