This is an attractive argument, but it seems to rely on a rather simplistic conception of the relation between the necessary and the contingent. For all social structures are in their origin contingent, as Storper (1987: 420) has recently emphasized; and all social structures ultimately return to that state prior to their dissolution as recognizable structures. We can illustrate this alternative view using a recent argument developed by Harvey and Scott (1987: 19). In a discussion of “flexible accumulation” they suggest that