Pasinetti's Ricardo after Sraffa: A reformulation based on Ricardo's 'early writings'

Abstract

Hobsbawm has written that historians, while drawing a clear-cut distinction between Marxists and non-Marxists and concerning themselves preferably with the former, have actually widened this group through the inclusion of a large selection of authors. This chapter explores that the establishment of a system of cooperative firms reversing the current capital-labour relation is tantamount to a revolution, in that it results in the introduction of a new production mode. It concerns the idea of a revolution enacted by peaceful and democratic means and in successive steps until worker-managed firms outnumber capitalistic companies fully compatible with the letter of Marx and Engels's writings. With specific regard to Rubel approach to the social order, Marxists fall into two broad divisions: those who describe socialism as a command economy founded on planning and those who assume that the correct Marxian view of a socialist economy is one which equates socialism with self-management.