The friendship between Piero Sraffa and Antonio Gramsci in the years 1919-1927

This paper is part of a research on Piero Sraffa's biography and studies the relationship between Piero Sraffa and the Italian Communist leader and political theoretician Antonio Gramsci during the years 1919–1927. This period extends from the beginning of their friendship to the first year of Gramsci's imprisonment (he was arrested in November 1926), which was also the year of Sraffa's departure for England, where he settled as a lecturer at the University of Cambridge.     

On the ‘Origins’ of Sraffa’s Production Equations: A Reply to de Vivo

In this rejoinder to de Vivo’s comment on Gehrke and Kurz (2018, ‘Sraffa’s constructive and interpretive work, and Marx.’ Review of Political Economy) we first ask what could possibly be meant by seeking to identify the ‘origins’ of Sraffa’s production equations. We then show that in his comment de Vivo has abandoned his original view, according to which the magnitudes in Sraffa’s ‘first equations’ are to be interpreted in Marxian (labour) value terms, without advising the reader. In addition, we show that his ‘new’ view is not supported by evidence from Sraffa’s papers. De Vivo misconstrues several propositions of Sraffa and misunderstands his ‘reduction method’ by means of which the values of commodities are reduced to some basic product or to labour. The criticisms de Vivo levels at the interpretation advocated by us are without any foundation.     

Method and analysis in Piero Sraffa's 1925 critique of Marshallian economics

This paper provides an analysis of the logical structure and analytical content of Piero Sraffa's 1925 Italian paper, ‘Sulle relazioni fra costo e quantità prodotta’. It shows that Sraffa's criticism of the supply side of Marshall's theory of value in a competitive partial equilibrium model involves analytical and methodological issues. Endorsing an agressive methodology Sraffa logically reconstructs Marshall's model on variable returns to determine its empirical domain. He demonstrates that the latter encompasses only the empirically irrelevant cases of specific factor industries and specific external economies industries and that it cannot be generalized to non-specific factor industries and to non-specific external economies industries.     

Shackle on Equilibrium: A Critique

This paper presents a critical evaluation of Shackle's views on economic method. Shackle's arguments against equilibrium analysis are shown to apply to orthodox theory, which has subjectivist foundations, but not to the objectivist classical approach associated with Sraffa. The long-period equilibrium method is indispensable to the analysis of how market societies function. Moreover, since the classical theory contains no trace of the factor substitution mechanisms that underpin neoclassical orthodoxy, its explanations of distribution, employment and outputs must take explicit account of institutions, power and ethical norms. Thus there is no conflict between social economics and the method of the classical economists and Sraffa. On the contrary, the classical approach provides a rigorous framework for the investigation of the very issues that are at the center of institutional and social economics.     

Interpreting Ricardo: a rejoinder to Peach

This note answers Terry Peach's (1998) response to our criticismsof his interpretation of Ricardo. We show that the availableevidence supports Sraffa's interpretation. The arguments putforward by Peach, far from undermining that interpretation orfurthering an understanding of Ricardo's project, do littlemore than catalogue the already well-known difficulties thatRicardo encountered as he grappled toward a clearer accountof the laws that regulate distribution and prices.     

The rise and fall of monopolistic competition revolution

The widespread idea among economists is that monopolistic or imperfect competition is a set of realistic models that were invented in the 1930s and their purpose was to fill the gap between the polar and, at the same time, hypothetical models of perfect competition and pure monopoly. The main argument of this paper is that the monopolistic competition revolution set in motion a reaction—partly driven by methodological considerations, partly ideological—that ultimately led to the restoration of perfect competition, as the benchmark for evaluating market outcomes. In the end, monopolistic competition eclipsed, and perfect competition from the fridges of economic analysis that was up until the 1920s was placed to the very core of microeconomic model-building.

