Piero Sraffa

This is a lively, intellectual biography of a leading protagonist of 20th century culture and his relations with other protagonists, such as Gramsci, Keynes and Wittgenstein. The book includes an authoritative interpretation of his main work Production of Commodities by Means of Commodities, a survey of the debates which followed its publication, and hence of the subsequent research strategies undertaken by different 'Sraffian schools'

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