ABSTRACT

This chapter seeks to explore Marxist and Post-Keynesian economics following a pluralistic approach informed by a critical realist methodology. We contend that the identification of Marxists as either ‘anti-Keynesian Marxists’ or ‘Keynesian Sympathisers’, is not at all helpful to furthering economic knowledge, as the supposed complementarity (or absence of it), underlying the division is misconceived; in contrast, we argue that any significant complementarity lies at a deeper level. We focus on Cooper’s analysis of Marx, Kalecki and Modern Monetary Theory, to explain how Cooper fails to recognise the deep significance of time in Marx. We suggest that the compatibility Cooper finds between these approaches is, in fact, based on mistaken assumptions; their sharing of mainstream notions of equilibrium and the time period. In contrast, if we escape orthodox economic convention, we suggest Marx’s and Keynes’ (and Post-Keynesian and Modern Monetary Theory) theories may be combined to further knowledge of how the economy actually works, as opposed to how it is constructed to work in economic models.