Three Principal Hallmarks of Classical Economics: Growth of the Economy, Processes of Continuing Change, and the Interaction of Individuals

The purpose of this book is to put forward an alternative to equilibrium economics, the paradigm that has dominated the mainstream of economic thought for the best part of a century. That alternative is what may be called classical economics, namely the intellectual tradition that began with Adam Smith, evolved in the nineteenth century, was continued in the twentieth century by Marshall and the Austrians amongst others, and is today represented by theorists of complexity.

The hallmarks of the classical tradition are principally three. The first is the belief that the growth of the economy, rather than relative prices, should be the principal object of analysis. Coupled with that belief is an understanding of the market economy as a collection of processes of continuing change rather than as a structure, and that the nature of this change is self-organising and evolutionary. Finally there is a conviction that economic activity is rooted in human nature and the interaction of individual human beings. Many people might suppose from the similarity of the terms 'classical' and 'neoclassical' that the one school of economic thought is closely related to the other. In fact, as this book will try to show, they are more nearly exact opposites.

--David Simpson, introduction to The Rediscovery of Classical Economics: Adaptation, Complexity and Growth, New Thinking in Political Economy (Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar Publishing, 2013), 1.