The core problem for today’s economics is a subjective theory of value.
No-one wants to tackle this because it exposes the economics profession to be an ideological prop rather than the science it was back in the days of Ricardo.
For the classical economists (not neo-classicals) value was objective. There were ‘natural’ prices which market prices deviated around due to fluctuations in supply & demand. These natural prices were determined by labour time. But the problem Ricardo couldn’t figure out was if prices were determined by labour time & labour power itself was sold at its ‘natural’ price, where did profits come from?
This suggested that profits came from capitalists not paying workers in full, & so we got the Ricardian Socialists. The reaction from the economics profession was to dump the labour theory of value & embrace marginalism.
