A comment on Sraffa’s ‘classical economics’

This paper tells the story of how Sraffa’s interpretation of classical economics, particularly Ricardo, closely follows the developments of his own theoretical project that culminated in his book, Production of Commodities by Means of Commodities, in 1960. It highlights some early movements in Sraffa’s position on classical economics and then a major shift in his position on Ricardo in the ‘Introduction’ to Ricardo’s Principles in 1951. It brings forward archival evidence to suggest that Sraffa’s new interpretation of Ricardo was perhaps influenced by his attempt to prove his ‘Hypothesis’ that the output/capital ratio of a given economic system remains constant with respect to changes in the rate of profits. This hypothesis as such, however, had nothing to do with Ricardo’s problem of the ‘invariable measure of value’. The paper concludes by pointing out that as early as 1927–28, Sraffa had set himself a task of constructing a homogenous understanding of classical economics in terms of modern terminology that would be helpful in understanding their scope from the point of view of his own theoretical project. Our story told here fits well with the task Sraffa had set himself at the beginning of his project.