section_path: Theory/Marxist communism/Marxist concepts/Critique of political economy
section_name: Critique of political economy
paragraph_text: Critique of political economy
  
  Critique of political economy is a form of social critique that rejects the various social categories and structures that constitute the mainstream discourse concerning the forms and modalities of resource allocation and income distribution in the economy. Communists, such as Marx and Engels, are described as prominent critics of political economy. The critique rejects economists' use of what its advocates believe are unrealistic axioms, faulty historical assumptions, and the normative use of various descriptive narratives. They reject what they describe as mainstream economists' tendency to posit the economy as an a priori societal category. Those who engage in critique of economy tend to reject the view that the economy and its categories is to be understood as something transhistorical. It is seen as merely one of many types of historically specific ways to distribute resources. They argue that it is a relatively new mode of resource distribution, which emerged along with modernity.
  
  Critics of economy critique the given status of the economy itself, and do not aim to create theories regarding how to administer economies. Critics of economy commonly view what is most commonly referred to as the economy as being bundles of metaphysical concepts, as well as societal and normative practices, rather than being the result of any self-evident or proclaimed economic laws. They also tend to consider the views which are commonplace within the field of economics as faulty, or simply as pseudoscience. Into the 21st century, there are multiple critiques of political economy; what they have in common is the critique of what critics of political economy tend to view as dogma, i.e. claims of the economy as a necessary and transhistorical societal category.