Piero Sraffa

Piero Sraffa (5 August 1898 – 3 September 1983) was an influential Italian economist, who served as lecturer of economics at the University of Cambridge. Quotes In economic theory the conclusions are sometimes less interesting than the route by which they are reached. October 1975 in letter to C.P. Blitch, as cited in: Riccardo Bellofiore, ‎Scott Carter (2014), Towards a New Understanding of Sraffa. p. 199 Quotes about Sraffa Perhaps the most influential theorist in England today is Nicholas Kaldor (Hungary), and undoubtedly the most original is Piero Sraffa (Italy). Perry Anderson, "Components of the National Culture", New Left Review I/50, July-August 1968 There are two things in Sraffa. One of them is very close to Keynes and that's the part that the Sraffians ignore and that is, Sraffa wrote a criticism of Hayek's capital theory book in 1932, and it's in that criticism that Sraffa developed this theory of spot and forward markets, and it's that theory which Keynes latched onto in his spot-forward market analysis. So there's a very good connection between Sraffa and the spot-forward markets. The other thing which they've latched onto, what was really anti-Keynesian, is The Production of Commodities by Means of Commodities. It has nothing to do with real world or with economics - it's an attack to show that the neoclassical system doesn't work. There are lots of ways of showing that it doesn't work, but basically the way Sraffa shows it doesn't work is by assuming that there's no substitutability between labour and capital. It's a fixed-coefficient system. So what? You know, the old neoclassicists would have said that wages were inflexible. It's the same thing. Real wages are inflexible in the Sraffian system. What does it prove? I don't think it proves anything. Paul Davidson, quoted in Conversations with Post Keynesians (1995) by J. E. King Il lavoro di Sraffa [Produzione di merci a mezzo merci. Premesse a una critica della teoria economica] parte dal pensiero che la crisi della teoria moderna è definitiva, mentre quella della teoria classica non lo è, al punto che ha senso riprendere la ricerca ponendosi proprio nella tradizione classica. Sraffa's work [Production of goods by means of goods. Premises for a critique of economic theory] starts from the thought that the crisis of modern theory is definitive, while that of classical theory is not, to the point that it makes sense to resume research by placing oneself precisely in the classical tradition. Claudio Napoleoni, Dalla scienza all'utopia, foreword by Gian Luigi Vaccarino (editor), Bollati Boringhieri, Torino 1992. ISBN 88-339-0664-7. Caro Piero, ho ripensato alla nostra discussione e ti faccio qui di seguito alcune osservazioni. Innanzi tutto provo a riesporre le tue tesi, in modo che tu possa controllare se le ho capite bene. La tua prima proposizione è stata questa: dallo schema di Produzione di merci a mezzo merci risulta che non esiste altra origine del profitto al di fuori del fatto che il salario è minore del prodotto netto; l'unico modo corretto di interpretare il profitto è perciò quello di considerarlo come un «minus-salario». Dear Piero, I thought back to our discussion and I make some observations below. First of all, I'll try to re-expose your theses, so you can check if I understand them well. Your first proposition was this: from the scheme of Production of goods by means of goods it appears that there is no other origin of profit than the fact that the wage is less than the net product; the only correct way to interpret profit is therefore to consider it as a «minus-wage». Claudio Napoleoni, Dalla scienza all'utopia, foreword by Gian Luigi Vaccarino (editor), Bollati Boringhieri, Torino 1992. ISBN 88-339-0664-7. Nel tuo schema che il valore del saggio profitto sia determinato solo dal livello del salario risulta già dal fatto che, con qualunque unità di misura, r è funzione soltanto di w, cioè dal fatto che la funzione che dà il saggio del profitto possiede un'unica variabile indipendente, ossia appunto il salario. La forma di questa funzione mi pare inessenziale rispetto al fatto (questo, sì, essenziale) che si tratti di una funzione di un'unica variabile, e quindi al fatto, da cui quest'ultimo deriva, che il tuo schema presenta, come direbbe un matematico, un solo grado di libertà. In your scheme, the fact that the value of the rate of profit is determined only by the level of the wage already results from the fact that, with any unit of measurement, r is a function only of w, that is, from the fact that the function that gives the rate of profit has a single independent variable, namely the wage. The form of this function seems to me to be inessential with respect to the fact (this, yes, essential) that it is a function of a single variable, and therefore to the fact, from which the latter derives, that your scheme presents, as a mathematician would say, only one degree of freedom. Claudio Napoleoni, Dalla scienza all'utopia, foreword by Gian Luigi Vaccarino (editor), Bollati Boringhieri, Torino 1992. ISBN 88-339-0664-7. See also Alessandro Roncaglia External links Category:1983 deaths Category:Economists from Italy Category:Agnostics Category:Jews Category:Socialists Category:Pacifists Category:People from Turin