Gordon's Accumulation Theory: The Highest Stage of Stadial Theory

Abstract

This essay examines the intellectual antecedents of David Gordon's social structure of accumulation (SSA) approach. It argues that Gordon's systematic treatment of long periods of growth and stagnation is the culmination of a long Marxist tradition which began early in the twentieth century with the work of Hilferding, Bukharin, and Lenin. Contemporary Marxist analyses of the recovery of capitalism from the great depression of the late nineteenth century parallel that developed by Gordon for the post-World War II period. Gordon's approach is genealogically linked to these turn of the century analyses through the work of Ernest Mandel on late capitalism and through the American monopoly capital school. Gordon's key contribution is to transform the early Marxist theory of the highest stage of capitalism into a general theory of capitalist stages.