Critical Realism, Marxism and the Critique of Neoclassical Economics

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2011 35: 3Capital & ClassBrian O'Boyle and Terrence McDonough

Critical realism, Marxism and the critique of neoclassical economics

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Critical realism, Marxism and the critique of neoclassical economics

Brian O’BoyleSt Angela’s College, Ireland

Terrence McDonoughNational University of Ireland, Galway

AbstractThis paper argues that while critical realist insights are important for heterodoxy, any engagement with the economic mainstream must remain faithful to Bhaskar’s original formulation with its explicit focus on ‘ideology critique’. The article proceeds by distinguishing Bhaskar’s more Marxian-inspired realism from the broadly heterodox variety of the ‘critical realism in economics’ (CRE) project. It then highlights the weaknesses of the CRE critique of the economic mainstream before positing an alternative critique in terms of ideology.

Keywordscritical realism, Marxism, neoclassical economics, capitalism, ideology

IntroductionThere is an historical anomaly in the relationship between critical realism and mainstream economics. While inadequacies within neoclassical development theory originally drove Bhaskar to an analysis of its philosophical deficiencies, Bhaskar himself has never elabo-rated an explicit critique of the neoclassical mainstream. This is despite the fact that he not only approves of Marx’s analysis of the ‘vulgar economy’ of his day, but actually pos-its it as the paradigmatic example of ideological critique.1 Indeed, this silence is all the more striking given that others within realism, most notably Tony Lawson, have placed

Corresponding author:Brian O’Boyle, St Angela’s College, IrelandEmail: [email protected]



4 Capital & Class 35(1)

such a critique at the centre of the development of their positions, but have explicitly eschewed the possibility of an ideology critique in doing so. Thus we have a situation within realism wherein, on the one hand, its founder has chosen to restrict any criticism of economic orthodoxy to its meta-theoretical underpinnings and, on the other, those within the critical realism in economics (CRE) project – a genealogically related school, but one which is developing its own trajectory – have sought to engage much more directly with academic economics, but on a level which has little basis in Bhaskar’s initial work.2

While some authors have noted this distinction and the tensions it entails (see, for example, Nielsen, 2002), others such as Fine (2002, 2004) have taken the CRE critique of orthodoxy as being the definitive (in fact the only) critical-realist position on the eco-nomic mainstream. This, however, is not the case, and it is the contention of this article that conflating the CRE position with that of Bhaskar and critical realism as a whole has been a mistake. We wish to propose an alternative line of critique of neoclassical econom-ics to that developed within the CRE project, which is more in line with the more explic-itly Marxian position of the (early) Bhaskarian tradition within critical realism.3 This will be achieved by drawing out the tensions that Nielsen has perceptively noted, before using these to delineate the CRE project from its Bhaskarian relative. It will be found in this context that most of the weaknesses identified by Fine are confined to the CRE position. We will contend that, ironically, CRE is often uncritical and despite its explicit attack on positivism, frequently positivist. This is evident in both its preoccupation with the epis-temological inadequacy of mainstream economics and in its clear lack of a critical sociol-ogy grounded in the structural reality of the mainstream’s real historical trajectory (Fine, 2002).4 This is not the case for Bhaskarian realism, however, and in demonstrating this, the paper will attempt to put clear water between the two traditions and in the process provide criteria for preferring Bhaskarian (Marxian) realism to that of CRE.

Part 1Two strands within critical realismIn an important contribution to the CR literature, Peter Nielsen (2002) has maintained that in order to advance the position of realism within political economy, one must initially attempt to resolve a number of currently existing tensions, centering on 1) the presence of two distinct research programmes within political economy – a Marxian current and a broadly heterodox one; and 2) more generally, a tension surrounding the status and importance of philosophy and the scope of critical realism. This section will argue that while the analysis of the first tension is illuminating, the second is mis-specified, and we therefore begin by recounting Nielsen’s case for distinguishing the two perspectives before moving on to substantive concerns.

In his appraisal of the situation within political economy, Nielsen contends that a particularly striking feature of Bhaskar’s critical realism is its Marxist pedigree (p. 728). He offers evidence from Reclaiming Reality and The Possibility of Naturalism to suggest that, in the main at least, Bhaskar’s work is centred on traditional Marxist themes such as ideological critique and fetishism, and on a mode of reasoning that originates in Marx’s own mature work on political economy. He also substantiates his claim with a decisive statement from Bhaskar himself:



O’Boyle and McDonough 5

In the first place, radical social change presupposes depth realism; Marx’s work at its best illustrates critical realism; and critical realism is the absent methodological fulcrum of Marx’s work … Secondly, the transitive dimension in critical realism is congruent with a Marxist theory of society and is influenced by it. Thirdly, critical realism employs many Marxian analogues in the analysis and critique of positivism and idealist epistemologies generally. (Bhaskar, 1991, in Nielsen, 2002: 728, emphasis added)

Such a definitive account allows Nielsen to place Bhaskar’s realism squarely on the Marxian side of an historical Marxist/non-Marxist divide within political economy. He can then subsequently define this as a point of tension, given that the CRE project within critical realism is explicitly embedded in the contemporary situation in heterodox economics, which includes Marxism, but not centrally, and only as one of a potentially large number of differing heterodox positions. Moreover, Nielsen argues that while this Marxian/non-Marxian division continues to be important, it has in the modern period increasingly co-existed with a sharper division of economics into a dominant and insular orthodoxy and a heterodoxy which, by contrast, is characterised by shared insights and numerous cross-references (at least within heterodoxy itself ). Therefore, as Nielsen maintains, not only are there two strands within critical realism, but they also relate to the aforementioned divisions in different ways. Thus, while the Bhaskarian variety is highly attuned to the divide between Marxian and non-Marxian political economy, it is virtually silent on the current situation within academic economics whereby such a divide has been subordinated to the orthodoxy/heterodoxy divide. For Lawson, it seems that the opposite is true. He is keenly aware of the chasm that currently divides ortho-doxy from the broad heterodox tradition, but is relatively insensitive to the differences that exist within heterodoxy.

Finally, then, Nielsen concludes that both strands have their merits and limitations. He argues that while Bhaskar is right to focus on Marxism as an unavoidable concomi-tant of critical realism, his project is limited by its exclusive focus on the iconoclastic Marx who broke with other traditions, and by a consequent lack of interest in approach-ing the contemporary situation in academic economics. In Lawson’s case, Nielsen believes the CRE endeavour has the merit of highlighting the commonalities within heterodoxy, and the limitation of paying too much attention to contemporary orthodox economics at the expense of externally developing heterodoxy. Consequently, Nielsen argues that a constructive mediation between the two strands is both feasible and necessary, and he even suggests, ‘it seems that combining the merits and avoiding the limitations cling together as aspects of the same critical synthesis within critical realism in political economy’ (p. 736).

