ABSTRACT
The earliest representations of the complete network of economic activity were constructed by Boisguilbert and later by the physiocrats, in terms of the circulation of wealth. Without ignoring the genuine dynamic aspects of their work, relating in the former case to the nature of crises, in the latter to the accumulation of capital, we will instead restrict ourselves to a presentation of the grand systems of interpretation of economic movement advanced by the English Classical economists, in particular Ricardo, and by Marx. Clearly, this account does not aim to give a complete historical picture of the work of these authors, such as might be found in a more specialised work. 1
David Ricardo, who wrote at the end of the Napoleonic Wars, was the principal representative of the English Classical school founded forty years previously with the publication of Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations. This book laid down quite clearly the two components which, these writers believed, constituted economic movement: growth, led by capital accumulation and culminating in a steady state, and short-term fluctuations which market mechanisms themselves would resolve, to the extent that they were allowed into play.
