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In this article I compare the approaches to process and order of classical political
economy and marginalist economics, taking into account the implicit ontological
commitments of each perspective in their explanation of capitalism. I draw on the
social ontology developed by Tony Lawson, especially the notion of social positioning.
The classical political economists studied the capitalist economy as a process of
reproduction and distribution of the economic surplus, where socio-economic order
depends on the division of society into social classes. After the marginal revolution,
the classical approach is definitely abandoned, in a context where the analysis of
human institutions in terms of social positions is progressively replaced by methodological
individualism. This leads to a conception where the notion of socio-economic
order is interpreted always in terms of market exchange between individuals, and in
many cases replaced with a concern with the stability of an equilibrium situation.
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