The man has natural and individual needs, but is a being that lives in groups, in cooperation with its similar to the satisfaction
of social needs. To understand how this group comes together is that the
economy grew policy. Under that discipline, the study of economics concerns the study of social factors as a whole. That is, the political economy is the
science of social relations and deals with laws governing the production, circulation and consumption of goods.
In the early years of civilization, the man was working to meet their immediate needs. The production was all geared for auto consumption and for the local market, but from the XI century occurred an increase of relations of exchange in local markets and fairs. In Brazil cologne, those relationships were observed in devices and on farms (corn, rice, beans) or in clusters of European immigration colonizadora based system of small property. The self consumption meant, therefore, the lack of accumulation of surpluses. Capitalism, in turn, is a market economy that aims to profit. Their development has been widely studied by Karl Marx in his work: the capital.
The transition from subsistence economy to a market economy was possible due to several factors: development of agriculture; greater distribution of tasks; development of tools and techniques that made the work more productive. The improvement of production factors has therefore increasing the production. In addition to produce their immediate needs, the man started to exchange surplus between them, leaving only be a social animal to be an economic animal.
Therefore, economic activity and the study of the economy have arisen because the existence of three factors: the emergence of economic surplus, production for exchange, the division of labour and the use of tools more productive. Thus, the economy and asks investigation on the conditions and causes of the state of the wealth of society and individuals. She asks as the means and ways to increase the potential of wealth and society occur. According to the neoclassical, the ultimate goal of human activity is to meet human needs, for the Marxist economy is the production of goods.