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.