ABSTRACT
Piero Sraffa had to leave Italy in the 1920s because his articles on reconstruction in Europe in the Manchester Guardian and the Italian banking crisis in the Economic Journal offended Mussolini. Sraffa was already a critic of orthodox economics, then represented by Marshall in England and Walras and Wicksell on the continent, and a Marxist in theory and action. He was a close friend of Gramsci; it was a typical Sraffa gesture, original and helpful, that he opened an unlimited credit account for Gramsci at a Milan bookshop when Mussolini imprisoned Gramsci.
