Microfoundationalist Reconciliation: the Fundamental Fantasy of Neoclassical Economics—Some Reflections on Yahya Madra’s Late Neoclassical Economics

Using neoclassical thought as his entry point, Yahya M. Madra offers a vital prolegomenon to a recalibrated critical political economy. Madra’s reinterpretation of the economic field pivots around what he calls the theoretical-humanist problematic, suggesting that an ontologically inflected recharacterization of economic thought is essential to any serious development of progressive alternatives to dominant mainstream forms of political economy. After outlining the constituent elements of theoretical humanism and some of Madra’s key conceptual moves, this essay explores several analytical, normative, and ideological implications of such a redrawing of the boundaries of economic thought. Madra’s intervention opens up at least three lines of inquiry regarding the theoretical-humanist problematic: the relative amplitude of tensions internal to different economic approaches in its orbit, including their capacities to resist or escape its gravitational pull; how it circumscribes the scope of concrete, normative visions; and how everyday practices and identifications reinforce or depart from related ideological fantasies underpinning it.