Abstract
This work aims to understand the origins and transformations of the social structures of accumulation (SSA) school, largely focusing on the changes in the main concept of the approach. The SSA school is one of the principal approaches of the radical political economy, which was developed from the 1960s in an attempt to explain racism, sexism, imperialism, and the long waves of capitalist accumulation, among other issues. The central concept of the social structures of accumulation school was developed from mid-1970, aiming to create an intermediate level of analysis between an abstract and general theory of capitalism and the historical and empirical realm. Throughout the historical evolution of this approach, it moved away from theoretical considerations about the fundamental characteristics of the capitalist mode of production and, eventually, adopted pre-theoretical conceptions of these features. This is why SSA researchers have recently reinterpreted its central concept.
Keywords:
Social structures of accumulation approach; radical political economics; Long waves