However, such a synthesis immediately runs into difficulties that centre on the nature of the CRE project’s engagement with contemporary economics. In particular, Nielsen suggests that while Bhaskar is right to follow the iconoclastic Marx in departing from the main road of economic thought, it is important that contemporary Marxists maintain some form of critical engagement with the orthodox framework, particularly in light of its hegemonic academic position and the pernicious real world effects that this entails (such as its contribution to the dominant neoliberal ideology). Hence his insistence that ‘the anatomy and ideological function of current orthodox economics have to be anal-ysed in depth’ (p. 733), and that consequently, ‘it is very important to unpack and expose




contemporary economics in a way similar to Lawson’s’ (p. 733, emphasis added). Yet precisely herein lies the problem, for to follow Lawson in his particular critique of the mainstream is to relinquish the very tools that are needed to uncover ‘the anatomy and ideological function of orthodoxy’, or indeed its contribution to neoliberal ideology.

Lawson’s critique of the mainstreamTony Lawson’s critique of mainstream economics has been sustained for well over a decade. Nevertheless, the essence of his position is readily discernible, and can be suc-cinctly expressed in the claim that the failure of orthodox economics can be traced to the persistent application of methods of explanation that are inappropriate to the object of their investigation. More specifically, Lawson claims that the economic mainstream is best characterised by its use of deductivist methods, and that these are singularly inapplicable in the social domain (given the existence of open systems and intentional agency). As such, there is a methodological disjuncture between the method of explanation on the one hand (presupposing closed systems for its applicability) and the object of investiga-tion on the other (being inherently open).

Clearly this dogmatic adherence to unsuitable methods is itself in need of explana-tion. Lawson believes that it is best understood in terms of the general standing of math-ematics in the Western intellectual tradition, which has encouraged the mainstream to interpret its (mathematical) methods as a necessary component of what it is to be scien-tific. Indeed, as Lawson himself relays, appreciating this (mis-) conception of science is crucial, for it is a mistaken account of scientific practice that decisively weakens the orthodox project, and ultimately dictates the poor choice of methods. Moreover, every method is underpinned by some philosophical analysis; and in the case of the economic mainstream, this is a positivist epistemology, rooted in a Humean theory of causality and relying on an empirical realist ontology. If such an ontology is to be sustained, it can only be on the basis that reality is exhausted in a series of isolated and atomistic events; and if this is the case, the only possibility for building up reliable knowledge is through the recording of event regularities or constant conjunctions of empirical phenomena.5

Yet if this is the case, it leads to the rather paradoxical conclusion that scientific laws are in some sense dependent on human intervention (since most if not all of the sought-after event regularities are restricted to conditions of experimental control). Moreover, there is a further anomaly in the positivist perspective in that the resultant knowledge is frequently intended to be applied in the open domain where the event regularities are unavailable. Therefore, in order to make sense of this situation Lawson follows Bhaskar in arguing that experimental activity should not be viewed as ‘the production of a rare situation in which an empirical law is put into effect, but as an intervention designed to bring about those special circumstances under which a non-empirical mechanism can be insulated and its tendencies empirically identified’ (Lawson, 1999a: 5). This further entails that it is with these relatively enduring non-empirical mechanisms that the scientist should be generally concerned; and consequently, if it is to progress at all, science must be premised on uncovering these underlying structures as opposed to the elabora-tion of constant conjunctions of surface phenomena.

In sum, according to Lawson it is methodological deficiencies that best explain the cur-rent malaise of the economic mainstream: ‘our best explanation of the widespread failures of economics (as well as the fictions that abound) is just that mathematical-deductivist or




closed systems modelling methods are often applied to material for which they are unsuited’ (Lawson, 2003: 21).

Significantly, moreover, given Lawson’s characterisation of the mainstream as an ori-entation in method, it is this more than anything that renders the project irreparable.

Critical realism and the scope of philosophyAs we have just seen, Lawson’s critique of the economic mainstream is purely philosophi-cal. This reflects the commitment of both Bhaskar and CRE to maintaining a distinction between philosophy and science, where philosophy should avoid commitment to the con-tent of specific theories and the critical realist account of anything cannot exist. However, Nielsen suggests that such a commitment is problematic. We expand on this below.

First, while an existing philosophy of science can be restated in the absence of sub-stantive accounts, it is impossible to elaborate a new philosophy of science without refer-ence to examples of scientific practice. There is no consensus within social science concerning which practices could constitute evidence of science, and hence no social science analogue of Bhaskar’s initial transcendental interrogation of the possibility of experiment within the natural sciences. The selection of particular practices (and hence practitioners) within social science (and political economy especially) is therefore charged. By contrast, the range of practices (and practitioners) within the physical sci-ences is in a sense pre-selected, and philosophy within this realm can proceed in relative innocence of controversial substantive commitments.6 No such privilege exists for the philosophers of social science. A second problem is that a specifically new philosophy of social science must be motivated. The most compelling motivations are necessarily found in the deleterious consequences for scientific practice of existing and inadequate philo-sophical foundations. The selection of deficient practice within the social sciences is then necessarily also charged.

Thus, while on the one hand honestly building critical realism as a meta-position charged with the rather modest task of under-labouring for the social sciences, both Bhaskar and Lawson are inevitably and necessarily implicated in a larger set of concerns. For Bhaskar, this implies a substantive involvement with Marxism and, further, a totalis-ing vision of social practice in which philosophy is assigned an important role in the struggle for human emancipation. Similarly Lawson’s under-labouring project is bound up with a critique of mainstream economics and the reconstitution of economics as a realist social science. Nielsen’s argument is consistent (though not identical) with the one elaborated above. He observes that for both Bhaskar and Lawson,

on the one hand, philosophy and science are sharply divided, and critical realism is firmly placed within the philosophical realm, but, on the other hand, the philosophy/science divide is clearly overstepped and critical realism is seen to be much more wide-ranging and pervasive. (p. 731)

Thus there are two opposing sets of problems. The first is that of stretching the realm of philosophy to cover elements of the science side of the divide. Nielsen accuses both schools of this error through ‘overstepping’. The second strategy is, however, the bigger problem in Nielsen’s view. This is that of at other moments retreating into a philosophi-cal reductionism characterised by an overwhelming focus on philosophical issues, and




the loss of the creative interaction of philosophy and concrete practice. As such, Nielsen emphasises a straightforward critique of reductionism – reminiscent of Fine (2002) – wherein critical realism is itself critiqued for being insufficiently alive to the primarily substantive and empirical nature of political economy. As a result, according to Nielsen, it has a tendency towards instituting an inappropriate philosophy/science divide that leads to a disconnected analysis unable to sustain the Marxian dialectic between (abstract) philosophy and (concrete) substantive theory. But is Bhaskarian critical realism really guilty as charged? We believe not.

