Including a Symposium on New Directions in Sraffa Scholarship

Luca Fiorito, Scott Scheall, Carlos Eduardo Suprinyak, Luca Fiorito, Scott Scheall, Carlos Eduardo Suprinyak

• Publisher: Emerald Publishing Limited
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781787145405
• eBook ISBN: 9781787149687
• Topic: Economics
• Subtopic: Economic History
• Index: Economics

Volume 35B of Research in the History of Economic Thought and Methodology features a symposium on the economics of Piero Sraffa, guest edited by Scott Carter and Riccardo Bellofiore. The symposium includes new research from Professor Carter, as well as from John Davis, Nerio Naldi and Eleonora Lattanzi, Bertram Schefold, Andres Lazzarini and Gabriel Brondino, and Lucia Morra.

Volume 35B also features general research contributions from Masazumi Wakatabe, and co-authors Eugene Callahan and Andreas Hoffman.

Mary Furner, Matthew Frye Jacobson, Scott Scheall, and Charles R. McCann, Jr. offer unique perspectives on Thomas C. Leonard's (2015) Illiberal Reformers: Race, Eugenics, and American Economics in the Progressive Era. Professor Leonard contributes a response essay.

PART I
A SYMPOSIUM ON NEW DIRECTIONS IN SRAFFA SCHOLARSHIP

SYMPOSIUM: NEW DIRECTIONS IN SRAFFA SCHOLARSHIP

Riccardo Bellofiore and Scott Carter

ABSTRACT

Resurgent interest in the life and work of the Italian Cambridge economist Piero Sraffa is leading to New Directions in Sraffa Scholarship. This chapter introduces readers to some of these developments. First and perhaps foremost is the fact that as of September 2016 Sraffa’s archival material has been uploaded onto the website of the Wren Library, Trinity College, Cambridge University, as digital colour images; this chapter introduces readers to the history of these events. This history provides sharp relief on the extant debates over the role of the archival material in leading to the final publication of Production of Commodities by Means of Commodities, and readers are provided a brief sketch of these matters. The varied nature of Sraffa scholarship is demonstrated by the different aspects of Sraffa’s intellectual legacy which are developed and discussed in the various entries of our Symposium. The conclusion is reached that we are on the cusp of an exciting phase change of tremendous potential in Sraffa scholarship.

Keywords Sraffa; Sraffa archives

INTRODUCTION

The title of this Symposium is meant to indicate that the future of Sraffa scholarship is bright indeed – bright both in terms of depth of analysis as well as breadth of content. The former aspect of Piero Sraffa’s inquiries – that of depth of analysis – has been recognised since he first made his way on the scene in the 1920s with a devastating critique of the Marshallian partial equilibrium framework (this being the subject of the Brondino & Lazzarini contribution below). John Maynard Keynes, among others, recognised the brilliance of this young Italian economist and it was because of this that he offered Sraffa an opportunity to come to Cambridge, partially as a way to add to the critical mass of scholars buzzing about the Cam River at that time who came to be known as the Circus,¹ and partially as a way for this friend of Antonio Gramsci to avoid persecution both overtly and subtly from Mussolini and the forces of fascism that swept Italy in the 1920s and 1930s (this being among the subjects of the Lattanzi & Naldi contribution below). Sraffa’s intellectual depth exhibited influences outside of economics too: his well-known interactions with Ludwig Wittgenstein exerted tremendous influence on the philosopher’s thinking (this being the subject of Morra’s contribution below and is also touched upon by the contribution by Davis).

Upon moving to Cambridge in 1927, Sraffa postponed by a year lectures he was supposed to give in fall allowing him to formally commence lecturing duties at Trinity College in the Michaelmas Term 1928. These lectures lasted through 1931 and their fruit is preserved as Lecture Notes on the Advanced Theory of Value, archived according to the Wren Trinity (WT) convention as D2/4, the colour images of which are now available for consultation on the Wren Library, Trinity College, Cambridge, website (https://janus.lib.cam.ac.uk/). This manuscript consists of over 240 mostly handwritten pages and contains important insights into the development of Sraffa’s thinking after publication of his 1925 (in Italian) and 1926 (in English) articles critiquing the Marshallian theory (see the Brondino & Lazzarini entry below). The manuscript is brilliant indeed and we are now fortunate to have complete online access to digital images of its entire content.²

The content in Sraffa’s lectures was what he had made public – albeit to a small audience of students.³ We now know the thoughts and developments that Sraffa was making at the time away from anyone else’s prying eyes. Such developments are contained in notes on his constructive activity, kept private throughout his lifetime, but now available for open study. Indeed, far from being idle in 1927, Sraffa made the most of the postponement of his lecturing duties with the writing of hundreds of pages of notes that expressed a different approach than what he would write in his lectures and present to his students. These notes are contained in five file folders⁴ and are available for consultation at the Wren Library and as digital images on their website. Also, when engaged in lecturing from 1928 to 1931 Sraffa found time to continue with his constructive activity as evidenced from three files which were penned at the time,⁵ often during the inter-session; these notes also comprise hundreds of handwritten pages. The article by Davis below discusses this period in Sraffa’s intellectual activity, focusing attention on notes written in 1931 entitled ‘Surplus Product’ that have received much attention in recent years.

The notes that Sraffa was writing in the late 1920s and early 1930s were the first efforts at grappling with economic theory on a different plane altogether. By the end of this time period Sraffa had been selected by the Royal Economics Society as Editor of the Works and Correspondence of David Ricardo.⁶ This allowed him to cease his lecturing duties which, given his reticence and disdain generally for lecturing, was quite a relief. Work on the Ricardo edition did, however, postpone Sraffa’s constructive activities for a decade until 1942 where for four years, until 1946, Sraffa engaged in an intense level of inquiry penning thousands of handwritten pages in 32 file folders available at the Wren archive. From 1946 through December 1954 Sraffa again put his constructive activity aside and spent those years finally finishing the Ricardo edition. Then from January 1955 to 1960 Sraffa would engage in his third and final stage of constructive activity, the fruits of which are contained in 58 file folders and thousands of handwritten pages; a significant file that begins this period is the Majorca draft of March 1955, archived according to WT as D3/12/52 of which more is spoken of in Carter’s essay below.⁷

In April of 1960 Sraffa finally published Production of Commodities by Means of Commodities: Prelude to a Critique of Economic Theory (PCMC). The earthshattering impact of this book was immediate and long-lived and indeed lasts to this day. Perhaps the most famous controversy that arose from its publication concerned the so-called Cambridge Capital Controversies, and in the contribution below by Schefold we have one of the participants in that debate from the 1970s revisiting this matter in light of recent theoretical and empirical evidence. Other positive dimensions and implications of Sraffa’s inquiries can be developed from grappling with the analysis in PCMC in light of archival evidence, and exploring some of these analytical aspects is the subject of Carter’s contribution below.

All of the above concerns the depth of Sraffa’s inquiries; that Sraffa was a deep thinker has always been acknowledged by proverbial friend-and-foe alike despite the paucity of his then-available written word. But deepness of thought notwithstanding, the relative dearth of publications over the years bec...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Part I A Symposium on New Directions in Sraffa Scholarship
• Part II Essays
• Part III A Collection of Reviews of Thomas C. Leonard’s Illiberal Reformers: Race, Eugenics, and American Economics in the Progressive ERA
• Index