On the Theoretical Consistency of Sraffa’s Economics

This piece is an entirely original challenge to Piero Sraffa’s economic theory. In the overall debate, the initiative always remained with the neo-Ricardians as they were the ones to attack and the Marxists to defend. No one else has, to our knowledge, ever questioned the internal consistency of Sraffian theory. There was almost a silent understanding between the two sides that Sraffian theory was impeccable on its own grounds. This article forms an exception to that universal consensus. It argues that whether distribution is fixed in terms of the wage or the rate of profit, and further on whether the wage itself is fixed in physical terms or as a price, in all three cases there is nothing that would act to make the wage rate to be consistent with the survival of the workers, a condition that would be expected of any economic theory but also shown textually here to be one of the assumptions of Sraffa’s own system. Thus, Sraffa’s system is internally inconsistent. This deals a serious blow to the claim of the neo-Ricardians that Sraffa’s theory is superior to that of Marx because while it is itself perfectly consistent, Marx’s is contradictory through and through.