Mainstream Economics Marred By False Consciousness?

"In 1966, if not 1985, a reasonable person not prone to excessive optimism would have expected the state of economics to be better in 2000 than it turned out to be; that is to say, with the mainstream less in thrall to marginalism than previously, not more acquiescent. The actual outcome is definitely a failure of some kind... is it always to be that an intellectual discipline so intimately involved with material interests will be marred by false consciousness? One might point to Ricardo as evidence for the possibility of non-mystifying economics. Or was a David Ricardo only possible in a time before economic analysis became an institutionalized element of the structure of social goverance?" -- Tony Aspromourgos, "Sraffian Research Programmes and Unorthodox Economics", Review of Political Economy, April 2004

As I understand it, Tony Aspromourgos recently gave a presentation at a conference on Social Structures of Accumulation. (It will be a long while before I have read these proceedings.)