Introduction

As the contributions to this volume show, the emerging social structures of accumulation (SSA) approach to political economy has begun to provide a comprehensive, middle-range theory of capitalist development that can be fruitfully used to better understand American economic and political history. The approach has been employed to explore the construction, unraveling, and reconstruction of the institutional foundations of capital accumulation during various stages of American history.

My aim in this chapter is twofold: to contribute to a clearer understanding of the political and cultural/ideological dimensions of SSA theory, and to show that the theory can be used to explain failed attempts at institutional change or innovation during periods of SSA crisis. I hope to accomplish this through a case study of the wide-ranging debate that took place in the United States in the early 1980s on the need for an American “industrial policy” in response to growing competitive challenges from Japan, Europe, and various newly industrializing countries. Many analysts at that time – including certain SSA theorists – saw industrial policy as the necessary and probable next step in the rationalization of American capitalism, in other words, as a “core” institution of a new SSA. Yet industrial policy faded as an issue in the early 1980s almost as rapidly as it had arisen.