ABSTRACT
In contemporary capitalism, economics has become the most relevant discipline within the political economy. Given its mathematically grounded insights into economic phenomena and its institutional commitment to academic excellence, economics functions dually as both a producer of knowledge and an authoritative for epistemic legitimacy in society. Based on this special role of economics, this chapter seeks to analyze the historical formation, the current consolidation, and the potential end of the paradigmatic monism within the field of economics in Germany. The chapter combines the discourse analysis and capital theory of the Discursive Political Economy of Economics with a critical examination of economics’ epistemological and ontological foundations. The discipline's response to the inherent link between society and economics is marked by the implementation of metric classification mechanisms, exemplified by rankings and evaluations, alongside a pyramidal hierarchy of publications. These measures contribute to the homogenization of the scientific conception of economics and the exclusion of alternative paradigms. Notably, a nexus emerges between the rise of neoliberalism, the metrification of scientific evaluation, and the ontology of mainstream economics, culminating in a paradigmatic monism in German economics.
