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Even within heterodoxy there is argument about what should and should not be included or why (Lawson 2006; King 2008; Milonakis & Fine 2009; Dow 2011). This paper proposes that important and convergent markers exist in the concerns of classical contributors to economic discourse, from the beginning of the nineteenth century to the midtwentieth century, as well as from the more recent revival of the same issues in social science broadly. Some problems of demarcation and method will probably remain unresolved, but imprecision does not negate the analytical potential of non-mainstream traditions in political economy.
The most troubling issues in heterodox political economy can be highlighted by examining the Marx-Keynes relationship. However, older anti-orthodox contributions continue to inform these dilemmas because claims made from outside the mainstream cannot be ignored.
At first blush, Marx sits firmly in the classical tradition. He deployed its abstract, formalist and anti-empirical methodology that initially glossed over the peculiarities of individual economies. From this abstraction derives his definition of capitalism, his conception of crisis tendencies and his scepticism concerning the state's capacity to politically manage periodic economic disruptions. Each of these has given rise to debates that continue to define Marxism.
Keynes, in many respects not an economist at all, encouraged intuitive, anti-formalist analyses which allowed for experimental policies and institution building. Keynes was accordingly more optimistic about the possibilities of politics, thus also contributing to instructive and enduring controversy. Marxism, by virtue of its problematization of the relationship between the forces and relations of production seems, perhaps surprisingly, to also demand some retreat from abstract forms of enquiry and to ultimately accommodate historical specificities in capitalism.
This article examines existing strands of what has become known as heterodoxy and suggests that, though we cannot expect a complete resolution of conceptual and methodological problems in political economy, ongoing intellectual investigation of contemporary capitalism in heterodox terms has much to offer.
Heterodox Political Economy outside Marxism
An early instance of fruitful disagreement about how to conceive political economy's subject matter was the dispute, through the second and third decades of the nineteenth century, between Robert Malthus and David Ricardo. Maynard Keynes supported Malthus's side in this controversy because he agreed that vague intuitions (that is, those which legitimate inductive and empirical...