Table Of ContentTowards a New Understanding of Sraffa
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Towards a New
Understanding of Sraffa
Insights from Archival Research
Edited by
Riccardo Bellofiore
University of Bergamo, Italy
and
Scott Carter
The University of Tulsa, USA
Editorial, selection and introduction © Riccardo Bellofi ore and Scott Carter 2014
Individual chapters © Contributors 2014
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2014 978-1-137-03431-1
All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this
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in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published 2014 by
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Contents
List of Illustrations v ii
Acknowledgements v iii
Notes on Contributors i x
List of Abbreviations x i
1 Introduction 1
Riccardo Bellofiore and Scott Carter
2 Surprise in the Archive: Reactions to Sraffa’s Papers 9
Jonathan Smith
Part I
3 On the Neoricardian Criticism of Irrelevance 25
Dario Preti
4 Sraffa and the Standard Commodity 47
Scott Carter
Comment on Preti and Carter 69
Pier Luigi Porta
Response to Porta 75
Scott Carter
Part II
5 A New Perspective on Sraffa 81
Ajit Sinha
6 The Standard System and the Tendency of the (Maximum)
Rate of Profit to Fall – Marx and Sraffa: There and Back 9 4
Stefano Perri
Comment on Sinha and Perri: Hamlet without the Prince:
Sraffa (and Marx) without Competition 121
Andrea Salanti
v
vi Contents
A Response to the Comments by Professor Salanti 130
Ajit Sinha
A Note on Professor Salanti’s Comments 133
Stefano Perri
Part III
7 The Essentiality of Money in the Sraffa Papers 1 39
Ghislain Deleplace
8 The Positive Surplus Hypothesis: Social versus
Physical Objectivity 167
Jean Cartelier
Comment On Surplus and Money in Sraffa: A Comment on
Cartelier and Deleplace 186
Guglielmo Chiodi
9 The Loneliness of the Long Distance Thinker: Sraffa,
Marx, and the Critique of Economic Theory 1 98
Riccardo Bellofiore
Archival Index 241
Index 2 45
List of Illustrations
Figures
3.1 Structure of the labour theory of value 39
3.2 Profit rate as an increasing function of daily working time 39
4.1 The ‘coincident ratio’ across three realms of economic
inquiry 5 3
6.1 The maximum and the actual rates of profit 1 11
6.2 Profitable change of technique with increasing organic
composition of capital 1 12
6.3 Non profitable change of technique with increasing
organic composition of capital 1 14
6.4 Sraffa’s model of the falling rate of profit 1 15
6.5 Foley and Michl’s model of the falling rate of profit 1 16
8.1 Monetary relations 1 81
Table
8.1 Flows of payments 1 82
vii
Acknowledgements
The editors and collaborators wish to thank the Hyman P. Minsky
Department of Economics, University of Bergamo, for having partially
financed the conference ‘The Other Sraffa: Surprises in the Archive?’ held
21–22 December 2010, on the occasion of the 50th year of the publica-
tion of Production of Commodities by Means of Commodities. We also thank
Annalisa Cristini, Head of the Department, for her welcome address.
Simona Locatelli provided efficient organisational support, before,
during and after the conference. The present book originated in that
conference, although the papers presented there have been rewritten,
thanks to the lively discussion. Without the help of Jonathan Smith
and the staff at the Wren Library during our visits to the Sraffa Papers
and Sraffa Collection of books at the Wren Library (Trinity College,
Cambridge) most of the papers here would have been impossible to
write. To that end we also thank Piero Sraffa’s Literary Executor Lord
Eatwell for permission to quote hitherto unpublished archival mate-
rial from the Sraffa Papers. We are also very thankful to Taiba Batool
and Ania Wronski at Palgrave Macmillan for their encouragement and
understanding, and to Linda Allegro and Giovanna Vertova for their
patience. Last but not least we wish to thank the contributors for their
forbearance in the period this book was coming into shape. Finally we
would like to thank Vidhya Jayaprakash and the Production Team at
Palgrave Macmillan for their hard work and patience in putting this
volume together.
viii
Notes on Contributors
Riccardo B ellofiore is Professor of Political Economy at the University
of Bergamo, Italy. He teaches monetary economics, history of economic
thought, international monetary economics, and advanced macroeco-
nomics. His current research interests include economics of globaliza-
tion, money manager capitalism and the current crisis, endogenous
approaches to money, Marxian theory, and economic philosophy. He
has edited books on Marx, Minsky, Luxemburg, Kalecki, globalization
and labour, and the Great Recession. He has recently published ‘The
‘tiresome objector’ and Old Moor: a renewal of the debate on Marx after
Sraffa based on the unpublished material at the Wren Library’ in the
Cambridge Journal of Economics (2012).
Jean Cartelier is Emeritus Professor, University of Paris-Ouest.
Scott Carter is Associate Professor of Economics at The University
of Tulsa in Tulsa, Oklahoma. He has published in the J ournal of Post
Keynesian Economics, Review of Political Economy, The Journal of the History
of Economic Thought, and The American Journal of Economics and Sociology .
He has most recently published ‘Sraffa and the “Corrected” organic
composition of capital’, in S. Levero, A. Palumbo, and A. Stirati (eds.)
Sraffa and the Reconstruction of Economic Theory, Volume Three: Sraffa’s
Legacy: Interpretations and Historical Perspectives (2013) and ‘From “pool of
profits” to surplus and deficit industries: Archival evidence on the evolu-
tion of Piero Sraffa’s thought’, Research in Political Economy, 2014.
Guglielmo Chiodi is Professor of Economics at the University of Rome
“La Sapienza”. He conducted research work over several years at the
University of Cambridge and has been Visiting Professor at the European
University Institute of Fiesole. He has published articles in theoretical
economics and is the author of Wicksell’s Monetary Theory (1991) and
co-editor of Sraffa or An Alternative Economics (2008).
Ghislain D eleplace is Emeritus Professor of Economics at the University
Paris 8 – Saint-Denis (France). His main interests are the history of mone-
tary theory and the history of the metallic-standard monetary regimes.
He published recently articles on the monetary theories of Ricardo,
Bentham, and Marshall, and authored a second edition of Histoire de
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