The Class Nature And Criticism Of Western Economics

Economics,as a discipline with a long history,undertakes the task of exploring the laws of socio-economic development and has the function of guiding economic and social development.Since its inception,Western economics has undergone over 400 years of development and sedimentation,forming a unique and comprehensive theoretical system that greatly promotes the development of productive forces in the capitalist world and controls the discourse power of the economic theory world.However,Western economics has always rejected and denied its own class nature,always embellishing itself with the appearance of "value neutrality",and presenting different reasons at different times.Among them,there were both the initial neglect of class nature in economics,the abandonment of class nature as a secondary factor within economics,and the exclusion of class nature as a non quantitative factor from the measurement range.But in fact,Western economics has always had a specific target audience,serving the bourgeoisie and serving its interests as a theoretical tool.Through the analysis of the main structure and construction logic of Western economics,it is not difficult to find that Western economics exhibits a distinct class nature in terms of research objects,research methods,logical premises,theoretical positions,and external forms.Fundamentally speaking,they are all theoretical expressions by Western economists that reflect the interests and demands of the bourgeoisie based on their social status during this period.Western economists emphasize the core position of capital in social production,and the theoretical content is subject to the proliferative nature of capital,which has inherent identity with the logic of capital.From Mercantilism to classical Political economy,the theoretical system of western economics expressed a strong tendency of Economic liberalism.The hypothesis of "Homo economicus",labor Axiology,and capital accumulation theory,which abstracts people into a simple existence,have become the legitimate tools to promote the bourgeois acquisition of wealth in western economic theory.In fact,this implied the cover up of Relations of production,especially class relations,by western economists.In the period of Marginalism revolution,western economics no longer discusses the value problem,but introduces a large number of non economic factors such as mathematics and psychology into economic research,delimits a clear boundary of economics,and replaces the due analysis of commodity value with the concept of equilibrium price.Then Neoclassicism economics put on the cloak of"science"with the innovation of analytical tools and became the"orthodoxy"of economics,trying to completely erase its own class nature.In fact,shifting economic research from the production side to the consumption side is a helpless move by Western economics in the face of cyclical economic crises of overproduction.The bourgeoisie is no longer the most advanced group in society.Western economists constantly innovate through research tools and perspectives,with the aim of maintaining the continued development of the capitalist world economy and further consolidating the economic interests of the bourgeoisie.Among them,a small number of economists have lost the scientific nature of their theories in order to maintain the capitalist system.Modern western economics has further supplemented and adjusted the theory of Neoclassicism economics.A small number of economists have recognized the connection between the cognitive forms of economics,and believe that economics is not"pure",and its theory has a certain value tendency.However,from beginning to end,modern western economics still failed to jump out of the established framework of capitalist Private property,but constantly verified the rationality and eternity of capitalism in its theoretical content.Its class nature is reflected in the value and currency theory,production theory,capital accumulation theory and distribution theory.Marx’s criticism of western economics is mainly concentrated in the criticism of classical Political economy.Since classical Political economy has a profound impact on the entire western economics in terms of research paradigm,system structure,etc.,Marx’s criticism of classical Political economy includes the criticism of the entire western economics.In the process of criticizing German Ancient philosophy,Marx created the historical materialism,and on this basis,he formed the class theory.He creatively applied historical materialism and class theory to the study of the laws of economic and social operation,forming the theoretical system of Marxian economics.Marx discovered the essence of capital’s exploitation of labor in the capitalist mode of production,revealed the class nature of Western economics serving the bourgeoisie and aiding capital proliferation,and launched a merciless critique of the class nature of Western economics.Marx subverted the western economists’ understanding of the permanence of the capitalist system,revealed the objective law of the progress and development of human society,pointed out the direction of progress and development from the perspective of productivity and Relations of production,and further exposed the hypocritical face of western economics that serves the capitalist class but claims to be "value free".The class nature of Western economics is an important reason for its continuous revision of the capitalist system and its inability to fundamentally solve the difficulties faced in economic development.It also explains why under the guidance of Western economics,the world has faced "unprecedented changes".The phenomena of weak global economic recovery,low economic governance efficiency,and declining growth momentum indicate that the Western economic theoretical system has gradually lost its function of scientifically explaining economic phenomena due to concealing its class nature,and has begun to lag behind the development trend of the times.Based on this,we must accelerate the construction of Political economy of China’s independent knowledge system,take the people’s character as the class basis of the independent economic theoretical system,and lay a solid theoretical support for building a socialist modern country in an all-round way.