Philosophical under-labouring and emancipatory projectsCentral to Nielsen’s argument is the contention that there exists a further tension between conceiving critical realism as both an emancipatory project and an under-labouring proj-ect charged with the reconstitution of the human sciences. However, once one accepts that, on the one hand, the philosophy of social science must engage with particular social sciences in order to advance, and that, on the other hand, emancipation cannot proceed without an adequate understanding of reality (and of the possibilities for change that this entails), one can immediately appreciate that rather than being mutually exclusive, these two positions are compatible and can co-exist in a reciprocal relationship. Indeed, one of the reasons for the original elaboration of critical realism was Bhaskar’s belief in the causal interdependency of social theory and reality, which consequently dictates the need for a critique that moves beyond identifying unscientific theoretical productions to analysing the underlying social structures that both support and condition them.

Moreover, as a socialist, Bhaskar has consistently championed the need for emancipa-tion based upon structural change, and he advances his philosophy as an essential aid in its eventual achievement. Hence he writes that ‘transforming society towards socialism depends upon knowledge of these underlying structures’ (Bhaskar, 1989: 5), and that ‘the relationship between social knowledge or theory and social (or more specifically socialist) practice will take the form of an emancipatory spiral in which deeper forms of understanding make possible new forms of practice leading to enhanced understanding and so on’ (p. 6). For Bhaskar, critical realism is far from synonymous with philosophy, and he explicitly defines it as ‘a movement in philosophy and the human sciences and cognate practices’ (Archer et al., 1998: ix, emphasis added). Consequently, the charge of philosophical reductionism is without foundation, and it is both feasible and appropriate for Bhaskar to engage in substantive theorizing, and to utilise a judgemental rationality in choosing Marxism on the basis of its stated aims and explanatory power. While Bhaskar does assert the need for philosophy7 to avoid any commitment to the content of specific theories, he is intimately aware of the practical impossibility of this prescription, and holds it merely as a regulative ideal.

Hartwig (2000) is therefore correct to assert that the development of philosophical critical realism has gone hand in hand with a reassessment of Marx’s mature work as essentially critical realist, and that once the ontology has been elaborated, it is intended to underpin and inform such emancipatory programmes as that of Marx (Hartwig, 2000: 37 emphasis in original). While it is true that Bhaskar’s insights have been primar-ily elaborated at the philosophical level, the project’s impetus has always stemmed from a desire to effect real emancipatory change, and this has ensured the relevance of the project in the intransitive domain.




Is there a parallel thrust within CRE? The tension around a totalising emancipatory project never arises for the CRE project, since it is more self-consciously delimited to methodological enquiry than its Bhaskarian alternative, and consequently has little to say about human freedom in general or of emancipatory projects in particular.8 Indeed, due to its perceived audience of professional economists, CRE also differs decisively in terms of its emphasis and point of departure. In attempting to reach the broader economics community and engaging with orthodoxy, certain concessions have had to be made that would otherwise be unnecessary. Furthermore, it is possible that these have included a strategic decision to more consistently abstain from substantive enquiry, and to empha-sise the role of realism in economics as that of a mere critical under-labourer. Therefore we believe that Nielsen’s reductionist claims carry significantly more weight when con-fined to the situation within CRE, and this leads to a tension between the Bhaskarian variety of critical realism, with its ambition for human emancipation, and the CRE proj-ect’s much less ambitious intention to engage in under-labouring for an alternative aca-demic economics. Moreover, it is this latter tension and distinction that is causally efficacious, since the reductionist orientation of the CRE project leaves it incapable of assessing the ideological nature of the economic mainstream.

Lawson’s rejection of the ‘mainstream as ideology hypothesis’As indicated earlier, Lawson’s ‘best’ explanation of the widespread failures of the main-stream project is the application of deductivist methods in contexts for which they are inappropriate. Yet to posit this explanation is merely to invite a further round of enquiry into 1) the historical rise to dominance of deductivist methods within economics, and 2) the current hegemonic position of the mainstream project, despite the fact that it is singularly unable to generate meaningful social scientific results. Indeed, Lawson himself has – at least partly – realised this, and has dealt with it in terms of a Darwinian evolu-tionary story wherein mathematically oriented economics became the principle benefi-ciary of a changing political and economic environment in the post-war USA.9 For our own part, we believe that there is much to commend in an analysis that attempts to link the rise of transitive or theoretical productions to changes in the intransitive domain. However, contrary to Lawson we believe that it is just this (dialectical) interaction between the intransitive and transitive domains that entails an ideological function for mainstream economics. Moreover, we further contend that this lack of an ideological critique is the most damaging omission in the Lawsonian project, in light of its own philosophical aim of critiquing mainstream economics.

That Lawson has generally elided the issue of ideology is relatively uncontroversial, having been noted by Nielsen (2002), Nielsen and Morgan (2006) and Natasha Kaul (2002). However, what is more troubling is that when the issue is broached, the idea that mainstream economics might be ideologically charged is summarily rejected. Indeed, in a recent paper (2005), Lawson attempts to buttress his own conception of orthodoxy by critiquing the ‘mainstream as ideology thesis’ of Bernard Guerrin (2004) and Rajani Kanth (1999). Lawson accepts that ‘ideology’ is a notoriously difficult concept to pin down, but settles on an ‘external function’ type conception in which adherence to a theory hinges on its external functions or the ‘purposes it serves’, rather than any internal coherence or explanatory power. This is indeed close to the view of Guerrin and Kanth, who jointly maintain that the orthodox insistence on rationality and closed systems




modelling is not due to an excessive commitment to formalism per se, but rather that it derives from the need to supply a theoretical justification for capitalism (which these models with their unique and optimal equilibrium solutions typically provide). Yet while this position is widespread amongst critics of the mainstream, it is rejected by Lawson on the grounds that by accepting it, one is further committed to the claim that mainstream economists often consciously set about defending the capitalist system.

