The Sraffian Contribution: An Evaluation

Abstract

Ronald Meek wrote one of the most perceptive reviews of Piero Sraffa’s 1960 classic, Production of Commodities by Means of Commodities.2 The perception started with the title, ‘Mr Sraffa’s rehabilitation of Classical economics’ and continued through to the last part (IV). There, Meek was the first to discern the connection between Sraffa’s standard system and commodity and Marx’s average industry — ‘an industry in which the “organic composition of capital” is equal to the “social average” ’ (1967, p. 176). In particular, Meek considered the roles that they respectively played in a theory of the origin of profits in the capitalist mode of production and the correct meaning to be given to the labour theory of value in the Classical, Marxist tradition: ‘One very important feature of Sraffa’s analysis remains to be commented upon — his implied rehabilitation of the Classical labour theory of value in something very like the form which it assumed in the hands of Marx’ (Meek, 1967, p. 175). While with hindsight we now might feel that the emphasis in Meek’s account lent too much towards the aspect of relative prices and too little towards the aspect of the origin of profits — non-labour incomes — in the capitalist mode of production, there is no doubt that Meek was far closer to Sraffa’s intent than were most reviewers.