Removing an ‘insuperable obstacle’ in the way of an objectivist analysis: Sraffa's attempts at fixed capital *

Abstract

The paper discusses Sraffa's consecutive attempts in the late 1920s and early 1940s to tackle a problem which endangered his objectivist, surplus-based approach to the theory of value and distribution aimed at reviving the standpoint of the classical economists. Whilst with circulating capital the value transfer to the product and the physical ‘destruction’ of the input are one and the same thing, with fixed capital this is not so. Sraffa eventually overcame the difficulty in terms of the joint products-method. This allowed him to explain relative prices and the rate of profits strictly in ‘material terms’.     

Sraffa and the Marshallian tradition*

Abstract

The paper retraces some of the stages in Sraffa's thinking about the work of Marshall, by drawing on unpublished material in the Sraffa archive from 1923 to 1930. It argues that Sraffa transformed his dissent – which was based on ideological grounds – into a ‘quest for the fatal error’ to demolish the logical construction of Marshallian theory. Some of his attacks were successful (for example, the critique of the relation between costs and output); other attempts failed (the critique of the ‘normal rate of profit’ and the critique of the concept of marginal productivity) since Sraffa could not find enough textual evidence to support his position.     

Interpreting Ricardo: a further reply to Sraffians

The paper contains a further defence of those aspects of theinterpretation of Ricardo advanced in Peach (1993) that havebeen subjected to criticism by writers of a Sraffian persuasion.It is argued that the latest criticisms, from Heinz Kurz andGary Mongiovi, serve best to illuminate the problems with theSraffa-derived view of Ricardo.     

Hollander, de Vivo and the 'further evidence' for the corn model interpretation of Ricardo: a conspiracy of silence?

This paper reconsiders the debate between de Vivo and Hollanderover the ‘further evidence’ in favour of Sraffa's‘corn model’ interpretation of Ricardo in the lightof Torrens's Letter to Lord Liverpool (1816). It is argued thatthe Letter provides unique evidence of the influence on Torrensof Ricardo's Essay on Profits (1815); and that, contrary tode Vivo, the evidence is not that of a ‘corn model’influence. It is further argued that the manner in which theLetter has been dealt with is unsatisfactory. The shortcomingsin Hollander's position are traced to peculiarities in his long-standinginterpretation of the early Ricardo.     

Reading Sraffa's Indices – a note *

Piero Sraffa took thirteen years to publish the General Indexto The Works and Correspondence of David Ricardo.The Index is compared to others and is shown to be exceptional in that it leads the way to specific interpretations of Ricardo's life and theory. The choice of entries referring to theory is based on Ricardo's own concepts and carefully avoids neoricardian, Marxian and neoclassical terms. Examples discussed concern ‘comparative advantage’ and ‘value’ The entries referring to Ricardo's life are proof of Sraffa's broad historical interests and focus on certain characteristics of Ricardo.     

On Torrens's theory of profits

This paper is about the presence in Torrens's works of the 1810sand 1820s of a theory of profits based on an assumption of physicalhomogeneity between capital and product—a theory thatderived from the ‘corn ratio’ theory of profitsput forward by Ricardo in 1814–15. Some views about Torrens'stheory and its Ricardian origin held by S. Hollander and T.Peach are also briefly discussed and are shown not to be wellfounded, and not to take into account correctly the evolutionof Torrens's views on distribution.     

Ricardo's discovery of comparative advantage revisited: a critique of Ruffin's account

Abstract

In an influential paper, Ruffin has attempted to reconstruct the circumstances of Ricardo's discovery of the law of comparative advantage. Ruffin's paper has inspired a number of further contributions on the precise nature, logical structure, and analytical significance of Ricardo's formulation of the law of comparative advantage. This paper re-examines Ruffin's reconstruction, and in particular his interpretation of Ricardo's three letters of October 1816 and suggests that it lacks textual and contextual support.     

Financial capital and banks in Hilferding and Sraffa: lessons for today

Rudolf Hilferding’s Das Finanzkapital dealt with the increasing role of finance in the German economy and the resulting structural transformations. The young Sraffa shared with Hilferding an interest on the role played by the banks in the transformation of capitalism. The relationship among banking and industrial capital implied different business models of the German and UK banks and determined the resulting domination of financial capital on the economy. We deepen the methodological and practical similarities and differences of the two scholars, discussing the aspects that are still relevant today to understand financialisation and instability of capitalism.     

