Bourgeois economist basically admits that neo-classical economics is pseudoscience.

[FireIceTalon]

Well...economics tries to predict things, but always with a goal and an ideology in mind. And usually this goal is the goal of western rich people.

Please never compare economics with physics (or meteorology for that matter).

To say the the goal of economics is to serve the wealthy is like saying the goal of science is to prove that no gods exist. The goal of economics is to create models of whatever economy you may be interested in describing. (Some economists use their models to study EVEonline.) How it is used may be influenced by ideology, but it is foolish to confuse a tool with the one who uses it. Even if many people use economics in a way that assumes the conclusion they seek, I do not believe the discipline is constructed around that. To me, that is like saying statistics is a corrupt discipline because some people distort studies and use handpicked samples.

-Lem

No....eppie is right, and he probably even understates things.

Economics is in fact more ideologically entangled than most other sciences for obvious reasons.

Capitalism needs productive technology and it needs a level of pure scientific discovery, but at the same time, this can be a threat. So on the one hand science is aimed in directions that obviously benefit the profit system - i.e. more money to research profitable drugs for depression when there are already options, instead of trying to figure out how to get more people to use existing drugs that they need, or producing cheaper versions or whatnot.

In other ways the sciences are shaped by the system because of ideological assumptions, or sometimes consciously redirected because of radical implications (related to why Marxian Economics is by necessity treated as a heterodox). So, for example, modern environmental science goes through tons of evidence for doom and gloom and all the ways our society is impacting the environment and yet they can't seem to come up with conclusions. Most don't even suggest that production methods should change - sometimes they offer small reforms, but nothing that will actually slow the huge environmental impact. Doom and gloom and the scientists offer suggestions for solar panels on people's homes and energy-saving light-bulbs. In other words, buy smarter, rather than change the way production is done - and the problems with this philosophy should be fairly obvious.

Thus, either these scientists never even question the role or purpose of capitalism, or they think that even modest reforms are too out of the question and unrealistic politically.

Since capitalists view and justify the system as being the 'best of all possible worlds', ideological pressure for economists to reflect this and gloss over the inherent problems is not some conspiracy theory as you would suggest, but it is real world phenomena and a natural consequence.

Lastly, a comparison to biological science in this case is dubious - science cannot prove or disprove that a god exists, and thus that is not its goal nor can it be its goal. However, a ruling class DOES materially exist, and thus economics can be and IS in fact used in an ideological context to the benefits of said ruling class. Whether it is done so consciously or not is up for debate (I believe it often is done deliberately), but either way makes no difference.

This post can be applied to Jesters comments as well. The three questions you posed are often glossed over by NCE's for reasons I explained above, and when they aren't glossed over, only explanations that stay within the navigation of the framework are acceptable, because of the ideological and political implications - anything that actually critiques the legitimacy or validity of capitalism's totality is to be rejected or ignored entirely. It is at square one, and then some, comrade. The mere fact you say otherwise is just further confirmation of this.