A History of Contemporary Political Economy and Post-Modernism

The study of the history of economic theory is entwined with both non-neoclassical and especially Marxist political economic analyses. These analyses basically relate the creation of an autonomous science of economic relations to the establishment of capitalism. Usually, the main agents in this interaction are social groups and especially social classes. Contrarily, neoclassical orthodoxy understands the history of economic theory as mere history of economic thought (i.e., a succession of personal contributions with limited relation to the socio-economic conditions). The relation between economy and economic theory is theorized through an a-social perspective, since social classes and politics are excluded and methodological individualism reigns. Recent post-modernist interpretations advance a historicist, relativist and politicist view. The reasons for the creation of an autonomous science of economic relations are to be found not in the socio-economic relations but mainly in the field of the political. This paper criticizes the post-modernist interpretations from a Marxist perspective and rejects them as historically unfounded and analytically infertile