Introduction

The social structure of accumulation theory first appeared in the late 1970s and early 1980s in a series of articles and books: Gordon (1978, 1980); Weisskopf (1981); Gordon et al. (1982); and Bowles et al. (1983). The fundamental claim of this theory is that the alternation between long periods of rapid economic expansion and long periods of stagnation in capitalist history can be explained by the successive creation and then collapse of sets of growth-promoting institutions. Such a set of growth-promoting institutions is referred to as a social structure of accumulation.

This chapter offers a clarification, critique, and reinterpretation of the social structure of accumulation theory. It is organized as follows: after this introductory section a historical context for the social structure of accumulation approach is provided by reviewing some earlier theories of long-run macro-instability. The following section explains the social structure of accumulation approach and offers evaluations and clarifications. This is followed by a critique, in which both conceptual problems and historical applicability are considered. The final section offers a modified version of the social structure of accumulation approach which overcomes some of the difficulties in the current version.

Antecedents

The first formulations of the social structure of accumulation theory, particularly Gordon's (1980), adopted the concept of “long waves,” which refers to regular, fifty-year-long cycles in economic growth associated with the work of Kondratieff (1935) and Schumpeter (1939). It was long waves in economic growth that the new theory sought to explain.