On the Central Concept of Austrian Economics: Market Process

In setting up the market process as the central concept of Austrian economics, as opposed to the general-equilibrium approach of the neoclassical school, Austrian economists have a choice of strategies: They might, on the one hand, attempt to show the absurdity of the notion of general equilibrium, the arid formalism of the style of thought that gave rise to it, and its "irrelevance" to many urgent problems. They might, without denying the significance of equilibrating forces, stress the time aspect and show that the equilibrating forces can never do their work in time, that long before general equilibrium is established some change will supervene to render the data obsolete.

The market process is the outward manifestation of an unending stream of knowledge. This insight is fundamental to Austrian economics. The pattern of knowledge is continuously changing in society, a process hard to describe. Knowledge defies all attempts to treat it as a "datum" or an object identifiable in time and space.

--Ludwig M. Lachmann, "On the Central Concept of Austrian Economics: Market Process," in The Foundations of Modern Austrian Economics, ed. Edwin G. Dolan (Kansas City: Sheed and Ward, 1976), 126-127.