Thus he writes,

There is little doubt that some mainstream economists approach their subject in the manner that Guerrin and others suggest. But most do not. And I do worry that portraying mainstream economics as driven by the goal of achieving results in these terms is overly conspiratorial. (Lawson, 2005: 5, emphasis added)

In addition, Lawson points out that the majority of economists working within the individualistic-rationalistic framework are not involved in general equilibrium (GE) theorising or concerned with the workings of the system as a whole, but rather content themselves with ‘highly specific or partial analysis of some restricted sectors or forms of behaviour’ (Lawson, 2005: 5); and that even for those few leading theoreticians (such as Frank Hahn) who were centrally involved in the elaboration of the GE framework, any conclusions that link the (formal) existence of general equilibrium with a justification for real world laissez-faire policies are to be firmly rejected. Finally, Lawson draws our atten-tion to the existence of ‘rational choice’ Marxism, which works within the deductivist framework in order to criticise the capitalist system. Consequently, in light of the above considerations, he believes that any ideological interpretation is unsustainable.

Responding to LawsonAccepting Lawson’s claims at face value, one might agree that ideology is not apparent on the surface of the neoclassical practice of economics. However, as Marx was apt to point out, the job of the scientist is to go behind the immediacy of surface appearances, and in so doing, one readily finds the possibility of ideology, and is struck by the empir-icism at the heart of Lawson’s claims. In the first instance, Lawson’s focus is on the consciousness of individual economists and, in the case of Hahn, he is prepared to accept a personal disavowal of ideology as definitive. Yet as any realist knows, there is always the possibility that ideology resides in the structure of a given problematic,10 and this stands whether its adherents are alive to its existence or not. Moreover, the fact that many individual economists are engaged in fragmented and specialised endeavours may be reason enough to suspect that ideological production is afoot.11 Finally, little can be gleaned one way or the other from the existence of a group of Marxists who model – for just as there are Marxists who model, so there are bourgeois apologists (the Austrians) who don’t. Indeed, the irony of an anti-positivist position that never moves beyond empirical phenomena is not lost on Wade Hands, who points out that a transcendental realist would not generally stop at the identification of surface phenomena (such as the widespread use of deductivism and apathy towards methodological inquiry), but would rather want to enquire as to the nature of the underlying causal mechanisms (Hands, 1999). This of course is largely correct; and yet it misses something, whilst it remains abstract and ahistorical.




Ben Fine (2004) can help in this regard. He contends that CRE is neither realist nor critical enough, as it fails to situate itself in relation to the capitalist economy. According to Fine, the project is guilty of the double separation of 1) economics from the economy and – within this – 2) of methodology from theory, and this has resulted in its being overly ahistorical and methodologically suspect. He goes on to suggest that ‘until it engages with that mode of production or period of history that has most obviously given birth to it’ (Fine, 2004: 202), CRE will remain an insignificant force in the world. Part of the reason that Lawson may be unwilling to countenance an ideological role for neoclassicism is precisely because he fails to situate it (or his own project) historically. While Fine is correct to indict CRE for its failure to recognise its own historicity, he attributes its lack of a critical edge to an overemphasis on methodology. For us, however, this lack goes much deeper, since CRE has hitherto been without a critical sociology. This, then, means that whilst Bhaskar is explicit about the need for emancipatory (oppositional) discourses to ‘exhibit a mechanism of ideology critique’ (Bhaskar, 1991:142), CRE consistently disavows this in favour of an overarching preoccupation with the epistemological adequacy of given frameworks. As such, the failure to conceive of economics as a specific discourse within and not just about capitalism not only renders CRE overly ahistorical, but also decisively weakens the nature of its critique. In conse-quence, we suggest that CRE is neither critical, nor structural enough. To substantiate this we now move to a more general elaboration of Bhaskarian critical realism.

Part 2Bhaskar’s ‘two sides’ of knowledgeIn A Realist Theory of Science (RTS), Bhaskar makes much of the fact that knowledge has ‘two sides’. He perceptively notes that on one side, much of the so-called ‘problem of “knowledge”’ stems from our (belated) realisation that people in their social activity pro-duce knowledge much like other social products; and yet on the other side, that this knowledge is of things that are not produced by mankind at all. Grappling with this problem has led to numerous unworkable strategies from idealist and/or postmodernist/poststructuralist approaches, which essentially jettison the intransitive side of knowledge, to positivist attempts to collapse the intransitive into the transitive.12 Bhaskar intends to sidestep both these positions, and his starting point is that any adequate account must quite simply accommodate both transitive antecedent theoretical materials, and the intransitive object that exists outside of the consciousness of persons (Bhaskar, 2008: 23). Now, while critical realism has clearly focused much of its intellectual resources on just this task, the implications of the two sides of knowledge have not been solely restricted to the philosophy of science. For once we accept that knowledge is our creation, it allows us to bring all manner of extra-theoretical considerations into our understanding of how it is that knowledge not only gets produced, but also gets institutionalised, disseminated and accepted (by the academic community and by society at large).

In short, just as knowledge has ‘two sides’, it also has ‘two outsides’, as it is simultane-ously oriented towards 1) an object of investigation, and conducted within 2) a scientific community, subject to all manner of political and/or ideological infiltrations (see Collier, 1989). Interestingly, the socioeconomic conditions of theory production are frequently




disregarded by positivism, and since it is just this problem that substantially conditions ideological infiltration, critical realism must devote some of its intellectual resources to illuminating this under the banner of sociology of knowledge (including ideology critique). Specifically, the transitive domain is not only reliant on antecedent theoretical materials, but also on funding and institutional mechanisms that control the dissemination of knowledge and bestow it with authority. Similarly, while there must be an intrinsic object to investigate, this object will always be abstracted from elements of a socioeconomic environment that impact on it in numerous ways. We may say, then, that (social scien-tific) knowledge takes the real as its object of investigation, and that the real impacts on it in numerous ways. This dialectic is key to understanding the many determinants that impact on the generation of knowledge, and formalising this, we may say that knowledge is not only created in society but that it is generally created in specific institutions within this society. As such, we have a model wherein knowledge is created within a set of social structures by individual scientists who are subject to socialisation, both in a general sense (into the social milieu) and in a specific sense (into their academic communities). This means that even if we momentarily presume that that object of investigation is (rela-tively) unproblematic, there is still a massively complex process of knowledge generation.

