Date: Tue, 23 Apr 1996 17:00:59 -0400 (EDT)
From: Justin Schwartz <jschwart-AT-freenet.columbus.oh.us>
Subject: Re: histoire du marxisme


On Tue, 23 Apr 1996 glevy-AT-acnet.pratt.edu wrote:

> Justin Schwartz wrote:
> 
> > Sraffa is a giant, towering in Marxist
> > economics, even if his neo-Ricardianism is ulrimately indefensible.
> 
> Although a personal friend of Gramsci, Sraffa never considered himself to 
> be a Marxist economist. In contrast, many followers of the "surplus 
> approach" school consider themselves to be Marxians.

Perhaps you are right about what S considered himself. When I was at
Cambridge I had a friend who had S as an advisor who said taht in his
rooms he had the collected works of Marx, Engelsm Lenin, and Stalin, all
heavily annotated, and that it was his impression that S was a pretty
unrepentant Stalinist. In S's obituary in the King's College mag, which I
get as an alum of King's, the author tells a story that goes something
like this. Around the time of the "Fourth Man" controvery--who was the
Fourth Man, apart from Kilby, Burgess, and MacLean, among the Cambridge
spies (it turned out to be Anthony Blunt, the art historian)--the author
asked S if he was the fourth man. S waved his hands in some Italian
gesture and said, I forget which number I was. Of course this is only
evidence that S was a Commie, not that he was a Marxist economist. But
there are Sraffian MArxists, surely. And whether or not S considered his
work to be Marxist, it can be regarded as a contribution to Marxist economics.

--Justin




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