Debating critical realism in economics

Abstract

While accepting the contribution that critical realism has made in exposing the methodological weaknesses of mainstream economics, this rejoinder to Nielsen and Morgan reasserts the need for critical realism to go much further. In particular, it highlights the need for critical realism's explicit confrontation with—and critique of—economic theory, and the need for it to construct a political economy rooted in the categories of contemporary capitalism. The paper again calls on those who espouse critical realism to undertake the important work of developing a careful exposition of the meanings of structure, relation and tendency, etc., their interrelationships and their historical and social scope and variability—and to provide an explicit account of where critical realism diverges from Marxism and Marxist political economy.