We have been stressing that a distinction must be drawn between the two outsides of knowledge, and in this connection, Steinmetz and Ou-Byung Chae (2002) make a use-ful contribution. They argue that critical realism in its guise as sociology of knowledge is essentially in the business of unmasking the social determinants of ideas, while as a philosophy of science, it is primarily concerned with the substantive adequacy of a given theoretical position. In short, ‘as a philosophy of science, and as a research activity criti-cal realism refutes; as a sociology of knowledge, it unmasks’ (Steinmetz and Ou-Byung Chae, 2002: 121).

As we observed earlier, Bhaskar has never developed a sustained critique of neoclassi-cal economics. He has, however, posited a paradigmatic critique of positivism (1989) that simultaneously refutes (its epistemological adequacy) and unmasks (its social basis). This, moreover, bears directly on the situation in neoclassical economics, and to substan-tiate this we will use the next section to develop the contrast between the Bhaskarian and CRE approaches to positivism, and the subsequent one to apply Bhaskarian realism (albeit briefly) to the neoclassical framework.13

PositivismPositivism is an epistemological position that pertains most centrally to the limits and nature of our knowledge. However, as Lawson has pointed out, every epistemology ultimately presupposes an attendant ontology, and in the case of positivism this is constituted by atomistic events contingently conjoined (otherwise known as empirical realism). The critique of positivism is a key prelude to the critique of neoclassical economics, for while its deductive methods are indeed a proximate problem, these are ultimately premised on a positivistic ascription of deduction as an appropriate method for understanding the social world. However, a focus exclusively on the intrinsic ele-ment of a science (a failure to come to grips with the nature of its object) would be only a partial critique. The critical realist must go further, and this can only be achieved by highlighting the secretion of an attendant sociology with covert and/or overt ideological significance.




Specifically, positivism presupposes an individualistic sociology characterised by passive scientists observing a world that is unproblematically available to them (Bhaskar, 2008: 55). This is predicated on an attempt to reduce the world to our experience of it, as positivism, in its search for foundations, ultimately ‘transcends’ the problem of knowledge by fusing experience and the world so that science becomes an epiphenomenon of nature (Bhaskar, 1989: 59). Charting the ideological consequences is relatively easy as knowledge in this framework becomes unproblematic and imbued with a level of certainty and authority. Moreover, knowledge becomes neutral and objective as the scientist is doing no more than ‘asking questions of the world’ and ‘waiting to record its answers’. This clearly renders the resulting knowledge beyond reproach, as the scientist and his or her listeners, lacking any conception of the scientific community’s active (and fallible) role in theory construction, can’t but feel that the ‘knowledges’ they produce are monistic and free from non-scientific influence. As such, positivism denies the social character of science and in so doing renders the scientist systematically unable to interrogate the social context of theory development, and the ‘science’ systematically insulated from rational critique.

While the ideological import of certain knowledge is obvious, Bhaskar is willing to accept that positivism (in the transitive realm at least) does resonate with common-sense experiences of the world, which seems to be made up of facts that are independently ‘out there’. Yet in positing facts as ‘somehow out there’, positivism both naturalises and dehistoricises them, so that things ‘just are’ as they appear. Not only is it is up to the scientist to move beyond these appearances, but it is precisely this endeavour that characterises the movement into science (p. 61).

Moving to the intransitive domain, Bhaskar becomes far less forgiving, arguing that positivism here supports a mystification. Following Marx’s lead, Bhaskar points out that just as the necessity of the wage-form is its concealment of exploitation, so the social function of constant conjunctions is their concealment of structures irreducible to events and societies irreducible to people (p. 62). Society thus becomes unstructured and utterly contingent (not to mention unchangeable); and the world contains no hidden mecha-nisms, but is rather a passing flux of events that are accurately captured in pre-critical consciousness. The message, then, is that whilst all may not be rosy in the Humean gar-den, all is at least apparent, and in a moment in which Bhaskar comes unusually close to a direct critique of the neoclassical framework,14 he explicitly equates the Humean philo-sophical system with the ideological presuppositions of utilitarian contractarianism at the (capitalist) societal level:

In perfect resonance with the conception of science as a behavioural response to the stimulus of given facts and their conjunctions, society is conceived as being constituted by individuals motivated by given desires and conjoined, if at all by contract. When it is necessary to conceive the components of such a society, the atomized individuals, as agents, a form of consistency is preserved by the simple expedient of the separation of reason from desire. A person’s freedom then consists in their ability to calculate their own interests in relation to given desires (that is performing an optimizing calculation). Utilitarianism is the natural handmaiden of positivism. (Bhaskar, 1989: 63)

Indeed it is, and as we shall see in the next section, neoclassical economics relies on a curious juxtaposition of positivism and utilitarianism to throw a spurious veil of scienti-ficity over what is in fact an ideological apology for capitalist inequality.




Using positivism for ideological ends: The case of neoclassicism Attempting a panoramic sweep of 140 years of theoretical development is difficult enough on its own terms, and to achieve this against the backdrop of contemporary developments in positivism and capitalism is simply unachievable in an article of this nature. That said, it is important to give some indication of the complex intertwining of these elements, and to this end we are aided (as critical realists) by a heuristic which demands the (retroductive) move from the myriad surface practices of neoclassicism towards the meta-theoretical core of the project. Having hitherto focused on positivist strictures, it is now important to point out that our primary assertion is not that the neoclassical commitment to deduction flows primarily from an ideological motive. Nor are we suggesting that neoclassical ideology is to be found primarily at the methodologi-cal level, or even that deduction is ideological per se (although it does have ideological effects, such as the neglect of the social basis of science, etc). Our position is rather that if one is to take the idea of ‘two outsides’ (of knowledge) seriously, one must attempt to dialectically link the two through the interactions of their respective structures, and that in the case of neoclassicism; it is within the nature of these interactions that the ideological benefit for capitalism resides. Positivist strictures predominated in the period in which all of the key contemporary traditions (of economics) developed, and given this, it is relatively unsurprising that adherents to deduction can be located across the ideological spectrum. Indeed, we accept the Lawsonian account of the rise to dominance of positivist methods as partly located in the reification of mathematical methods (itself a function of the drive to expunge the messy realities of common sense and everyday prejudices from the lexicon of science). However even in accepting this, we believe that the specific use of positivism by the neoclassical school marks it out as a special case, and that this can be brought to light by examining numerous examples wherein the ostensive move towards scientificity actually resulted in important ideological benefits at the substantive level. The ideologi-cal functions of neoclassical economics deserve (and have received) extensive analysis. Thus the argument below can be only indicative.

