Post Keynesianism and critical realism: what is the connection?

Abstract

First paragraph: Is Post Keynesianism critical realist, and, if so, what does that mean for Post Keynesianism?  Critical realism is an approach to economics that has been developed in the 1980s and 1990s (see Lawson, 1997; Fleetwood, 1999). Post Keynesianism is a school of thought in economics that had its beginnings in the 1950s (see Robinson, 1975; Lee, 1998), and whose philosophical foundations have generally been considered as deriving from the philosophy of Keynes. Recently, however, several accounts of Post Keynesian methodology have expressed these foundations as realist, apparently in the sense of critical realism (see, for example, Arestis, 1992; Lavoie, 1992). Further, Lawson ( 1994b) has invited Post Keynesians to seek foundations in critical realism.