Luz de Agosto.

When people say they know “economics” they mean neoclassical economics. Which is the unscientific stand of economic thought that the ruling class had to develop after Karl Marx criticized and built upon the work of classical political economy to reveal capitalism’s core structural contradictions. Neoclassical economics invented a hypothetical idealist version of capitalism that’s never actually existed in reality where markets regulate themselves in order to produce the best possible outcomes for society. When the real world doesn’t correspond to their fantasy, when markets fail to regulate themselves, and the economy crashes, the neoclassical economists act confused and pretend like it was a one off event that nobody could have predicted. This occurred after the 2008 crisis when federal reserve chairman Alan Greenspan had to admit before Congress that his theoretical economic model was “flawed.” When reactionaries tell you to “study economics” this is what they’re telling you to study. An imaginary world of price astrology invented by rich people to justify handing the economy over to financiers and shareholders. Marxism is the antithesis of this, a truly scientific study of economics that studies the structure of the system, its general laws of motion, its contradictions, and how it arose historically. Anyone who takes seriously the task of “studying economics” must become a Marxist eventually.