Whither Regulationism: Reflections on the Regulation Approach

Against the background of ongoing global crisis of capitalism, the article reflects on the most important and intriguing contributions of the French Regulation School within the Marxist tradition to critical international political economy. In particular, it examines and critiques the respective theses of principal regulationists—Aglietta, Lipietz, and Boyer—about capitalist stability, contradictions, dynamics, and relations. Aglietta’s limited conception of crises and contradictions is scrutinised by proposing a framework of agential-structural interrelations—specifically, the interactions between class struggle and market-dependence—in understanding capitalist relations and processes. Lipietz’s level of analysis on ‘national’ capitalism is questioned with a comprehension of the global character and universalising tendencies of capitalism. And Boyer’s reading of finance-led growth as the new regime of accumulation is explored with an argument to put more significance on reproduction than regulation and to bring back production and its interaction with the system of exchange in the analysis of capitalist development. The conclusion proposes a synthesis of regulation approach and the concepts from classical Marxism to better capture the specificities of contemporary capitalist development.