Last modified: 2018-06-20
Abstract
The origins of the equations which form the structure of Piero Sraffa’s 1960 book Production of Commodities by means of Commodities have already been approached during the two decades that have followed the opening of the papers of Piero Sraffa to the public of scholars and the answers put forward have been different and sometimes contrasting.
A first interpretation indicated Marx’s Theories of Surplus Value and the reproduction schemes contained in the second volume of Marx’s Capital as Sraffa’s main source of inspiration. A subsequent interpretation called attention on Sraffa’s reading of contemporary economists, on his interest in natural sciences, notably physics and chemistry, and on his interest in objectively based descriptions of economic processes. Thirdly, it has been argued that Sraffa’s equations were an offspring of an endogenous evolution that his critical analysis of Marshallian economics went through in summer 1927.
The former two interpretations are crucially based on recognition of similarities between the equations Sraffa started to develop in late 1927 and specific passages in books or articles he certainly knew. None of these reconstructions, however, is supported by pointing to manuscripts produced by Sraffa himself in the specific processes which would have led him to write the earliest formulations of his equations. The third interpretation, on the other hand, indicates some manuscripts as crucial steps of that process.
In our view, the latter approach is methodologically stronger than the others, and the abovementioned recognition of similarities should be read as leading evidence only if reconstructions more directly searching for relevant manuscripts in the Sraffa Papers had proven unfruitful. Indeed, even though we have already argued that the list of manuscripts which have been singled out to substantiate the third hypothesis is largely unsatisfactory, we believe that that approach can be positively developed.
This paper points to new evidence relevant to the reconstruction of the path which led Sraffa to conceive his equations. Its focus is directed to single out the closest spring which led Sraffa to write his equations and the earliest extant drafts of those equations. The latter have been identified in four manuscripts most probably dating to late November 1927; the former has been identified in some pages of Sraffa’s manuscript “Notes London, Summer 1927 (Physical Real Costs etc.)”, and, in particular, in a note which pointed at the case of “a community that produces just what is sufficient to keep it going”.