Towards a New Understanding of Sraffa: Insights from Archival Research PDF
Preview Towards a New Understanding of Sraffa: Insights from Archival Research
Towards a New Understanding of Sraffa This page intentionally left blank Towards a New Understanding of Sraffa Insights from Archival Research Edited by Riccardo Bellofiore University of Bergamo, Italy and Scott Carter The University of Tulsa, USA Editorial, selection and introduction © Riccardo Bellofi ore and Scott Carter 2014 Individual chapters © Contributors 2014 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2014 978-1-137-03431-1 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6–10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The authors have asserted their rights to be identified as the authors of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2014 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries ISBN 978-1-349-44176-1 ISBN 978-1-137-03432-8 (eBook) DOI 10.1057/9781137034328 This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. Contents List of Illustrations v ii Acknowledgements v iii Notes on Contributors i x List of Abbreviations x i 1 Introduction 1 Riccardo Bellofiore and Scott Carter 2 Surprise in the Archive: Reactions to Sraffa’s Papers 9 Jonathan Smith Part I 3 On the Neoricardian Criticism of Irrelevance 25 Dario Preti 4 Sraffa and the Standard Commodity 47 Scott Carter Comment on Preti and Carter 69 Pier Luigi Porta Response to Porta 75 Scott Carter Part II 5 A New Perspective on Sraffa 81 Ajit Sinha 6 The Standard System and the Tendency of the (Maximum) Rate of Profit to Fall – Marx and Sraffa: There and Back 9 4 Stefano Perri Comment on Sinha and Perri: Hamlet without the Prince: Sraffa (and Marx) without Competition 121 Andrea Salanti v vi Contents A Response to the Comments by Professor Salanti 130 Ajit Sinha A Note on Professor Salanti’s Comments 133 Stefano Perri Part III 7 The Essentiality of Money in the Sraffa Papers 1 39 Ghislain Deleplace 8 The Positive Surplus Hypothesis: Social versus Physical Objectivity 167 Jean Cartelier Comment On Surplus and Money in Sraffa: A Comment on Cartelier and Deleplace 186 Guglielmo Chiodi 9 The Loneliness of the Long Distance Thinker: Sraffa, Marx, and the Critique of Economic Theory 1 98 Riccardo Bellofiore Archival Index 241 Index 2 45 List of Illustrations Figures 3.1 Structure of the labour theory of value 39 3.2 Profit rate as an increasing function of daily working time 39 4.1 The ‘coincident ratio’ across three realms of economic inquiry 5 3 6.1 The maximum and the actual rates of profit 1 11 6.2 Profitable change of technique with increasing organic composition of capital 1 12 6.3 Non profitable change of technique with increasing organic composition of capital 1 14 6.4 Sraffa’s model of the falling rate of profit 1 15 6.5 Foley and Michl’s model of the falling rate of profit 1 16 8.1 Monetary relations 1 81 Table 8.1 Flows of payments 1 82 vii Acknowledgements The editors and collaborators wish to thank the Hyman P. Minsky Department of Economics, University of Bergamo, for having partially financed the conference ‘The Other Sraffa: Surprises in the Archive?’ held 21–22 December 2010, on the occasion of the 50th year of the publica- tion of Production of Commodities by Means of Commodities. We also thank Annalisa Cristini, Head of the Department, for her welcome address. Simona Locatelli provided efficient organisational support, before, during and after the conference. The present book originated in that conference, although the papers presented there have been rewritten, thanks to the lively discussion. Without the help of Jonathan Smith and the staff at the Wren Library during our visits to the Sraffa Papers and Sraffa Collection of books at the Wren Library (Trinity College, Cambridge) most of the papers here would have been impossible to write. To that end we also thank Piero Sraffa’s Literary Executor Lord Eatwell for permission to quote hitherto unpublished archival mate- rial from the Sraffa Papers. We are also very thankful to Taiba Batool and Ania Wronski at Palgrave Macmillan for their encouragement and understanding, and to Linda Allegro and Giovanna Vertova for their patience. Last but not least we wish to thank the contributors for their forbearance in the period this book was coming into shape. Finally we would like to thank Vidhya Jayaprakash and the Production Team at Palgrave Macmillan for their hard work and patience in putting this volume together. viii Notes on Contributors Riccardo B ellofiore is Professor of Political Economy at the University of Bergamo, Italy. He teaches monetary economics, history of economic thought, international monetary economics, and advanced macroeco- nomics. His current research interests include economics of globaliza- tion, money manager capitalism and the current crisis, endogenous approaches to money, Marxian theory, and economic philosophy. He has edited books on Marx, Minsky, Luxemburg, Kalecki, globalization and labour, and the Great Recession. He has recently published ‘The ‘tiresome objector’ and Old Moor: a renewal of the debate on Marx after Sraffa based on the unpublished material at the Wren Library’ in the Cambridge Journal of Economics (2012). Jean Cartelier is Emeritus Professor, University of Paris-Ouest. Scott Carter is Associate Professor of Economics at The University of Tulsa in Tulsa, Oklahoma. He has published in the J ournal of Post Keynesian Economics, Review of Political Economy, The Journal of the History of Economic Thought, and The American Journal of Economics and Sociology . He has most recently published ‘Sraffa and the “Corrected” organic composition of capital’, in S. Levero, A. Palumbo, and A. Stirati (eds.) Sraffa and the Reconstruction of Economic Theory, Volume Three: Sraffa’s Legacy: Interpretations and Historical Perspectives (2013) and ‘From “pool of profits” to surplus and deficit industries: Archival evidence on the evolu- tion of Piero Sraffa’s thought’, Research in Political Economy, 2014. Guglielmo Chiodi is Professor of Economics at the University of Rome “La Sapienza”. He conducted research work over several years at the University of Cambridge and has been Visiting Professor at the European University Institute of Fiesole. He has published articles in theoretical economics and is the author of Wicksell’s Monetary Theory (1991) and co-editor of Sraffa or An Alternative Economics (2008). Ghislain D eleplace is Emeritus Professor of Economics at the University Paris 8 – Saint-Denis (France). His main interests are the history of mone- tary theory and the history of the metallic-standard monetary regimes. He published recently articles on the monetary theories of Ricardo, Bentham, and Marshall, and authored a second edition of Histoire de ix
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