Ramsey and Keynes...and Sraffa and Wittgenstein: Change in Interwar Cambridge Economics and Policy

The Ramsey-Keynes exchange regarding the nature of probability is investigated in connection with the development of interwar Cambridge economics and Ramsey and Sraffa’s influences on Keynes and Wittgenstein. First discussed are Ramsey’s criticisms of Keynes and Wittgenstein; then Sraffa’s criticisms of Marshall and Wittgenstein. Ramsey was influenced by Peirce and pragmatism and Sraffa by Gramsci and the theory of cultural hegemony. Ramsey died in 1930 but Sraffa continued to interact with both Keynes and Wittgenstein. After his critique of Marshall he participated in the ‘Cambridge circus’ and turned to recovering the Classical economics of Ricardo. Keynes’s General Theory statement of what the essence of his theory was and Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations distinction between rules of language and language-games both parallel Sraffa’s Classical outside forces operating in the economic field argument and Gramsci’s state power and non-state institutions view. Keynes and Wittgenstein determined the nature of interwar Cambridge economics and philosophy. Ramsey and Sraffa were instigators of this change.