Thanks for the actual quote: By referring the the "successive phases of its NORMAL development" Marx is describing a MODERN (e.g. capitalist) economy which has "laws of motion" that can be discovered.
Now, I don't for a minute want to be thought of as saying that "the economy" is a bloodless functioning set of processes (mechanistic if you will) that follow laws such as the laws of physics or biology --- However, if there is anything to the scientific approach to understand human interaction in the sphere of study known as political economy, they, YES, "the economy" does exist (it involves dynamic interaction of classes as well as "forces of production" and is thus more complicated than even complicated macro models such as the ones developed since Lawrence Klein took a crack at them during the 1940s) and can be studied for it;s "laws of motion." To take one example (dear to my heart because of a recent collaboration) -- the effort of Howard SHerman (over decades of study) to utilize the insights of Wesley Clair Mitchell in discovering a "regularity" in the business cycle that is driven very much by the "class struggle" aspect of economic dynamics produces a very different picture of "how the world works" than the neo-conservative and even many so-called "Keynesian" analyses that dominate most writings by the economics mainstream --- [shameless plug coming' -- that's why I've enjoyed working so much with Howard on the recent textbook (Principles of Macroeconomics: Activist vs. Austerity Policies -- ME SHARPE) --- it's so grounded in the empirical realities of the period since WOrld War II in the U.S. (just as Marx's Vol I was grounded in the empirical realities of the mid-19th century in Britain -- a reality he promised the Germans and other up and comping capitalist nations was a "picture of their futures")
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