Philosophy For Our Times Why the neoclassical philosophy of economics is fundamentally flawed | Abby Innes
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Mar 24, 2026 
Abby Innes, Associate Professor of Political Economy at LSE, challenges neoclassical economics as a closed-system, machine-like science. She links Soviet planning and contemporary Britain, explores Kantian ideas about open-ended societies, critiques the depoliticisation of economic policy, and warns about technocratic blind spots while calling for plural, context-sensitive analysis.
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Neoclassical Markets Mirror Soviet Planning
- Neoclassical economics and Stalinist planning are mirror-image machine models that treat economies as closed, computable systems.
- Abby Innes argues both assume omniscience and deterministic planning, which fails because human societies are open-ended and inventive.
From Soviet Childhood To British Policy Parallels
- Innes found British public sector failures (outsourcing, quasi-markets, new public management) looked strikingly familiar to post-Soviet transition problems.
- That surprise led her to trace shared metaphysics beneath Stalinist planning and neoliberal policy design.
No Archimedean Point For Social Science
- A Kantian philosophy of science shows you cannot discover a timeless, complete governing science for society.
- Innes says theories inherit past assumptions and society continually changes via imagination, novelty, and technological shifts, so perfect forecasting is impossible.