Anwar Shaikh (1945-2026)

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I did not have the privilege to meet Professor Shaikh in person, but his work has had a profound effect on me for well over 25 years.

Dobzhansky wrote that that "Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except In The Light of Evolution".

I feel the same way about Shaikh.

Nothing in economics makes sense except in the light of Real Competition.

In the same way that you get to modern evolutionary theory by drawing a line through Darwin to Dobzhansky' modern synthesis to current evolutionary ecology and genetics, you can draw a line through from Smith, Ricardo, Marx, Keynes, Straffa, to Shaikh for the correct understanding of capitalism.

Shaikh's theory of Real Competition and his resulting Real Economic Analysis was outlined in 2016 with the printing of Capitalism. We are also uniquely privileged in that we have the full video lecture series of Shaikh teaching most of the concepts in Capitalism—along with the history of political economics—to students at the New School in NYC.

Shaikh spent his entire life examining the economics of capitalism from a materialist and engineering perspective using the scientific method. Such a systematic approach to understanding the economy is exceedingly rare. Most economists are ideologues applying the models dictated from on high by the priests of neoclassical economics, concepts that have been long rejected by anyone who has actually tested them.

Shaikh outlined why he attacked the field of economics from a scientific perspective by describing his background from engineering. Engineers must understand how things actually work to be able to build structures that do not fall down. If your foundation is built on beliefs that are not correct, the rest of the building, no matter how well made, will not stand. The same goes for theories within the field of economics. Unfortunately, most of the economic theories we teach are quite incorrect.

They are so incorrect that Shaikh needed to insert the word "real" to describe his and others’ work in economics. His work studied the real world, as opposed to the made-up world of neoclassical theory.

You have to really dig to find the study of the foundation of real economics; you must return to the classical theories of Smith, Ricardo, and Marx. There, you find the clearest examples of how to describe interactions between people and value, how to interrogate and measure that understanding, and then how to move forward.

What is particularly important to understand in any field of study is that knowledge is not static. There is no Bible or original concept that is too important that it cannot be tested, falsified, and tossed. Such a view in economics is, unfortunately, the minority. Most practitioners of "economics" do not do this, they are technicians, applying models designed to advance a political agenda instead of real understanding.

Shaikh's work shows how the models in the Orthodxy of neoliberalism (and the heterodox critique of it) are wrong simply by applying them to the real data from the real world. However, he did not only show how they were wrong, he showed the path to concepts that describe economic reality as it actually functions. He showed how you can test even those models and refine them using data already available and a scientific process.

His gift to the world was this process and the clarity and dedication he put into describing these models and math for us all.

Like Darwin and Marx, tearing down our assumptions and dogma from the priests, shining a light on a new way forward is difficult work. For Darwin, it took decades to reject the dogmatic creationist view, and for Marx, exposing the ghost in the machine of capitalism continues to be denigrated by those who do not like what the answer reveals.

Shaikh's life work demands that we see clearly how the world around us really works, reject explanation that do not fit that reality, and move forward with a better, more accurate, and testable understanding.

To honour his life, we must take a hard look at the assumptions of the supposed unassailable Orthodoxy (and heterodoxy) in economics and test whether what we believe about capitalism and markets is really true. Luckily, he has provided us the manual on how to do just that.

And, in that, there is no better legacy.