Neoclassical economics has, from the beginning, located its scientificity in positivist strictures, as it dates its (claimed) transition to scientificity in the marginalist revolution and the adoption of a utility theory of value. The traditional account of this incident is well known, as proto neo-classicists, not content to infer the presence of ‘metaphysical’ or abstract labour in concrete commodities, sought to place their discipline on a scientific footing via the instigation of a subjectivist theory of value and the further mathematisation of the discipline. On the one hand, this move mirrored later (logical) positivist attempts to establish a protocol language, and so could be characterised as scientific. On the other hand, it ensured a decisive move away from a value theory that had been well and truly sullied (from their perspective) by the Marxist equation of labour and (surplus) value. Thus whilst there is no doubt that ‘increasing scientificity’ may have been part of the reason, there are still questions to be answered in relation to a move from a ‘metaphysical’ theory of value to one that renders value essentially non-observable. After all, it remains a stubborn fact that utility maximization has not, and cannot, be directly perceived despite the best efforts of Samuelson to address this within a revealed preference model.15 A second ideological benefit flows from a (positivistic) belief in monistic science (progressive development in a unilinear fashion), as neoclassicism has interpreted its late arrival as a sign of its ability to supersede all of its theoretical competitors. Indeed, as it is




the latest and therefore most modern set of developments in economic thinking, neo-classicism generally absolves its practitioners from doing methodology (or indeed disciplinary history), and this leaves the discipline unable to interrogate its own scientific-ity in anything like the manner approached by thinkers in the other traditions.16 Moving on, the axiological distinction between facts and values has allowed neoclassical economics to portray itself as a system of value-free knowledge while systematically throwing up injunctions as to what can meaningfully be said about the world by the ‘conscientious’ scientist. This distinction is pervasive in the discipline, from the introductory textbooks through to the welfare theorems, and prominently asserts the impossibility of making interpersonal utility comparisons. And yet, as Putman has cogently pointed out, the resulting ‘Pareto optimality’ criterion itself only gets off the ground if one accepts the ‘underlying value judgement that every agent’s right to maximize his or her utility is as important as every other agents’ (Putnam in Pressman, 2004: 487). Indeed, it gets worse, as the whole neoclassical framework can be interpreted normatively if one accepts, as Hosseini does, that neoclassical economics has sought refuge in the ideal utopian world of perfect competition,

Instead of explaining what is – which should be the main task of a science including positive theories of economics – neoclassical economics, in spite of its claim to the contrary, has concentrated on what should be. It is to explain the ideal world of a perfectly competitive world that the assumptions of rationality and optimization of economic agents have become relevant. (Hosseini, 1990: 84)

It would be possible to continue for some time discussing the ideological import of various more specific positivist propositions within neoclassical economics. We will, however, restrict ourselves to discussions of 1) the maximisation assumption and 2) (ahistorical) methodological individualism, before moving on to chart some of sig-nificant effects of these strictures for the undergraduate project (as found in mainstream text books). With the institution of a maximising agent, we find a powerful justification for the market, as sovereign actors with autonomous preferences allow for a society that can achieve its optimal position via the hidden hand of capitalist competition and the partly visible hands of individuals in maximisation mode. This then allows the ‘market as panacea’ position to pervade neoclassical orthodoxy, as every action within markets is destined to increase welfare (utility), and the result is a framework that is constitutionally blind to exploitation. Moreover, if utilitarianism is one handmaiden to positivism, meth-odological individualism is another, and under the combined forces of reducing society to its individual constituents (reductionism) and further reducing these to automata (atomism) with simplistic motivations (utilitarianism), neoclassical economics is afforded the opportunity to sidestep such essential social scientific categories as history, geogra-phy, class and gender in favour of the representative agent that can be said to be maximis-ing, whether they be scavenging for metal on a dump, or short selling on the stock exchange (subject to very real constraints, of course). Having rejected both time (history) and space (structure), neoclassicism can now get on with the really important business of building a theoretical edifice that is both tractable and internally consistent with the D-N model. To this end, the framework as presented to the undergraduate is fully congruent with a positivist analysis, and yet it also sustains a number of the important




features of capitalist ideology. To see this, one must remember that while the initial supply and demand model is often defended on pedagogical grounds as the ‘most manageable starting point for the uninitiated’, it relies on a series of assumptions about ontology and the nature of agency to even get off the ground. In particular, neoclassicism posits a constant conjunction of moving prices (whenever x) and appropriate agential responses (then y), and so the whole discussion of markets, and by extension society, is premised on the idea that rational agents will respond exclusively to one source of information embodied in the price mechanism. If this is the case, we have a powerful normative account of the benefits of markets, as Say’s Law always holds, money becomes a neutral medium, and every economic decision can be brought into harmonious interaction with all the rest. The ideological import is surely obvious as voluntary unem-ployment becomes all but impossible, all resources are allocated efficiently (no waste), welfare is maximised, and government intervention is both superfluous and sub optimal.17 Added to this account of the beneficence of markets is a strategic manoeuvre designed to neglect the foundational dependence of markets relations on prior exploitation within production. To this end, an atomistic ontology is absolutely indispensible as it allows (neoclassical) marginal productivity theory to define both capital and labour as discrete elements, contingently conjoined on the basis of their respective productivity (see Samuelson’s stark claim that ‘it doesn’t really matter who hires whom; so let labour hire capital’ (Samuelson, 1957: 894)). Ideologically, this denial of concrete social relations completely elides the foundational dependence of capital on ‘dead labour’, and allows the neoclassicals to assert that each owner merely ‘turns up’ with whatever factor they happen to have, only to subsequently receive the equivalent marginal payment to the factor they ‘happen to own’. Income distribution is therefore equitable and rational and the ‘market as panacea’ message has completely usurped the once contested landscape of capitalist production.

Taking stock, it seems that whether we begin at the meta-level or at the level of ini-tial fundamentals, neoclassicism utilises a form of utilitarian-positivism, and that just as Bhaskar has suggested, both ‘isms’ are pressed into ideological service in the defence of capitalism. Clearly there is much work to do to round out this picture, and again we stress the indicative nature of this discussion. For now, we will finish by highlighting (as Marx did) one last ideological benefit of ahistorical method centering on its ability to naturalise those social relations that are currently most in evidence. Neoclassical eco-nomics begins and ends with forms of behaviour most associated with capitalism, and so limits the horizons of social change to just these forms of relationships. This more than anything else renders the framework eminently ideological.

