This post lists some views on Production of Commodities by Means of Commodities: A Prelude to a Critique of Economic Theory.
- The quantity flows Sraffa takes as given are those observable in an actual economy at a given time, as with a snapshot (Roncaglia 1978).
- These quantity flows, on the contrary, are at the level of effectual demand (Garegnani 1990).
- These quantity flows are for an economy in a self-replacing state.
- The assumption of constant returns to scale is necessary for drawing any interesting conclusions from Sraffa's work (Samuelson 1990, Samuelson 2000).
- Market prices tend towards or orbit around Sraffa's prices of production in a process akin to gravitational attraction (Garegnani 1990).
- Sraffa's book is an investigation of logical consequences in a system of prices of production, akin to reasoning in geometry; no claims are put forth about tendencies or paths of market prices (Sinha 2012).
- Sraffa started, in the 1920s, in his research for his 1960 book from labor values and Marx's schemes of reproduction in Volume 2 of Capital (De Vivo 2003 and Gilibert 2003).
- Sraffa began, on the contrary, with a formalization of prices in terms of physical real cost; labor values are a corruption of this notion of real costs and Sraffa was not originally inspired by Marx in his economics (Gehrke and Kurz 2006).
- Sraffa showed that labor values are unnecessary and redundant for defining prices of production (Steedman 1981).
- Sraffa, on the contrary, vindicated Marx in his work (Porta 2012 and Bellofiore 2014).
- Sraffa's work cannot be set in historical time (Robinson 1985).
- Sraffa, for methodological reasons, rejected counterfactual reasoning and thus the marginal revolution (Sen 2003).
Some of the above statements are probably stated more strongly than the referenced scholars might endorse. I am also not at all sure those are the best references. They certainly are not the most up-to-date. It is clear at any rate that the Cambridge Capital Controversy was not solely about difficulties in aggregating capital and that Sraffa's approach to economics cannot be subsumed by general equilibrium theory (Hahn 1982).
References- Bellofiore, Riccardo. 2014. The loneliness of the long distance thinker: Sraffa, Marx, and the critique of economic theory. In Bellofiore and Carter (2014).
- Bellofiore, Riccardo and Scott Carter. 2014. Towards a New Understanding of Sraffa: Insights from Archival Research. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
- Bharadwaj, Krishna and Bertram Schefold (eds.). 1990. Essays on Piero Sraffa: Critical Perspectives on the Revival of Classical Theory. London: Unwin Hyman.
- de Vivo, Giancarlo. 2003. Sraffa's path to Production of Commodities by Means of Commodities. An interpretation. Contributions to Political Economy 22 (1): 1-25.
- Garegnani, Pierangelo. 1990. Classical versus Marginalist Analysis. In Bharadwaj and Schefold (1990).
- Gehrke, Christian & Heinz D. Kurz. 2006. Sraffa on von Bortkiewicz: Reconstructing the classical theory of value and distribution. History of Political Economy 38 (1): 91-149.
- Gilibert, Giorgio. 2003. The equations unveiled: Sraffa's price equations in the making. Contributions to Political Economy 22 (1): 27-40.
- Hahn, Frank H. 1982. The neo-Ricardians. Cambridge Journal of Economics 6: 352-374.
- Kurz, Heinz D. (ed.). 2000. Critical Essays on Piero Sraffa's Legacy in Economics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- Porta, Pier Luigi. 2012. Piero Sraffa's early views on classical political economy. Cambridge Journal of Economics 36: 1357-1383.
- Robinson, Joan. 1985. The theory of normal prices and the reconstruction of economic theory.
- Roncaglia, Alessandro. 1978. Sraffa and the Theory of Prices (trans. by J. A. Kregel). New York: John Wiley & Sons.
- Samuelson, Paul A. 1990. Revisionist findings on Sraffa. In Bharadwaj and Schefold (1990) and reprinted in Kurz (2000).
- Samuelson, Paul A. 2000. Sraffa's hits and misses. In Kurz 2000.
- Sen, Amartya. 2003. Sraffa, Wittgenstein, and Gramsci. Journal of Economic Literature 41: 1240-1255.
- Sinha, Ajit. 2012. Listen to Sraffa's silences: a new interpretation of Sraffa's Production of Commodities. Cambridge Journal of Economics 36 (6): 1323-1339.
- Steedman, Ian. 1981. Marx after Sraffa. London: Verso.
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3 comments:
“* Sraffa's book is an investigation of logical consequences in a system of prices of production, akin to reasoning in geometry; no claims are put forth about tendencies or paths of market prices (Sinha 2012).”
