Although Ricardo’s very substantial contribution to an objective economic analysis ultimately fell short, it was not a complete failure. His framework, however, was systematically dismantled on fundamental points by the subsequent exploitation of his work by both Marxism and marginalism (cf. Paul Fabra’s seminal work). The specific lacunae in Ricardo's rigor that prevented economic thought from crossing the threshold into a hard science have since been obscured by poorly framed questions and biased answers. For two centuries after the 1820s, the intellectual climate remained unready for his level of analytical clarity
Objective Political Economy establishes a fundamental distinction between economic accumulations (the aggregation of properties with economic exchange value) and economic gains (the increase of monetary sums). It posits a viable foundational principle for economic systems: the endorsement of the former, coupled with the rejection of maximizing the latter. Crucially, this endorsement does not prescribe the collectivization of property. The prohibition on maximizing gains pertains foremost to enterprise profit margins, upper-echelon wages, and the multiplication of redistributive or punitive fiscal sanctions.
A significant school of thought within liberalism champions the pursuit of economic gains while rejecting the legitimacy of economic accumulations. This view holds that the race for maximum gain is essential to competition—particularly when competition is framed as a Darwinian struggle rather than a principle of social organization. Proponents argue that this very process, by accelerating general prosperity, automatically safeguards the minimal requirements of social justice.
Automatically attributing to individuals a universal will to maximize their personal gain is not a liberal principle. The foundation of a free society is that every person—natural or legal—must take full responsibility for their self-determined goals. Theorizations and practices that impose a single, rigid objective on entire categories of economic agents are inherently illiberal. A society can only be considered maturely open when it rejects such teleological generalizations and the mathematical models derived from them.
While claiming the mantle of methodological individualism7, fundamentally subjectivist and behaviorist approaches to economics reduce individual and entrepreneurial rationality to a set of arbitrary, self-serving assumptions. Consequently, these frameworks are not only pseudo-liberal but also socially divisive.