Blind spots and strategic manoeuvres in Lawson’s critique of the mainstreamWhat we have so far discovered is that 1) Lawson relies on a critique of positivism in his designation of neoclassical economics as unscientific; 2) Lawson’s critique relies heavily on Bhaskar’s elaboration of positivism; and that 3) Bhaskar conceives the latter as a multifac-eted system containing an epistemology, an ontology and a sociology of science. Bhaskar conceives positivism as inherently ideological and eminently congruent with the ideology propounded by utilitarian contractarianism. We have also found that 4) Lawson chooses not to accuse neoclassical economics of ideology, being content to rest his critique on the




immediacy of the lack of scientific merit in constant conjunction analysis, without questioning the possible relevance of this outlook for capitalist society. In this section, we will attempt to round off this picture by charting the ways that Lawson’s refusal to coun-tenance an ideological function impacts negatively on his own account of neoclassical economics.

We earlier established that theory is never generated in a vacuum, either in terms of its theoretical antecedents or its social determinants, and that failing to appreciate this will inevitably lead one into difficulty. Now, on the face of it, Lawson has at least come to grips with the intransitive domain as this is the realm of the object of investigation, and Lawson is (quite rightly) adamant that neoclassical economics simply can’t cut the mustard in this domain. Ironically though (as Fine has pointed out), while Lawson con-tinually attacks the mismatch between neoclassical tools and their specific object of investigation, he himself is content to stick to unspecific meta-theoretical accounts of abstract structures in abstract open systems. This leads to two specific blind spots in the CRE position and one strategic manoeuvre, all of which must be radically critiqued if a rounded appraisal of the neoclassical framework is to emerge.

The first blind spot is Lawson’s distinctly uncritical account of ideology. Lawson insists on focusing on the thoughts of individual economists rather than on the structural emergence of the mainstream paradigm. The account of ideology is thus couched in terms of economists who are ‘seeking to defend the system’, and this can then be rejected as ‘overly conspiratorial’. Yet clearly there exists the possibility that the reproduction of the ideological biases of orthodoxy can be achieved through the unintentional conse-quences of intentional action or by the unconscious motivations of its adherents etc. Indeed, this is exactly the type of scenario envisaged by Bhaskar’s transformational model of social activity (TMSA). Granted, the TMSA argues that social structures are ultimately dependent on the praxis of individuals; but it also suggests that structures in turn are causally efficacious on the forms of action that emerge and generally ensure behaviours congruent with structural reproduction. As such, to continually focus on the consciousness of individual agents is essentially, from a critical-realist perspective, to miss the point.18

A second theoretical blind spot relates to the continual (over) emphasis placed on form. For Lawson, neoclassical economics pertains to positivism most fully in its aspira-tion to translate the messy business of common-sense language into more formal pro-nouncements befitting of a science. However, it must be remembered that formal methods have a ‘substantial benefit’ over so-called messy language in their ability to screen out unwanted influences and therein to patrol the nature of ‘legitimate’ and ‘non-legitimate’ explanatory variables from behind the authority of (pseudo-) scientific strictures (a point made particularly clear in the case of neoclassicism, which invokes an atomistic phenomenalism to reject all talk of structure, class, power, gender, etc.). This point is supported by Natasha Kaul (2002), who argues that Lawson concedes far too much to the neoclassicals by engaging with them on their own terms. Yes, formalisation occurs. Yes, it is irrelevant. But by focusing on this exclusively, Lawson misses the essen-tial point that it is only irrelevant from the point of view of science. And that given its scientific irrelevance, it must, (from an ideological perspective) be doing a fairly decent job of being relevant for those social forces that it supports with its conclusions.




Finally, we discuss the strategic decision. A striking feature of the Lawsonian project is its continuous references to the ‘mainstream’ or ‘orthodoxy’ as ‘an orientation in method’, rather than as neoclassical economics. Now, this might be considered as being little more than an idiosyncrasy, and this indeed is the sense that Lawson himself con-veys in response to a number of his critics:

although I think little, if anything turns on this particular exchange, unlike Hands I tend to avoid making reference to neoclassical economics. Instead I refer only to the contemporary mainstream project … The category neoclassical, however is more problematic, unnecessarily bringing into play, amongst other things, matters of historical lineage. (Lawson 1999b: 224)

If Lawson is to be believed, the distinction drawn between neoclassicism and the mainstream project would seem to be of little import. However, we believe that on closer inspection distinguishing the two becomes crucial, for it is only by doing so that Lawson can then go on to define the mainstream in a way that is appropriate to his purposes. Specifically, in dealing with neoclassicism one is immediately enveloped in a number of substantive positions,19 and consequently the attempt to define the mainstream in terms of formalism alone would be thwarted. It follows, moreover, that it is only by restricting the mainstream to an orientation in method that one can sustain the hypothesis that the main-stream is most accurately defined in this way. But in so doing, Lawson merely succeeds in offering us a truism of the following form: all those economic theories that are deductive make up the mainstream, ergo the mainstream must be defined as an orientation in method.20

This tautology is, moreover, the best-case scenario. For at worst, Lawson has thrown a protective cover over mainstream economic ideology, which is distinctive in its use of a positivistic utilitarianism, which secretes its ideological benefits under the guise of proper scientific method. Other modelling perspectives do not do this. And while they may be guilty of the epistemological mistake outlined by Lawson above (viz, using methods that are simply inappropriate),21 we believe that neoclassical economics is distinctive, as its ideological impact emerges in the interaction of substantive and methodological ele-ments, to ensure a framework that is constitutionally unable to deal with class conflict, exploitation, gender or social inequality.

ConclusionThis paper is an attempt to add to the debate within heterodoxy surrounding the role of critical realism in economics. While we accept that there are numerous benefits to be gained from applying critical realist insights to both strands within economics (orthodoxy and heterodoxy), we believe that any confrontation with the neoclassical mainstream must remain faithful to Bhaskar’s original formulation, with its explicit focus on ‘ideology critique’. We earlier suggested the untenability of a rapprochement between Bhaskar and Lawson, and we conclude this essay by reiterating the reasons why. Bhaskarian realism is a multifaceted system, and we believe that it cannot be used selectively. Indeed, we suggest that one must engage the critical sociology in conjunction with ontological and epistemological critiques in order to sustain the full force of the framework. In con-sequence, it is not enough to see the Lawsonian critique as merely one-sided. Rather, it is compromised, as it fails to utilise the critical sociology and in so doing, only partly critiques




