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