ABSTRACT
A good critical assessment of the regulation school, from the viewpoint of a relatively orthodox Marxist, is that of CLARKE, who attacks it on both theoretical and historical grounds. He argues that the regulation theorists rely on a deeply flawed structuralist-functionalist method that cannot deal adequately with class struggle, and fail to present a coherent analysis of the overaccumulation of capital. Nor is there convincing evidence that the 1929 crisis marked the transition from one regime of accumulation to another, as all the crucial features of the “intensive” regime were already present in 19th-century capitalism. Equally, the postwar boom had little or nothing to do with the introduction of Fordist modes of regulation.