the implications of positivism, and fails to address the ideological resonance at the heart of neoclassicism. It must be granted that its critique of the epistemological inadequacy of positivism is a cogent one, but without a discussion of its relations to substantive theory (and the capitalist economy), CRE actually mis-describes its opponent and essentially ‘lets it off the hook’. Contrary to the Lawsonian position, we follow Bhaskar in arguing for a critique that moves beyond the shortcomings of specific theoretical productions to the conditions that are necessary for their dominance. Yet this invariably means doing what the CRE project has failed to do, and that is to focus much more explicitly on the relations between the levels of theoretical productions and the real-world structures that both condition and support them. Once this is achieved, it will be seen that contrary to Lawson’s position, mainstream economics is best conceived in terms of its apologetic content, and appreciating this allows for a more cogent critique of the mainstream. Lawson once noted22 that a big stick may well do a useful job of beating dust from a tat-tered mat, but is more than useless if one is in the business of cleaning windows. Paraphrasing slightly, we may say that a broom would also be an ill-advised implement for cleaning windows, but would certainly suffice if one’s intention were to sweep things under the carpet. This, then, is where we must take our leave from the Lawsonian project and its presupposition that neoclassical economics, considered holistically, may actually intend to clean the windows.

Acknowledgements

The research employed in this paper was supported by the Irish Research Council for the Humanities and Social Sciences. The authors would like to thank Steve Fleetwood and two anon-ymous referees for the valuable comments they made on an earlier draft of this paper.

Notes 1. See Bhaskar (1998: 65-71) for a formal account of ideology critique that draws heavily on

Marx. 2. Tony Lawson is perhaps the best known representative of CRE, while others associated with

the project include Steve Fleetwood, Clive Lawson, Stephen Pratten, Paul Lewis and Jochen Runde. See Lawson (1997, 2003) for the definitive position of CRE, and Fleetwood (1999) for contributions that develop and situate the project from some of the others mentioned above.

3. It must be noted that we follow Joseph (1998), Nielsen (2002) and Callinicos (in Bhaskar, 2003) in drawing on Bhaskar’s early critical realism, and not on his later dialectical/transcendental reformulation. Like these authors, we believe that the earlier work holds significantly more promise from a Marxist perspective, and we seek to extend the project in this direction rather than that chosen by Bhaskar himself. This eschewal of Bhaskar’s later formulation is also true of the CRE project, and we therefore have a coherent basis on which to compare the two positions.

4. See Bhaskar (1989, Ch. 4) for the definitive account of the importance of a critical sociology in relation to positivism.

5. See Lawson (1997: 19-20) for a more detailed account of the links between positivism, Humean causality and empirical realism.

6. Steve Fleetwood has rightly pointed out that natural sciences such as meteorology have suf-fered quite badly due to their uncritical adherence to positivism. Our point is not to suggest that the natural sciences are immune to such issues, but merely to sustain the impossibility of avoiding substantive considerations in the social sciences.




7. It is telling that Bhaskar asserts this need in relation to philosophy only, and therefore the commitment to disengage from substantive pronouncements does not carry over into critical realism itself.

8. This is not to suggest that those authors connected to CRE are unconcerned with emancipa-tion. Indeed, Lawson has occasionally engaged with emancipatory themes, as one reviewer quite rightly pointed out. However, given the differing emphases that emerge in the respec-tive published outputs of the given writers, we believe our position to be at least defensible.

9. See Lawson (2003), Chapter 10.10. See Althusser (2005) for an account of the importance of theoretical problematics in structur-

ing the output of given thinkers.11. Indeed, fragmented knowledge is one of the hallmarks of bourgeois ideology. See Lukács

(1971) for a definitive critique of fragmented knowledge as a source of ideological distortion12. Most commentators would argue that positivism collapses the transitive into the intransitive,

but according to Bhaskar, this is incorrect since the world is collapsed into our knowledge of it, and so positivism is itself quintessentially idealist.

13. Steve Fleetwood has correctly highlighted the interrelation of these two, premised on the fact that some refutation is necessary to unmask. This is no doubt correct, since once one accepts the truth of a position, its social origin may seem unimportant. However, we still feel it useful to analytically separate the two, if only to highlight the necessity of interrogating the social origins (class basis) of ideas that are found to be cognitively inadequate.

14. Although Bhaskar has never engaged in a sustained critique of neoclassical economics, it is clear from his occasional criticisms that he regards this system in negative terms. See for example Bhaskar (2003: 98); Bhaskar (2008: 23); and Bhaskar (1998: 132).

15. See Samuelson (1955) for a brief discussion of ‘operationalism’ in economics. For a more detailed discussion, see Seligman (1967).

16. Lawson has himself noted this point in the introduction to Economics and Reality (1997).17. A similar conjunction is found in the Quantity Theory of Money, which allows the monetar-

ists to reject discretionary monetary policy by government. If the constant conjunction when-ever x (increase in MS) then y (equivalent increase in prices) is not obtained, then we have much more space for active government intervention in the economic sphere

18. This is not to suggest that all other authors within CRE are unable to view ideology in struc-tural terms.

19. Marginalist analysis, a rationality axiom and the existence of conditions for substitution are just three of the substantive positions that immediately come to mind.

20. Again, we thank Steve Fleetwood for improving our exposition of this point. 21. Even allowing for the fact that deduction is a largely inappropriate method for doing concrete

social theory, the mathematical deductive method can be deployed productively in the small range of situations where artificial closure can be achieved (thought experiments like those carried out by Sraffa in his critique of neoclassical economics come to mind). See Hodgson (2004) on this point, where he argues that Sraffa (1960) uses formal methods to affect an internal critique of mainstream capital theory.

22. See Lawson (1994).

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Author biographies

Brian O’Boyle is the academic programme director for economics at St. Angela’s College, Sligo. He is currently completing a Ph.D. entitled ‘Extending the realist contribution to Marxism: Essays on the nature of “science” and “structure” in the Marxist framework’, and his research interests include Marxist political economy, philosophy of science and economics education for labour and community groups.

Terrence McDonough is a professor of economics at the National University of Ireland, Galway. His published works as author, editor or co-editor include Contemporary Capitalism and Its Crises: Social Structure of Accumulation Theory for the 21st Century; The HEAP Chart: Hierarchy of Earnings, Attributes and Privilege Analysis; Was Ireland A Colony? Economics, Politics, Ideology and Culture in the Irish Nineteenth Century; and Social Structures of Accumulation: The Political Economy of Growth and Crisis. His current interests include globalisation, American and Irish economic history, and economics education for labour and community groups.



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Critical Realism, Marxism and the Critique of Neoclassical Economics