Sraffa

[red eck]

I noticed this thread at Crooked Timber:

http://crookedtimber.org/2009/11/02/facts-and-values/

I was wondering if Sraffa's work is considered a valuable contribution towards Marxism/Historical Materialism and if it is consistent with G.A Cohen's 'Karl Marx's Theory of History'?

Sraffa is very interesting, and I would to know what lasting impacts he has made on today's economics.

[Paul Cockshott]

He made a significant impact within marxist economics in the 60s and 70s. There was a general move in the mid 20th century towards the use of large systems of linear equations to describe the economy. Arguably it was the experience of Gosplan that drove this, but we see it in the work of von Neumann, Leontief, Lange and Sraffa. Sraffa made the biggest impact in the West.
His book is extraordinarily elegant and concise, which must be one of the reasons for his appeal.
Sraffas intention, indicated in the title, is a critique of neo-classical economics. Unfortunately he was misinterpreted by some others as doing a ciritique of the labour theory of value which was not his intention( see the work of Steedman). The key theoretical issue is whether the profit rate actually equilibrates or not. If it does not, then the price theory in volume 1 of Kapital is basically right.

Empirical work by a number of economists in the 80s and 90s showed that the rate of profit does not equilibrate and that in consequence the real price structure of a capitalist economy is as well approximated by labour values as it is by Sraffian prices.

[rararoadrunner]

Comrades:

I'm so glad that this discussion thread has been opened: to me, Sraffa merits at least a Nobel, if not a Lenin, prize in economics.

It is true that some, such as Ian Steedman, have argued that Sraffa's analysis renders the Labour Theory of Value redundant; others such as Robert Langston counter that, since Sraffa fails to respond to Marx' critique of Ricardo, limiting his work to dealing with Ricardo's self-criticism, Sraffa's work was dated before it began.

I am of the opinion, shared by Alfredo Medio, E.K. Hunt (following Medio's lead) and others that one can apply Marx's critique to Sraffa's analysis in order to arrive at a method for analysing the workings of capitalism.

I would go further, however: I agree with Richard Goodwin that, precisely because Sraffa fleshes out Ricardo's analysis before the application of Marx' critique of it, it can be used, not only to analyse the inner workings of capitalism, but as a guide for planning the development of socialism into communism: Goodwin analysed this point in "Swinging Along the Turnpike With von Neumann and Sraffa," and I've written about it in "A Theory of Industrial Imbalances and Investments" (which I've been working on since 1986, and for which I'm seeking a publisher: it's about as long as Sraffa's "Production of Commodities By Means of Commodities," with three appendices, a few tables, and one illustration. An earlier version was intended for a special value theory issue of Review of Radical Political Economics; I've since submitted it twice to Monthly Review, but they have other things going. It's undergone numerous revisions, the last of which updates it to reflect the current economic crisis. Can anyone suggest a publisher?)

Hope I can be of some help to this discussion: hasta pronto, y a la victoria, siempre, MKO.

PS: I too detected a close kinship between Sraffa's tables of Basic Industries and the input-output matrices of Vasili Leontiev: I also noted how these input-output matrices can enrich the studies of economic cycles of Simon Kuznets, Nikolai Kondratiev, etc. once one comes to see, as Goodwin and I (among others, I suspect) did, that the Standard Commodity (I prefer the term "Standard Product" to emphasise its generality across modes of production) meets the conditions, not only of Marx's Capital of Average Composition, but of von Neumann's growth-optimum mix of means of production, or "Turnpike."

I offered "A Theory of Industrial Imbalances and Investments" to Soviet planners shortly after I wrote it (Appendix B reflects this thinking; they paid no attention to it, and look where they are now, lol!) as well as to the Venezuelan Ivenplan (Appendix C reflects this: no response there either, yet...) I will continue to offer it to serious socialist economists, but seek a publisher by means of which to do so...

[cyu]

to me, Sraffa merits at least a Nobel, if not a Lenin, prize in economics.

Funny you should mention that. I don't know if you've seen this, but here's an excerpt from Reagan's Assistant Secretary of the Treasury http://www.counterpunch.com/roberts10072009.html -

"If Karl Marx and V. I. Lenin were alive today, they would be leading contenders for the Nobel Prize in economics."