The Standard Commodity

Abstract

Despite the apparent convictions of many commentators and the relatively great number of pages devoted to them, the standard commodity and the standard system do not represent the central nucleus and principal objectives of Production of Commodities by Means of Commodities. Rather, they simply represent — together with joint production and fixed capital — ‘particular points’ in the general problem of the relationship between prices of production and the distributive variables, as Sraffa himself indicates in his Preface (Sraffa 1960: vi). These ‘particular points’ are obviously not simply accessories. However, they do not imply substantial modifications to the ‘central propositions’ regarding the system of relative prices developed on the basis of a very simple analytical scheme, such as that presented by Sraffa in the first three chapters of his book.