Towards a New Understanding of Sraffa. Insights from Archival Research

Abstract

After a big initial impact and remarkable successes, of which the 1960s debates on capital theory were the apex, the line of research stemming from Sraffa's work has not delivered what that initial push had encouraged many to believe it would deliver. This is not to say it has achieved little, but many expectations were certainly disappointed. There are of course different possible explanations for this, many of which may actually complement rather than exclude each other. Certainly, not all is to be ascribed to failings on the Sraffian side. One element which has in my view played a role is the fact that too much attention has been given to topics like that of the similarities or differences between Sraffa and Marx, with the long, drawn out debate on whether Sraffa had ‘made a bonfire’ of Marx, as alleged by some ‘pure’ Marxists,1 while not enough attention and energies have been devoted to using the theory to examine economic realities in a way which is not only different from the one which could be construed using marginalist theory, but also one that was more fruitful. Perhaps overexcited by the results of what Maurice Dobb called ‘A decade of high criticism’, many students of Sraffa have neglected what may have (wrongly) appeared to them as the inferior task of showing with concrete examples to what use the theory rescued by Sraffa could be put, and with what results.