ABSTRACT
Man has been aware of social and economic evolution for thousands of years. There are myths about the origin of man in probably all cultures, and they always involve comparisons between early and simple states of society and later, more developed ones. The philosophers of antiquity tried to rationalize this oral tradition; they discussed, for instance, whether the inventions were rather the result of accumulated practical experience 1 or of rational philosophy, as Panaitios had asserted. Old is also the idea of political and social change. The Greeks distinguished different forms of government, and discussed the evolution from tribal rulers to kings of cities and realms, later to aristocratic rule, tyranny and eventually to democracy, with democracy itself undergoing well-observed institutional changes. Political change was associated with changes of the social forms, the emergence of new elites and the adoption of constitutions which legitimized political forms and social divisions. However, nobody before modern times seems to have associated this technical, political and social evolution with a corresponding change of economic forms, although the description of history always also involved the description of the change of some economic institutions, for instance concerning the introduction of coins, the policy of the monetary authority, fiscal arrangements, redistribution and the like. There was thus partial awareness of what we mean when we say that the economic system was transformed, but the change of the economic system could be identified only when the logic of the interdependence of a given economic system was understood, and this began only with classical thought. With the classical school, culminating in Marx, the idea of a ‘material’ (meaning an economic) determination of social and political life began to take hold, and with it the view of progress as a process of linear evolution. The older classical authors thought that free national markets and international free trade would ultimately prevail and displace the perceived arbitrariness of feudal institutions. Marx thought that competition would become imperfect and necessitate (and facilitate!) the transition to a socialization of property and production, but little room was left in this view for the roles of cultural forces and free and conscious choice in the shaping of development.
