The bourgeois classical political economy tried to create conditions for the further development of capitalism, opposed the privileges of feudal nobles and outdated mercantilism, put forward the slogan of "laissez-faire" and opposed the state's intervention in bourgeois economic activities. To this end, classical economists put forward the idea of "natural law", starting from "human nature", looking for and demonstrating a reasonable system of nature. In this way, they actually admit that there are objective laws in social and economic life that are not transferred by human will; But at the same time, they described the dominant law in economic life as "eternity" and regarded capitalism as the most reasonable, natural and eternal system, which reflected the limitations of their theoretical thinking. The bourgeois classical political economy represented the interests of industrial capital in this period. By organizing labor, industrial capital exploits wage labor in the form of surplus value under the principle of equivalent exchange; Production is the basis of industrial capital rule, and circulation is the subordinate factor of production. In order to demonstrate the superiority of capitalist mode of production, classical political economics tries to study the essence and inherent law of capitalist production behind the phenomenon of circulation described by mercantilism.

In the history of economic thought, classical political economy first shifted its theoretical investigation from the field of circulation to the field of production, and made a preliminary analysis of the capitalist mode of production. Its main scientific achievement is to lay the foundation of labor theory of value, study various forms of surplus value (profit, interest, land rent) to varying degrees, and make a preliminary analysis and discussion on the reproduction and circulation of social capital. Due to the limitation of bourgeois vision, classical political economy inevitably contains vulgar elements and serious contradictions in addition to scientific factors.