Where Marx was right: towards a more secure foundation for heterodox economics

Marx has never been very influential among Western economists, but the collapse of all types of socialist movements has reinforced the belief that Marx is irrelevant for economic analysis. At the same time, some heterodox economists have claimed that neoclassical theory is sufficiently flexible to provide a foundation for post-Keynesians, institutionalists, evolutionary and feminist economists. We argue that both conclusions are incorrect and that Marx's treatment of agents' choices and constraints, and of systemic cooperation and conflict, is far superior to that of orthodoxy in several crucial respects and can provide a better grounding for non-neoclassical analyses.