Explain and compare the Classical, Marxist, and Evolutionary models of economic growth and structural change. The classical theory emphasizes the economy's tendency towards equilibrium, stability, and self-correction. It posits that economic change occurs gradually as a result of capital accumulation. Investment declines, and the economy eventually stagnates. Marx's theory of change was based on a dialectical process called Historical Materialism.
Productive forces determine productive relations, which in turn determines the superstructure.
Productive forces may change slowly over time, but contradictions build up and eventually the relations of production and the superstructure undergo revolutionary change. In Marx's view, the relations of production have historically been based on class struggle, and so the most important contradictions are between classes. Economies must go through inevitable and necessary stages of progression, from primitive communism to a slave economy to feudalism to capitalism to socialism to advanced communism and the end of history. In many ways, economic evolution combines aspects of both the classical and Marxian models. Economic evolution can be both convergent and divergent, depending on whether economies act in isolation or fill coevolutionary niches dependent on other economies.