#sraffa

History

Classical Political Economy (The age of Ricardo) or A. Smith?

from Petty to Ricardo.

Right concept[ion] (fundamental assumptions)

primitive, rudimentary technique

(A. Smith had strong “vulgar” tendencies: he can truly be said to be the “founder of modern economics”!)

Vulgar Political Economy (the age of Mill)

From Malthus to Stuart Mill

All wrong here: they have the wrong conceptions of modern economics and the rudimentary technique of the classical

Period dominated by Mill: Marx stands here towering as the last of the classical amongst the vulgar, just as Smith stood isolated among the classicals, being the first of the vulgars.

Economics [(the age of Marshall)], since Jevons + Co, and Marshall

Highly refined technique, rotten conceptions and fundam. assumptions

But technique so highly perfected that sometimes compels them unconsciously to modify their conscious assumptions (justly contradicting themselves) and thus reaching partially true conclusions

What had happened in the meantime, to change so much the mind of the economists, and induce them to scrap all that had been done up to that time? (It was in fact scrapping the whole: Jevons, Preface, + Cannan, Theories, 379–383, “must be visited with almost unqualified condemnation” are right, from the point of view of Economics).

Socialism has been the cause of all this. In fact, classical P. E., with its surplus to be arbitrarily divided, leads straight to Socialism. When after the death of Ricardo the first timid attempts of using socialistically his Theory of value were made (Hodgskin, Thompson: the were misguided if (?) they used the moral argument that labour produces everything as Proudhon, but not Marx did), Senior + Mill + Cairnes fol rallyied to the defense by making cost psychological.

But when the mass attack of Marx, and the threat of the rampant International [and the Paris Commune] came, simultan a much more drastic defence was called for: not only sacrifice, but utility, ‒ and simultaneously J. M. W. and their success. The classical economy was becoming too dangerous as a whole, it had to be scrapped bodily. It was a burning house which threatened to set to fire the whole structure and foundations of capitalist society ‒ it was forthwith removed.

Tavolozza

But later, having been advocated by Marx to beat the capitalists, it was necessary for the defenders of the present system to devise a new theory, the utility theory of value.

As to Ricardo, it should not be thought that he was consciously biassed in his theory, that he was the champion of the rising capitalist against the landlord. This accusation was raised in his face in parliament (see Cannan, Ricardo in Parliament, Ec. J. 1892) and he succesfully cleared it out [away] by showing that in fact his property mainly consisted of land. It is of course not necessary for an economist to belong to a given class, or to have private interests at stake bound with that class in order that he should be crossed. It is enough for him to believe that one is a progressive class, that its success will be in the interest of majori community as a whole to justify him.

As to Marx, the fact that the utility theory of value had been found several times before (by Cournot, Dupuit, Gossen) and had fallen flat, while when it was again almost simultaneousley published by Jevons, Menger and Walras in the years immediately following the publication of Vol I of Capital, found suddenly a large body of opinion prepared to accept it and support it, is significant enough (Ashley, Present Pos. of P. E., Ec. J. 1910?)