THE POWER AXIS 49 external environment in the formation of expectations about the rate of profit, or to fail to provide a substantive account of that environment* (Gordon, et al. 1982,23). The social structures of accumulation approach renounces attempts to ground accumulation theory in concepts of the behavior bf economic agents—whether entrepreneurs, preference maximizers, or monopolistic firms—defined in isolation. It will instead start with the 'political-economic environment* within which the process of capital accumulation takes place (Gordon, et al. 1982,23). Justifying and extending this position, Gordon, Edwards, and Reich later counterpose their social approach to investment determination to frameworks based on concepts of the behavior of individual agents: Because capital accumulation depends on disconnected investment decisions by individual firms, it appears that one can understand those decisions through models of individual behavior. Investment in capitalist economies is mediated fundamentally by social (or institutional) forces, however—that is, by factors external to individual capitalists that are determined by collective social activities. Macrodynamic analyses of growth and disequilibria must take the structure and contradictions of this conditioning environment into account (Gordon, et al. 1982,26). As I argue elsewhere, in the context of Marxian theory's history^ of reductionist uses of concepts of 'inner logics' and 'inner laws of motion,' this aspect of SSA theory is a welcome and needed intervention (Norton 1988a). It would replace innately given behaviors with historically changing 'social activities' as the starting point for specifically Marxian conceptions of the process of capital accumulation. A further hypothesis has accompanied social structures of accumulation theory from its inception. Each distinct SSA's ability to support profits and growth passes through a cycle. Initially launched when a set of institutions jointly promoting stable and profitable conditions for accumulation is established, an SSA promotes an extended period of subsequent growth. With time, however, either stresses fueled by that growth, or other kinds of shocks, begin to unravel the SSA or diminish its effectiveness in supporting domestic capitalist power. Confronting deteriorating or increasingly unstable accumulation conditions, capitalists react by reducing investment spending in favor of alternative uses of their funds. The resulting period of stagnation ends only with the construction of a new SSA—a process which may take considerable time since it requires extended political and ideological struggle, coalition formation, and so on. The frameworks other side is thus a long-swing theory of stages in capitalist economic activity (Gordon, et al, 1982,18-47). The work by Bowles, Gordon, and Weisskopf which followed this initial formulation introduced a second pressing goal for the new