Judging by the subtitle of his book, Sraffa was interested in critiquing conventional economics. He was a Marxist, but he never really discussed Marx
in his published work. From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, October 15, 2008 11:38 AM To: [email protected]; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [Pen-l] Sraffa - is this true? PEN-Lers, I'm having a discussion on an anthropologhy listserv about the labor theory of value and one wrote the following (below). (including the note that J. Galbraith is advisor to Obama) Is it true? best, Brian _______________________________________________________________________ The revival of the labor theory of value in conventional economics is credited to Piero Sraffa, 1898-1983. The following is from the History of Economics website at the New School: http://cepa.newschool.edu/het/ "The shy, Italian-born Sraffa was brought by John Maynard Keynes to Cambridge in the 1920s. A close friend of the Italian revolutionary Antonio Gramsci, Sraffa has been sometimes considered a "closet Marxian" - and, apparently, he would sometimes be quite explicit about his loyalties - although the 1920s England was not exactly welcoming to Marxian radicals. Sraffa quickly became a fixture in the Cambridge world. He was part of the legendary "cafeteria group" with Frank Ramsey and Ludwig Wittgenstein which explored the 1921 probability treatise of J.M. Keynes. Sraffa ganged up with Keynes to bury Friedrich Hayek in the business cycle debates. Nonetheless, Sraffa's shyness in front of his students made lecturing a hellish experience. Ever resourceful, Keynes arranged for Sraffa to be appointed as a librarian of King's College and, to keep him busy, got the Royal Society to hand over the task of editing a new collected edition of David Ricardo 's works over to him. Sraffa's painstaking and meticulous collecting and editing of Ricardo's works, begun in 1931, turned out to be a 20-year-task! Although already in the printers in 1943, the edition was delayed after the last-minute discovery of a trunk full of Ricardo's papers in Ireland. Publication finally began (after Maurice Dobb got on board as assistant) in 1953. It was a formidable edition. As George Stigler was to put it later in his review, "Ricardo was a fortunate man.. And now, 130 years after his death, he is as fortunate as ever : he has been befriended by Sraffa." (Stigler, 1953). Sraffa's introduction to the works was perhaps one of the most remarkable interpretations of the tenets of Classical and Neoclassical theory in the history of economic thought. The outgrowth of these efforts was one of the longest-gestating works in economic theory. Begun in the 1920s, Sraffa's Production of Commodities by Means of Commodities, a terse, hundred-page text which finally emerged in 1960. This book solved and restated Ricardo's theory [i.e. the labor theory of value] for the moderns - inspiring the "Classical Revival" spearheaded by the Neo-Ricardians at Cambridge and elsewhere in the 1960s and 1970s." [Anthropologist Joe's] notion of labor constructing "values in and of the biophysical word" is of a different epistemological status than the economic labor theory of value as conceived by Ricardo through Sraffa and on to today. However, that is another discussion. I've always believed that labor + energy/materials account for value - surplus or otherwise - with technology placed within labor. Some within Ecological Economics have worked on an energy theory of value - Bob Costanza comes to mind. On a related note, I believe Jamie Galbraith at the U. of Texas and an advisor to the Obama campaign is someone who incorporates the Sraffra influenced labor theory of value into his economics. ________________________________ McCain or Obama? Stay updated on coverage of the Presidential race while you browse - Download Now! <http://pr.atwola.com/promoclk/100000075x1211139166x1200680084/aol?redir =http://toolbar.aol.com/elections/download.html?ncid=emlweusdown00000002 >
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