ABSTRACT
Most of the theories dealing with the study of stages of capitalist development, characterized by particular accumulation regimes, can be situated both in the middle of the time ‘scale’, employing as they do mainly a medium-term time horizon, and in the middle of the ‘space axis’, for in practice their validity is mostly limited to the core areas of the world system. The first Marxist theorist to analyse the transition to the new stage of capitalist development into which the US economy gradually entered in the 1920s was Antonio Gramsci. The intensity of production which this implied led Ford and other American industrialists to concern themselves with maintaining a stable, skilled labour force. In the 1960s and 1970s the developments which Gramsci could only vaguely foretell had become the dominant reality throughout the developed capitalist world.
