REFERENCES

DE VIVO, G. (2003). Sraffa’s path to Production of Commodities by Means of Commodities. Aninterpretation. Contributions to Political Economy, Vol. 22, 1–25.

HERTZ, H. (1899). Principles of Mechanics, Macmillan, London.MONK, R. (1990). Ludwig Wittgenstein. The Duty of Genius, Vintage, London.SRAFFA, P. (1960). Production of Commodities by Means of Commodities, Cambridge University

Press, Cambridge.WITTGENSTEIN, L. (1953). Philosophical Investigations, Basil Blackwell, Oxford.

doi:10.1093/cpe/bzl006

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Ajit Sinha writes that I “attempt to read Sraffa’s project as a Marxist one”, and that the

“hook” on which I try to “hang” this contention is the interpretation of a passage from

some reflections on “Metaphysics”, to be found among Sraffa’s papers. I do not think

I have ever maintained that, in the work which led him to Production of Commodities by

Means of Commodities, Sraffa had a “Marxist project”: if he had a project at all, it was

that of formulating a critique of received economic doctrine, but this was so far

from being a Marxist project that he actually started, as I have shown in my paper,

from a rather important criticism of Marx, whom he accused of having “corrupt[ed]

the old idea of cost – from food to labour”. A “project” starting by criticizing

Marx’s theory of value could hardly be labelled as “Marxist project”: criticism of the

labour theory of value has always been anathema for Marxists. The work I have

done on Sraffa’s papers rather shows that Sraffa (somewhat to his own surprise I

think) in a sense discovered Marx as an economist in the course of his research

(though admittedly rather early), so that he would write that “the ultimate result”

of his own work would be “a restatement of Marx . . . simply a translation of

Marx into English”. Sinha maintains that in this remark Sraffa was not referring to

his work for the book, but rather “to his ‘Lectures’ dealing with the history of the the-

ories of value”. Sinha appears here to unwarrantedly draw a line completely separating

Sraffa’s work for the lectures from his work for the book, which went on at the same

time,8 and of course overlapped with it.9 Moreover, it seems to me that it would

8 A document of (probably) November 1927 shows that at that early stage Sraffa was working on what healready regarded as a book (see de Vivo, 2003, n. 2). It should be mentioned that my remark (de Vivo, 2000,p. 275 n. 40) that this document was probably misdated in Trinity’s catalogue of Sraffa’s papers, where it wasgiven as “November [1928]”, and that it should rather be attributed to November 1927, has now beenaccepted, and its date in the catalogue has been accordingly changed.

9 This of course as long as Sraffa’s work for the lectures lasted, i.e. until his resignation from theCambridge lecturership in 1931.

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have been rather strange to speak of “the ultimate result” of a course of lectures, and

even stranger to state that the lectures’ “result” would be “a restatement of Marx,

by substituting to his Hegelian metaphysics and terminology our own modern

metaphysics and terminology . . . simply a translation of Marx into English,

from the forms of Hegelian metaphysics to the form of Hume’s metaphysics”.

In any case, even if this remark applied to what Sraffa thought he would do in his lec-

tures, this would be totally consistent with my idea that—though not because of a pre-

conceived “project”—Sraffa came to see his work not only as a critique of received

economic doctrine, but also as a rehabilitation of Marx (and the Classical economists

of course). Sinha writes as if the only link I provide between Sraffa’s work for Production

of Commodities and Marx was the one found in Sraffa’s remarks in the few pages on

“Metaphysics” (whose relation to Production of Commodities he disputes), whereas

there is a wealth of materials which in many ways show that link. For this I must

refer the interested reader to my paper (de Vivo, 2003).

Sinha’s comments have the important merit of drawing attention to the fact that

in Sraffa’s papers there is a great amount that—though not strictly part of Sraffa’s

analytical work—must be seen in the right context to understand it; there are also

many interesting considerations on the foundations of economics, also in relation to

other sciences, especially physics, in which Sraffa seems to have had a keen interest,

particularly in his youth. This is the case with Sraffa’s remarks on “Metaphysics”,

which go beyond the few pages with this title quoted by Sinha, and which I had

myself briefly commented upon, in a paper which Sinha seems not to have seen.10

Sinha comments on other aspects of Sraffa’s remarks, also making the interesting

point (which I had not noticed) that Sraffa and Wittgenstein had both (independently,

it would seem) been attracted by Hertz’s remarks quoted by Sinha at the end of his

paper. Wittgenstein’s biographer has written that Wittgenstein’s interest for Hertz’s

Principles of Mechanics “suggest[s] an interest, not in mechanical engineering, nor

even, especially, in theoretical physics, but rather in the philosophy of science”

(Monk, 1990, p.26). This, mutatis mutandis, could be said of Sraffa as well.

REFERENCES

DE VIVO, G. (2000). Produzione di merci a mezzo di merci: Note sul percorso intellettuale diSraffa, in Piero Sraffa. Contributi per una biografia intellettuale, edited by M. Pivetti,Carocci, Rome.

DE VIVO, G. (2003). Sraffa’s path to Production of Commodities by Means of Commodities. Aninterpretation, Contributions to Political Economy, 22, pp. 1–25.

MONK, R. (1990). Ludwig Wittgenstein. The Duty of Genius, Vintage, London.

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10 See de Vivo (2000), p. 273 n.

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