This book presents a substantial collection of essays from a wide range of well respected scholars addressing several aspects of Piero Sraffa’s economics in light of continuing controversies over the interpretation that should be placed on his work. It moves beyond extant scholarship with an added emphasis on the philosophical dimension of Sraffa’s seminal work, Production of Commodities by Means of Commodities. Contributors probe new ways of thinking about the political economy of Sraffa and in doing so, alongside the comments to each contribution by other scholars, provide a cutting edge debate and discussion on non-mainstream economic theory. This book will be of interest to academics and advanced graduate students in economics, with additional interest from scholars in philosophy and the methodology of science.

This book presents a substantial collection of essays from a wide range of well respected scholars addressing several aspects of Piero Sraffa's economics in light of continuing controversies over the interpretation that should be placed on his work. It moves beyond extant scholarship with an added emphasis on the philosophical dimension of Sraffa's seminal work, Production of Commodities by Means of Commodities. Contributors probe new ways of thinking about the political economy of Sraffa and in doing so, alongside the comments to each contribution by other scholars, provide a cutting edge debate and discussion on non-mainstream economic theory. This book will be of interest to academics and advanced graduate students in economics, with additional interest from scholars in philosophy and the methodology of science.

This book draws on the work of one of the sharpest minds of the 20th century, Piero Sraffa. Ludwig Wittgenstein credited him for 'the most consequential ideas' of the Philosophical Investigations (1953) and put him high on his short list of geniuses. Sraffa's revolutionary contribution to economics was, however, lost to the world because economists did not pay attention to the philosophical underpinnings of his economics. Based on exhaustive archival research, Sinha presents an exciting new thesis that shows how Sraffa challenged the usual mode of theorizing in terms of essential and mechanical causation and, instead, argued for a descriptive or geometrical theory based on simultaneous relations. A consequence of this approach was a complete removal of 'agent's subjectivity' and 'marginal method' or counterfactual reasoning from economic analysis – the two fundamental pillars of orthodox economic theory.

This book accounts for the work done around the two central aspects of Piero Sraffa's contribution to economic analysis, namely the criticism of the neoclassical theory of value and distribution and the construction of economic theory along the lines of the Classical approach.

This book aims to show how Sraffa's theoretical contributions could be pursued in new directions, in effect providing an alternative paradigm to the postclassical economic theory and challenging the persistent dominance of a widespread economic culture based on that theory.

The papers collected in this book, first published in 1990, represent the edited proceedings of a conference held to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the publication of Piero Sraffa’s Production of Commodities by Means of Commodities. In arranging the conference, and subsequently during the editing of the papers, great care has been taken to invite scholars of different schools of thought to contribute. The result of this collection of ideas has resulted in a most promising critique and provides an extensive alternative to modern Neo-Classical theory, of interest to all students of economic thought.

This collection contains wide ranging contributions from distinguished authorities in economics, reflecting on Ian Steedman's work on time, international trade, capital theory and prices and growth and distribution.