Strongly agree, as in "A prelude to a critique". What the book actually says is not the same thing as the arguments it was meant to support in the future.
“* Sraffa started, in the 1920s, in his research for his 1960 book from labor values and Marx's schemes of reproduction in Volumereasoing 2 of Capital (De Vivo 2003 and Gilibert 2003).
* Sraffa began, on the contrary, with a formalization of prices in terms of physical real cost; labor values are a corruption of this notion of real costs and Sraffa was not originally inspired by Marx in his economics (Gehrke and Kurz 2006).”
I think that both of these are agreeable, because I think that "labour values" are a special and important case of physical real costs.
“* Sraffa showed that labor values are unnecessary and redundant for defining prices of production (Steedman 1981).”
What are prices of production? This makes no sense to me.
“* Sraffa's work cannot be set in historical time (Robinson 1985).”
That is either way off or a narrow interpretation, as given the subtitle "A prelude to a critique of economic theory"; obviously the booklet was intended as a stepping stone in a historical debate. Even if the analysis is independent of the context, it stands by itself.
My interpretation is that Sraffa wanted to show that even in a fully static, atemporal, capital-as-given, pure barter system, that is even in a brutally simplified marginalist model, there are grave inconsistencies that blow up "economic theory" (which at the time meant Marshall in Cambridge, and other neoclassicals elsewhere); but while that purpose is something separate from the analysis itself, it cannot be ignored.
“* Sraffa, for methodological reasons, rejected counterfactual reasoning and thus the marginal revolution (Sen 2003).”
That's an intriguing reading, and Sen studied in Cambridge and was even a member of the Apostles, so probably had some inside information from old timers. I can believe that Sraffa was very uncomfortable with counterfactuals and non-constructive reasoning, and this was his style, but I also believe that his work had the purpose, as said above, to "critique" "economic theory" from inside, exploding its contradictions, not merely because it was methodologically unsound.
“the Cambridge Capital Controversy was not solely about difficulties in aggregating capital»
That controversy was not merely about "leets" of capital, but most importantly that "economic theory" simply waved away any theory of production, and focused solely on initial endowments and transactions, and thus it was pretty much useless.
“and that Sraffa's approach to economics cannot be subsumed by general equilibrium theory (Hahn 1982)”
But note that Sraffa's work, except for one very, very important and often forgotten detail, does not really related to capital theory; in my view as above it is meant to show that even *without* a theory of capital, assuming capital as a given, and sidestepping all issues of aggregating capital, there are "anomalies" that make a neoclassical style theory impossible.
The forgotten detail (which I mentioned before) is that under very simplified circumstance Sraffa was able to create the political economy version of the Philopher's Stone, something that political economists had tried to discover or create for centuries, a "numeraire" whose "value" does not change with the distribution of income. But its importance, and to the theory of capital, seems to be greatly underestimated by "sraffians".
Some earlier reviewers thought the standard system was the main innovation and a central point of Sraffa's book.
All of these arguments have impressive scholars arguing about them.
Prices of production are set out in Volume 3 of Capital. They are analogous to what Smith and Ricardo called natural prices. I think Quesnay may have talked about necessary prices. They are the prices that solve Sraffa's equations.
I suppose I could have brought up the question of how Smith's distinction between market and natural prices relates to the neoclassical distinction between the short and long run.
«Some earlier reviewers thought the standard system was the main innovation and a central point of Sraffa's book.»
That's almost completely lost in the fog of the past. Many Departments Of Business Economics (as they are now often called after "normalization") have eliminated the "History of economic thought" subject because there is no need after all to learn about the mistakes of the past, now that thanks to JB Clark and Arrow-Debreu-Lucas and DSG models we have the "correct" version of Business Economics and economic policy :-).
«All of these arguments have impressive scholars arguing about them.»
But but but G Mankiw, J Cochrane, JB Clark, A Alesina, G Hubbard, etc. are also "impressive scholars" :-). And even our favourite, the Cambridges Capital Controversy, had "impressive scholars" arguing that it was nonsense rantings by that mad old woman and her weirdo english and italian clique. :-)
What I mean really is that even outsiders like us can hazard to have opinions over the worth of the arguments of these "impressive scholars", at least as to plausibility, if we make the effort to read a lot and try to understand the history and substance of these arguments. Also because many of those "impressive scholars" are so obviously biased by ideology (or as I usually say, by careeerism, or almost equivalently the ideological biases of their mentor and sponsors and of "top rated" publications).
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