Introduction

The regulation theory arose in France at about the same time that the social structure of accumulation theory, which is the subject of this volume, was developing in the United States. The regulation school first appeared in print with the publication of Aglietta's Theory of Capitalist Regulation (1979, first published in French in 1976). The first published work of the social structure of accumulation school, Gordon (1978, 1980), appeared soon after the French edition of Aglietta's book.

The regulation theory holds that capitalism has experienced a sequence of “regimes of accumulation,” each associated with a particular “mode of regulation” that governs the accumulation process. The regulation school is perhaps best known for its concept of “Fordism,” the name given to the post World War II regime of accumulation. Fordism is a regime of accumulation based on assembly line production methods and mass consumption by the working class.

Both the regulation theory and the social structure of accumulation theory offer new theoretical frameworks for analyzing the long-run course of capital accumulation. Both approaches use Marxian categories and concepts for that purpose, yet both go beyond traditional Marxian formulations on that subject. These two theories have differences as well as similarities, and a consideration of both the similarities and the differences helps to understand both theories better. This chapter offers a comparative analysis of these two approaches.