Review of “From Political Economy to Economics: Method, the Social and Historical Evolution of Economic Theory”



Review of Milonakis and Fine

Schumpeter, Robbins, Menger, Hayek, and Keynes. The book concludes with a chapter
entitled “Beyond the Formalist Revolution.” As should be clear to the reader, the topics
covered parallel the standard topics of a history of thought text, and in some ways, this
book can be seen as a history of economic thought text.

That, however, would be an incorrect characterization for two reasons. The first is
that the coverage they give to various topics varies enormously in its depth. At times the
book reads like a text written for students; at other times it reads like a scholarly treatise
written for history of thought scholars, based on a transcription of margin notes and
comments that two careful scholars jotted down as they were reading the literature on the
topic. Some topics get in-depth discussions, and seem to be written as responses to
existing scholarly literature, while other topics are skimmed over and do not get even
cursory textbook expositions. The second reason is that the goal of the book is not to be a
neutral text; the authors have a point of view, and the book conveys that point of view.
Their concluding remarks summarize their views.

The current generation of political economists has a major responsibility
in sustaining their critique of orthodoxy in and of itself and in constructively
offering alternatives especially in relation to interdisciplinary—rather than
retreating into a strategy for tenuous survival on or outside the markets of
orthodoxy. By the same token, there is responsibility amongst non-economists to
take political economy seriously rather than to dismiss all economic analysis as
inevitably reductionist simply because it is dominated by an orthodoxy which is
irretrievably so. (pg 308)



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