Allen Oakley’s Contribution to History of Political Economy: Capitalism, Agency-Structure and Realism

Allen Oakley has been a consistent and innovative contributor to the history of political economy for thirty years. His contributions span a wide spectrum, from the classical economics of Adam Smith and John Stuart Mill, through to the dynamics of capitalism associated with the work of Karl Marx and Joseph Schumpeter, and more latterly the Austrian school and beyond. His work on Marx links to the evolution and conceptual development of his political economy of capitalism, while for Schumpeter he took a critically sympathetic view of his theory of development and cycles. He also worked on issues of methodology, including Adolf Lowe’s structural and instrumental analysis, and Karl Popper’s situational perspective. More recently, he has scrutinised the contradictions of Austrian thought associated with subjectivism versus market order. He sought to resolve the question of agency-structure through reconstructing political economy along the lines of a critically realistic view of hermeneutic cross-causation between individuals and society.