Labour values and energy values: some developments on the common substance of value since 1867

Abstract

Marx’s Das Kapital (1867) singled out labour as the common substance of value in all commodities. Costanza (1980 Costanza, Robert. 1980. “Embodied Energy and Economic Valuation.” Science 210 (4475): 1219–1224. doi:10.1126/science.210.4475.1219[Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) in Science chose energy and propagated energy values (a century after Engels criticised Podolinsky on energy). Mainstream economists quickly questioned Marx’s logic. Pareto advocated simultaneous equations, unaware of their use by Mühlpfordt and Dmitriev. Contributions by Charasoff and Potron were also overlooked. Already in 1927, Leontief and Sraffa knew how to replace labour values by other commodity values. Generalising Sraffa’s subsystems and using “percentage formulas” for price-value deviations, I discuss some empirical results for labour or energy theories of value.     

The Isolated State in Relation to Agriculture and Political Economy,Part III: Principles for the Determination of Rent,the Most Advantageous Rotation Period and the Value of Stands of Varying Age in Pinewoods

Abstract

Sraffa's book artfully combines an exposition of key problems of capital theory, using economic logic, with mathematical arguments, and he created a school of disciples extending his ideas by means of both methods. His analysis of single product systems has turned out essentially to be flawless, but the problems of joint production cannot simply be solved on the basis of analogies with single production. A truncation approach and a dynamic approach are discussed in order to summarise his main results, to illustrate his method and to take stock of the recent developments of the theory.     

The Hayek–Sraffa controversy in 1932 – a philosophy of science perspective

Analysing the intense controversy between Hayek and Sraffa in 1932, this article throws light on the logical consistency of their arguments and the philosophy of science axioms concerning knowledge, society, and human beings upon which these were based. The purpose is to use the controversy as an example to clarify the elemental preconditions of economic science to validly reach the core of economic theories and thus throw light on their historical and ideological conditions and range and the validity of the knowledge produced. The article uses Imre Lakatos' thoughts on research programmes and formal logic as an analytical tool.     

The interaction between Leontief and Sraffa: No meeting,no citation,no attention?

Abstract

Samuelson often regretted that Leontief and Sraffa never cited each other (true), and seemed to pay no attention to the other's work (false). In the Foley interview Leontief suggested he never met Sraffa (false). Archival evidence shows that in the 1940s Sraffa studied Leontief's classic The Structure of American Economy; he also owned the rare mimeographed supplement, and did some calculations on Leontief's first input–output table. Leontief and Sraffa met in Cambridge (UK) in 1950 and later. In the 1980s Leontief wrote an ambitious empirical paper on technological change, rejected by the AER, and not widely read. It studied some Sraffian topics without Sraffian terminology. I construct a hypothetical reswitching example using Leontief's statistics.     

Gramsci,Sraffa, Wittgenstein: philosophical linkages

The paper assumes that since Gramsci influenced Sraffa and SraffA influenced Wittgenstein it may be possible to delineate a set of philosophical ideas which they shared in some degree. Gramsci's ideas are first reviewed on terms of his concept of hegemony, concept of caesarism and philosophy of praxis. On this basis three philosophical themes are identified in his thinking: the conept of emergence; catastrophic equilibrium; and the idea of a concrete universal. The thinking of Sraffa (both earlier and later) and the thinking of Wittgenstein (later) are then interpreted in terms of these same three themes. These links neither exhaust their philosophical thinking nor necessarily constitute the only links among the three. But these ideas provide one way of exploring connections among the three. The paper closes with brief remarks concerning two opposed philosophical traditions in modern European intellectual history at the turn of the century — one associated with thinking in Britain and one associated with continental thinking — meant to suggest the distinctiveness of a line of thinking running through Gramsci, Sraffa and Wittgenstein.     

Notes and comments. A re(in)statement of the labour theory of value: a comment

The aim of this paper is to show that the main conclusions inMohun's (1994) paper rest on an implicit assumption: the compositionof net output has to remain constant. When this is removed,some paradoxical results are obtained.