Classical economists had a more dynamic approach to the study of political economy than the more mathematical neoclassical schools. Joseph Schumpeter and F. A. Hayek both understood path dependency, endogenous effects, and the complexity of the market economy, and of norms and the social and cultural orders. The modern Austrian school has so far failed to comprehensively analyse society and culture using this approach largely due to their reliance upon methodological individualism (MI).

These ‘spontaneous orders’, as Hayek referred to them, are endogenous cycles of interaction between individual and collective—or society—in which each affect the other, the individual influencing society, norms, and culture as much as they influence the individual. Neither is the root cause: not the individual, as the MI of Austrians argue, nor the society or state, as Marxists (and many other schools) argue (or assume or imply). Nor can one or the other dominate by force of will. The two are forever intertwined and affect the other in a cycle – interaction in a spontaneous order with evolution and emergence – whether a cycle of violence or one of cooperation and civilisation, that cannot be stopped even in a purely anarchic society, though the nature of the cycles involved can be (and has been) changed.

Here we consider modern Complex Adaptive Systems (CAS) theory and its roots in Hayek’s Spontaneous Order and the “systems theory” of Schumpeter and others. Analysis of classical theories of communication, interaction, social change, and culture from a modern perspective can bring about new insights. This may provide a foundation for a new post-Austrian analysis (an Austrian framework which moves beyond methodological individualism) of the social and economic cycles of the modern economy and culture. This might help to determine things including what leads to the emergence of cooperation, the development of coordination, the origins of prosocial behaviour, and the way to move toward a less violent and selfish society, one which would be ready to embrace a Universal Basic Income and be peaceful whilst the majority of young men are jobless (which would be unprecedented).