And you have a habit of misreading what I say because you’re blinded and inflamed by partisanship. I never said math itself is bad, although elsewhere I put forward a deflationary account of the so-called miracle of mathematics. In the case of mainstream, economics I’ve said, indeed, that math has obscured a pro-capitalistic bias. There’s neutral scientific theorizing on the one hand, and there’s propaganda on the other, and the line between them isn’t always so clear.
The biases in the case of neoclassical economics are apparent: first, capitalism is supposed to be good because it’s self-correcting and therefore needn’t be highly regulated; second, the results of capitalistic competition (such as the distributions of private property) are supposed to be justified because the participants are at some level perfectly rational. Thus, we choose those distributions indirectly by engaging with the market. The choices are instrumentally rational and are indeed strategic calculations of self-interest.
Yet those two assumptions are unrealistic and utopian, whereas the leftist heterodox assumptions (as opposed to the libertarian ones) are the opposite. Those heterodox economists say, with Marx, that capitalism is inherently unstable, and that economic actors are fundamentally irrational (instinctive, emotional, easily misled, etc). We know the heterodox findings are realistic because they’re more consistent with the history of capitalism. Keynesianism is a centrist form of that heterodoxy, one that’s made peace with neoliberalism and that stops short of socialism.
You’ve evaded this charge of mine only by reducing rational choice “theory” to a triviality, in which case it’s no longer a theory but an unfalsifiable definition of some elements of personhood. That definition is potentially theological, which means it’s consistent with my charge that economists have engaged in propaganda for capitalism. That is, the economist would redefine “rationality” to make it consistent with all manner of flagrant irrationality (and sociopathy), thus insinuating by equivocation that economic activity is justified because it’s rational in the thick, folk sense even though economists are entitled to claim only that it’s rational in the thin, trivial one.
