Prabhat Patnaik's starting point is the fundamental question of how we can explain the resilience and durability of capitalist economies - after all, the writings of most of the giants among economists have been permeated by a sense of the transitoriness of capitalism. His argument is that the existence of a periphery of less developed countries provides a buffer that allows (relatively) crisis-free and non-inflationary growth in the capitalist core. The analysis unifies two fields that are normally separate: models of growth and stabilization policy in advanced economies and the economics of open developing economies. Consequently, Patnaik embraces both a thorough analysis of modern fiscal, monetary, and inflation policy in advanced capitalist economies and the constraints that systematically hinder development in less developed countries.

Accumulation and Stability under Capitalism uses macroeconomic principles to solve problems currently addressed with microeconomic tools, establishing macroeconomics as a framework for analysing phenomena as wide-ranging as migration, imperialist systems, technological change, and labour markets. In the tradition of Keynes, Harrod and Domar, Marx, and Kalecki, it offers an alternative path to the choice-theoretic models that have appeared to be the only modern analytical path.