It is somewhat odd, that a rejection of the view that economics is the  
science of  choice is taken to imply that one supports some mystical ideas  
of supra-historical iron laws and sacrifices human agency to the Moloch of  
socio-historical entelechy.  Human agency is all we 've got.  But do we have  
to trivialize it, and force the study of social action to a suitable  
formalization of a choice problem solvable by some appropriate mathematical  
method?  I am not accusing anyone that  s/he ignores constraints. I object  
to the fact that constraints are taken for granted.  The interesting part is  
the explanation of these constraints rather than how choice is made.  You  
can even explain some of the formation of the constraints through a theory  
of choice [Stackelberg, principal-agent and GE].  The question remains, is  
this convincing or relevant?  No wonder, that the labor movement considered  
economists to be on the wrong side of them.  They "chose" not to believe  
their theories or trust their agenda.  
  
By the way, "the stupid ideologues" are not a caricature or a decoy.  The  
strawman is off to see the wizard. There are not stupid in the sense of  
being thick as a brick.  Theirs is not the arrogance of stupidity, but the  
stupidity of arrogance.  Tony Brewer writes "As historians of economics ...  
shouldn't we be thinking about the different ways people have (explicitly or  
implicitly) defined the subject, the methods of  analysis they have used,  
and so on, rather than searching for some sort of Platonic ideal which is  
the true definition of economics?"  Absolutely.  But I am afraid that, in a  
while, this will not be an option: only platonic polyhedra, lagrange  
multipliers and fixed point theorems will be allowed.  Historians of  
Economic Idea will be relegated to departments of Paleontology [or Business  
Studies].  
  
Nicholas J. Theocarakis