Extensive Stage

Extensive stage, or by its full name, predominantly extensive stage of accumulation is pertains at one of the periodizations of capitalism, as proposed by Aglietta (1976). It is the first stage of capitalism and thus in it there is plenty of room for the extension of capitalist relations of production, meaning, of wage labour and therefore of commodity production. In other periodizations this is known as early or concurrential stage. It is characterized by high rates of growth (runaway, unfettered).

One of the best descriptions of this stage as it developed in England is in Marx's Capital I, Part VI: The so-called primitive accumulation.

When the extensive stage becomes exhausted, it is followed by the intensive stage (of predominantly intensive accumulation).

Famous quotes containing the words extensive and/or stage:

    “There is a patent office at the seat of government of the universe, whose managers are as much interested in the dispersion of seeds as anybody at Washington can be, and their operations are infinitely more extensive and regular.”
    —Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    “The slightest living thing answers a deeper need than all the works of man because it is transitory. It has an evanescence of life, or growth, or change: it passes, as we do, from one stage to the another, from darkness to darkness, into a distance where we, too, vanish out of sight. A work of art is static; and its value and its weakness lie in being so: but the tuft of grass and the clouds above it belong to our own travelling brotherhood.”
    —Freya Stark (b. 1893–1993)