Reactualization of Classical Political Economy at the Current Stage of Technological and Global Economic Development

More than a decade and a half ago (2008–2009), neoliberal hopes for “endless” economic growth “stumbled” on the global economic crisis. Soon after, geopolitical tensions “layered” on the complex socio-economic problems. Global challenges facing the modern world economy “demanded” adequate theoretical and methodological responses from the academic community. However, the dominant paradigm of economic science has obvious ontological and epistemological limitations. As a result, this paradigm “has failed” in fruitless attempts to conceptually comprehend the rapid growth of global social inequality, unprecedented technological transformation, rapid expansion of artificial intelligence, a very likely change in the geopolitical balance, etc. The authors put forward a hypothesis that the intellectual legacy of classical political economy allows to overcome this cognitive crisis. The focus on the problems of production and distribution, class division of society, exploitation of labor by capital and other provisions of classical political economy are considered in the article as relevant for understanding modern socio-economic trends. Thus, the article puts on the agenda the issue of the urgent need in the academic environment to reactualize classical political economy, especially taking into account the Marxist tradition.