But what claim exactly are you saying is baseless? I'm aware the neoclassicists have a subjective view of value. And they call it "utility" rather than "happiness" because it's open-ended, allowing for altruism, as I explain in more detail in the article linked below. But "happiness" can also be understood as such an abstraction, as whatever it is that satisfies a person.
My point about the equivocations here is that the economists shift back and forth between implicit conceptions that are more objective and controversial (egoistic). If economists stop analyzing utility at the point of positing a subjective, open-ended ultimate value, as you say, the question is whether their models still supports capitalism via something like the invisible hand argument.
