Only to mention that what is probably Marx’s best known (and in its three vol completeness least read) work was titled:

Capital: A Critique of Political Economy

As a critique it built on but also divorced itself from classical economics.

Sraffa also seems to occupy a fairly unique space.

Both are worthwhile.

It would be very constructive if, for once, Austrians explain why they use the a priory assumptions about the nature of private property and the role of government.

I’m not saying they can’t, just saying they never did.

Grenspanism – failed.

Marxism is branch of classical economics. Everything before marginalism is classical.

How about if we call what we have in America by its real name, FASCISM

There are MANY problems with Austrian economics:

– Their radically aprioristic epistemology and methodology. Start with a few “axioms” about human behavior and deduce all of the facts of the universe from there. “No amount of empirical evidence to the contrary can ever prove us wrong”. Not.

– An incoherent capital theory that requires a bunch of ad hoc assumptions like the “natural rate of interest”, the “degree of roundaboutness”, and the “average period of production”. Sraffa spanked Hayek so hard on the natural rate of interest that Hayek stopped writing about economics altogether afterwards.

– A complete ignorance of the role of money and finance in the workings of a modern capitalistic economy. Austrians view money as a medium of exchange and ignore its other functions. They see finance as the supply and demand of loanable funds mediated by the interest rate. To be fair, mainstram neoclassical economics takes a hit here as well.

– A normative ideological bias that permeates every attempt at a positive description of the economy. “Government is always and everywhere the problem and markets are always and everywhere the solution.”

Yes, neoclassical economics has many problems and we need something to replace it. Austrian economics, however, is NOT it.