The Means of Subsistence and the Notion of ‘Viability’ in Sraffa’s Surplus Approach

No specific attention has been generally devoted to the notion of ‘viability’ of a system in economic theory. Hawkins and Simon (1949) offered a crude and rough approximation of that notion within the linear production models framework à la Leontief. The subsequent works by Gale (1960) and Pasinetti (1977) should also be mentioned, for they contributed in rendering more transparent and more analytically refined that notion. However, it was only with Sraffa (1960) that a radically different notion of ‘viability’ explicitly entered the economic literature. It included, in a systematic and characterizing way (as opposed to the analogous and highly disputable treatment made by the above mentioned writers), the notion of ‘productive consumption’ and therefore the corresponding notion of ‘sustenance’ for the workers, along the lines previously traced by the old classical economists and by Marx. These notions are the essential ingredients of the far more important conception of ‘human subsistence and reproduction’, which is at the basis of the alternative Sraffian ‘surplus approach’ and the connected production price theory.