Abstract

The self-regulated nature of capitalist economic systems cannot be understood through the concept of equilibrium, as neoclassical economics does. A new way to create a systemic theory of the economy has been opened by the concept of autopoiesis. Starting from Marx’s proposition of the founding character of social relations for economic systems and combining it with the autopoietic theory it is possible to propose a systemic theory of economics. In the first section it is made a characterization of autopoietic systems and argued that developed capitalist economic systems belong to this kind. In the second section, economic dynamics is presented as adequate to the nature of autopoietic systems.

JEL Classification: B41; B51; P16.