Revisiting the regulation approach : critical reflections on the contradictions, dilemmas, fixes, and crisis dynamics of growth regimes

Jessop, Bob (2013) Revisiting the regulation approach : critical reflections on the contradictions, dilemmas, fixes, and crisis dynamics of growth regimes. Capital and Class, 37 (1). pp. 5-24. ISSN 0309-8168

Abstract

Capitalist growth regimes are analysed drawing on Marx’s insights into capital’s fundamental contradictions, regulationist arguments about the five basic structural forms of accumulation regimes and their modes of regulation, historical geographical materialism’s emphasis on spatio-temporal fixes, and state-theoretical accounts of government and governance. This framework is applied to four growth regimes: Atlantic Fordism, the knowledge-based economy, finance-dominated capitalism, and a 'no-growth' alternative. The article highlights the crisis-tendencies of the first three and assesses whether the Green New Deal can provide an eco-social exit from crisis and/or is vulnerable to capture by the same forces that brought us finance-dominated accumulation.