by From Ikonoclast Economics is not a science and it cannot be a science. It is an ideology. The policy applications of an ideology may be “science-informed”, or not, as the cases might be, but the discipline itself, economics of any ideological persuasion, is not a science. Economics properly considered is really political economy. The term “political economy” carries two connotations: one meaning “national economy” and the other literally meaning economics is always political. The attempt to hive off economics from political economy and pretend that economics is not political but somehow an objective discipline has been a grotesque failure academically, socially and we see now environmentally. In turn, a political economy theory, an ideology if you will, always returns and must return
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from Ikonoclast
Economics is not a science and it cannot be a science. It is an ideology. The policy applications of an ideology may be “science-informed”, or not, as the cases might be, but the discipline itself, economics of any ideological persuasion, is not a science.
Economics properly considered is really political economy. The term “political economy” carries two connotations: one meaning “national economy” and the other literally meaning economics is always political. The attempt to hive off economics from political economy and pretend that economics is not political but somehow an objective discipline has been a grotesque failure academically, socially and we see now environmentally. In turn, a political economy theory, an ideology if you will, always returns and must return to moral philosophy to argue its legitimacy, be those arguments good or bad according to the tenets adopted for judgement.
In moral philosophy it is not possible to elaborate out the full shape of good and how to get there, at least not without being religiously or metaphysically dogmatic. It is possible, usually, to define egregious ills and how to most likely avoid them. Even less so in political economy than in science (see Popper on falsification) is it the case that we can we develop a perfect, eternal and irrefutable theory. Yet current orthodox (neoclassical) economic theory pretends to be exactly that. We can however, refute political economy theories (e.g. ones which posit endless growth) which are in clearly conflict with the observable and highly dependable laws of hard science.
In theory, we can throw out theories which will lead to near-term disaster. Neoclassical economics and conventional economics in general is clearly one of those theory sets. However, given the power formations of the current political economy ideology, internal criticism has not proven effective to date and even democratic opinion and voting have also been rendered relatively inoperative due to oligarchic and corporate power. We are at a very late stage, very close to runaway climate and ecological disasters. At this late stage, forerunner disasters will have to occur (unfortunately), as incontrovertible empirical evidence events directly impacting on and galvanizing the vast majority of the people to demand real change. https://rwer.wordpress.com/2019/06/20/a-fine-line-descriptive-or-normative-science/