This course draws on a variety of traditions – Post Keynesianism, Marxism and Institutionalism – that study capitalism as a social and historical system that changes as it grows. The course will suggest that capitalism can be understood as a system that has evolved through various stages or episodes characterized by different Social Structures of Accumulation – sets of institutions that mediate certain key economic activities and relationships, and that both influence and are influenced by economic outcomes. The transformation of the US economy since 1945 will be used to illustrate this thinking.