Sraffa and Robinson Subversive professors

Scan page 11

Socialist Labour Socialist Fight the Join the ORGANISER Party ORGANISER fritet Get SOCIALIST ORGANISER each week delivered to PIERO Sraffa died recently. He was not famous, and most Socialist , Organiser readers will not have heard of him.

Yet he was one of the most important and influential intellectual figures of this century.

He was the closest friend of the great Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci.

Ludwig Wittgenstein, the most celebrated philosopher of this century (in the English-speaking world, at least) credited his most important ideas to discussions with Sraffa.

For J M Keynes, who wrought revolution in bourgeois economics, Sraffa was also a maior influence one of five or six people who helped shape the 'Keynesian' critique of what was capitalist orthoeconomics and in Marxist economics. Throughout these controversies Sraffa was silent.

was on them.

in Turin, Italy. As a student, he became a socialist, then a sympathiser or member doxy up to the 1930s.

And Sraffa himself also initiated a whole new school of thought in economics. slipping the academic Sraffa was so cautious about reticence in which he would live for the rest of his life. committing himself that he In a letter which Gramsci wrote very little.

His revolution in economics printed and replied to in the is contained in a small book, 'Production of Commodities Nuovo, Sraffa wrote: by Means of Commodities' absent from political life. published in 1960. It took him there is nothing to be done over 30 years to write. It has been followed by tremendous (about the political situation) controversy both in academic except to wait for it to pass...

I do not feel that my (opinion) is incompatible with being a Communist (though a nonwords: "This letter contains all the necessary and sufficient elements to liquidate a revolutionary organisation such as our party is and must be...

But the two men remained friendly. When Gramsci was in Mussolini's jails from 1926 most regularly corresponded with him, sell inte books, and pressed for his release.

to Britain in 1927. From then until he died he was a lecturer No one knows what his opinion™ Sraffa was born in 1898, of the Italian Communist By 124, bowever he mis Communist • paper Ordine Wittgenstein: he said discussions with Sraffa made him feel "like a "The working class is totally tree from which all branches had been cut...

all her life, she was a gadfly - helping to shape and promote every critical, radical idea that came along, from Keynes's to Sraffa's.

Gramsci did not mince • In her 'Essay on Marxian Economics' (1942) she argued that many of Marx's ideas were useful but his basic theory of value was wrong.

More recently, some would be critical Marxists have used Sraffa's. ideas to argue the same conclusions against 1934, it was Sraffa who Marx's theory of value. Sraffa's technical analysis of prices and profits (so the argument goes) can replace value theory Meanwhile Sraffa had moved without damage to the rest of Marxist economics, and in fact shows the value theory Cambridge University, to be metaphysical and imprecise.

Whether Sraffa himself His 1960 book as its agreed with this use of his ideas is unclear. Joan Robinson wrote in 1977, 'Piero has always stuck close to pure unadulterated Marx, and regards my amendments with suspicion' Were Sraffa and Robinson victims of the Stalinist regression which for a :hole epoch stymied official 'Marxism' and cut off the possibility of a fruitful interaction between Sraffa himself, typically, the militant workers' movement and the most critical, enlightened strands in bourge- and perhaps most notably ois thought?

I'm not sure: it is difficult to see how even the most healthy workers' movement Joan Robinson, also a Camcould have integrated them intellectual and political simi- into a real dialogue.

Their careers do however was a tireless, prolific writer, illustrate how false the idea La vocal enthusiast for is that Marx completed the all sorts of causes - particu- critique of bourgeois theory 100 years ago and nothing In the world academic, new is to be expected from that quarter.

LUM 1941 By Harry Keat's Stoan appeal to Will inti for months; £8.50 for Please send me .... months' sub, I To: Socialist Organiser, 28, Middle