Towards a New Understanding of Sraffa

Towards a New Understanding of Sraffa examines the legacy of Piero Sraffa by approaching his ideas in a new light, thanks to the insights gained from the opening of the archive collection of his papers at the Wren Library (Trinity College, Cambridge, UK). It provides a refreshing perspective into Sraffa's approach to money, the role of equilibrium and of the surplus in economic theory. The study is backed by previously unpublished, original, archival material. It provides an appraisal of the discontinuities in the path leading the publication in 1960 of Production of Commodities by Means of Commodities since its conception in the late 1920s. It unlocks significant new perspectives about the connection of Sraffa to Marx regarding standard commodity, the macro-social and monetary theory of exploitation, the tendency of the rate of profit to fall, and the transformation of values into prices of production. It also offers insights on how Sraffa dealt with money in the various phases of his thinking, and explores his ideas about the role of equilibrium and of the surplus in economic theory. It concludes with an account of some recent Sraffa scholarship and points towards future research avenues.