From Marx to market and back again: Performing the economy

- Assesses approaches to markets in different schools of heterodox economics.
- Documents deprioritization of markets in political economy, especially Marxian.
- Calls for positive dialogue between political economy and cultural economy approaches.
- Focuses on possibilities for dialogue opened up by the market performativity paradigm.
- Emphasizes need for cultural economy work to be more generalizable and integrative.

This article argues for a more constructive dialogue between political-economic and other heterodox economic approaches to capitalist markets. Arguing that political economists' suspicion of “techno-cultural” approaches is overstated, and drawing closely on the work of David Harvey, the article explores the potential for one particular such approach - that which emphasizes the “performativity” of markets - to contribute towards one particular variant of political economy: the classical political economy of Marx.