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Classical economics, also known as the classical school of economics, [1] or classical political economy, is a school of thought in political economy that flourished, primarily in Britain, in the late 18th and early-to-mid 19th century. It includes both the Smithian and Ricardian schools. [2]
In the history of economic thought, ancient economic thought refers to the ideas from people before the Middle Ages. Economics in the classical age is defined in the modern analysis as a factor of ethics and politics, only becoming an object of study as a separate discipline during the 18th century. [1] [2] [3] [4]
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Discours sur l'oeconomie politique, 1758. Political economy is a branch of political science and economics studying economic systems (e.g. markets and national economies) and their governance by political systems (e.g. law, institutions, and government).
Classical economics focuses on the tendency of markets to move to equilibrium and on objective theories of value. Neo-classical economics differs from classical economics primarily in being utilitarian in its value theory and using marginal theory as the basis of its models and equations. Marxian economics also descends from classical theory.
The system of imperialism produced economic conditions particularly amenable to the movement of capital according to the assumptions of classical economics. Britain, for instance, was able to design, impose, and control the quality of institutions in its colonies to capitalize on the high returns to capital in the new world.
It uses neoclassical economic theory to reinterpret historical data, spreading throughout academia, causing economic historians untrained in economics to disappear from history departments. American cliometric economists Douglass Cecil North (1920–2015) and Robert William Fogel (1926–2013) were awarded the 1993 Nobel Economics Prize.
A critique of the base and superstructure theory is that property relations (supposedly part of the base and the driving force of history) are more properly situated in legal relations, an element of the superstructure. This suggests that the distinction between base and superstructure is incoherent, and undermines the theory as a whole.
Classical Marxism is the body of economic, philosophical, and sociological theories expounded by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in their works, as contrasted with orthodox Marxism, Marxism–Leninism, and autonomist Marxism which emerged after their deaths. [1]