Critique of the Marginalist Approach

Abstract

As already noted, Sraffa aims at a complete turnaround in economic science, rejecting the dominant marginalist approach and proposing in its place the classical economists’ approach, though modified so as to take Keynes’s contributions into account. The first step he takes in the direction of his critique of the marginalist approach is to tackle the Marshallian variety that dominated the academic teaching of economics both in Italy and England (Sraffa 1925, 1926, 1930). The second step is taken with his critical edition of Ricardo’s writings (Ricardo 1951–5), where the conceptual framework and the analytical scheme constituting the foundations of classical political economy are re-proposed, cleared from the misinterpretations superimposed on it in nearly a century of marginalism. Finally, the third and analytically decisive step is the publication, in 1960, of Production of Commodities by Means of Commodities: an analysis of the relationship between relative prices and income distribution that provides both a solution to fundamental problems left unsolved by classical theorists and the basis for an internal critique of the traditional marginalist theories of value and distribution.