Beyond Capitalism: Sraffa's Economic Theory

The transition between chapter one of Sraffa’s book and the following chapters marks only a huge difference in so far as the existence of a surplus and the problem arising from it are concerned. But no discontinuity exists as soon as the role played by production prices is concerned. The problem of viability, so fundamental for any community, must concern any economic system, with or without a surplus. The latter interpretation must be contrasted to the usual one made by most Sraffians, according to which production prices should be considered as ‘centres of gravitation’ for market prices. This interpretation is based on the assumption that the economy implicitly considered when a surplus is supposed to exist be necessarily a ‘capitalistic’ economy, in which the agents are characterized by some defined maximizing behaviour. On further reflection, however, one soon realizes that the logic at the basis of production prices is radically different from that characterizing market prices. The former is based on the holistic objective of the ‘viability’ of the economy as a whole, the latter, instead, is based on the maximization of individual objectives. The ‘reconstructed’ theory of value of Production of Commodities by means of Commodities does differ from the neoclassical theory of value because Sraffa had in mind a completely different structure of the society with respect to the one envisaged by the Postclassical (Neoclassical) economists.