Piero Sraffa

This important new book illuminates our understanding of Sraffa and his work in three key areas. Firstly, Roncaglia re-examines Sraffa's intellectual biography, including his friendships with Gramsci, Wittgenstein and Keynes. Secondly, the book presents a new interpretation of his main work, "Production of Commodities by Means of Commodities." Finally, the author provides a survey of the 'Sraffian schools', bringing Italian debates on Sraffa to an English-speaking audience.

Introduction Chapter 1. Piero Sraffa1. The early writings: money and banking2. Friendship with Gramsci3. Criticism of Marshallian theory4. Imperfect competition5. Criticism of the representative firm6. Cambridge7. Wittgenstein8. Friendship with Keynes and the criticism of Hayek9. The critical edition of Ricardo's writings10. Production of Commodities by Means of Commdities11. Critique of the marginalist approach12. The Sraffian revolution Chapter 2. 'Production of Commodities by Means of Commodities' between criticism of the marginalist approach and reconstruction of the classical approach1. Introduction2. The quantities produced assumption3. The clash between the classical and marginalist approaches4. Sraffa and Wittgenstein: the problem of method in economics5. Sraffa and Keynes6. Summing up Chapter 3. The Sraffian Schools1. Introduction2. The critique of the marginalist theory3. The rediscovery of the classical approach4. The analytical contributions stemming from Sraffa5. The 'Ricardian' reconstruction: Pasinetti6. The 'Marxian' reconstruction: Garegnani7. The 'Smithian' reconstruction: Sylos Labini8. A preliminary evaluation of the three lines of enquiry9. Conclusions