ABSTRACT
In this chapter we turn our attention to the alternatives within economics that continue to engage socially and historically. In Section 2 it is argued that the nature of heterodoxy within economics has, not surprisingly, been heavily influenced both by its relationship to the mainstream and the more general intellectual environment. It has necessarily struggled against being marginalised by the mainstream within economics, both in terms of presence and weight of professional recognition, and also against an antipathy to economics (and even the economic) from the other social sciences. The result has been either to drive heterodoxy to mimic the technicism of orthodoxy or for it to engage socially and historically without the benefit of an appropriately constituted value theory, proceeding as if all value theory must be unduly deductive and insufficiently social and historical. This is an unfortunate analytical weakness, especially in addressing the political economy of capitalism, one that might have further weakened the status and significance of heterodoxy in its influence within economics and across the social sciences more generally.
