The Marxian Theory of Capitalist Stages

This article traces the history of a continuous tradition of Marxian stage theory from the beginning of the twentieth century until the present day. The resolution of the first crisis of Marxism was found in the work of Hilferding on finance capital, Bukharin on the world economy and Lenin on imperialism as a new stage of capitalism. Hilferding's, Bukarin's and Lenin's analysis was carried into the post–World War II era through the work of Sweezy and Mandel. A second wave of Marxian stage theorizing emerged with the end of the post–World War II expansion. Mandel's long wave theory (LWT), the Social Structure of Accumulation Framework (SSAF), and the Regulation Approach (RA) analyzed the stagflationary crises as the end of a long wave of growth. This long wave was underpinned by the emergence of a postwar stage of capitalism, which was analogous to the reorganization brought about by monopoly capital at the turn of the century. These new schools were reluctant to predict the non-resolution of the current crisis, thus opening up the possibility of further stages of capitalism in the future. This elevated Lenin's theory of the highest stage to a general theory of capitalist stages. The last decade has seen a substantial convergence in the three perspectives. In general, this convergence has reaffirmed the importance of Hilferding's, Bukarin's and Lenin's (HBL's) initial contributions to the stage theoretic tradition. The article concludes with some thoughts on the necessity of stage theory for understanding of the current period of globalization.