Occasional X: The futile attempt to recycle Marginalism (IV)

“In 1871, Menger published his groundbreaking Principles of Economics, arguing that the value of a good is not determined by the labour required to produce it, but by the subjective importance individuals place on it. Value is not objective or embodied in objects. It is marginal - determined by the least important use of a good to the individual. Jevons and Walras reached similar conclusions around the same time. Together, they launched what became known as the Marginalist Revolution, shifting economics from production costs and labour theories toward subjective marginal utility.” (Creative Deduction) Marginalism is the worst example of scientific failure. For over 200 years, economics has said it is a science, but it isn't. The major approaches (Walrasianism, Keynesianism, Marxianism, Austrianism, and their derivatives) are mutually contradictory and axiomatically false and materially/formally inconsistent. They all got profit wrong. When the subject's foundational concepts are inconsistent, the entire analytical superstructure is scientifically worthless. The root cause of economics' scientific failure lies in the foundational propositions/assumptions/axioms. It is the fatal methodological blunder to base economics on behavioral/subjective microfoundations instead of objective/systemic macrofoundations. Legacy economics is built upon this set of foundational propositions, a.k.a. axioms: “HC1 economic agents have preferences over outcomes; HC2 agents individually optimize subject to constraints; HC3 agent choice is manifest in interrelated markets; HC4 agents have full relevant knowledge; HC5 observable outcomes are coordinated, and must be discussed with reference to equilibrium states.” (Weintraub) Marginalism comes from “HC2 agents individually optimize subject to constraints”. It's unnecessary to emphasize that economists borrowed this idea from physics/mathematics, where it was discovered that light takes the shortest possible time. In other words, Nature seems to apply an optimization principle. And this was where calculus came in, which reappeared later in economics as Marginalism, i.e., as utility/profit maximization. The behavioral axioms and auxiliary assumptions like well-behaved production functions are methodologically untenable (⇓ AXEC113h). The point is that the market transforms the endless multitude of subjective values into one objective market price. The claim that Austrianism refutes Marxianism has no scientific substance. Both are political agenda pushing dressed up as science. For details, see ⇒ Cross-references Axiomatization and Marginalism is the landmark of scientific incompetence https://t.co/r1Lmt9qZ6D It's high time to flush the 'architects of subjective value', i.e., Carl Menger, Stanley Jevons, Léon Walras, Philip Wicksteed, and Eugen von Boehm-Bawerk down the scientific drain.

— AXEC (@EgmontHandtke) October 7, 2026