Milonakis, D., & Fine, B. (2009). ‘Introduction’. In Milonakis, D., & Fine, B. (2009). From Political Economy to Economics: Method, the social and the historical in the evolution of economic theory. Routledge.

Key points:

• This book primarily focuses on the shifting boundaries between economics and the non-economic, within a methodological context.
• It explores how political economy evolved into economics and the subsequent separation of economics from other social sciences in the early 20th century.
• Two key schisms in economic thought are highlighted: the diachronic debate between abstract/deductive and inductive/historical methods, and the transition from classical political economy to neoclassical economics, affecting methodology and content.
• Classical writers like Adam Smith and Karl Marx incorporated the social, psychological, and historical aspects into their analyses, considering political economy a unified social science.
• The marginalist revolution brought about a detachment from the social and historical, leading to the fragmentation of social sciences and the emergence of separate disciplines like economic history.
• The book argues for a reintroduction of the social and historical dimensions into economics and political economy, transcending disciplinary boundaries and emphasising their relevance to economic theory.
• The author's perspective aligns more with political economy and heterodox economics, making the book likely to appeal more to historians of economic thought, economic historians, and heterodox economists than to mainstream economists.