ABSTRACT
Piero Sraffa's Production of Commodities by Means of Commodities (PCMC) is not the only work at the root of the recent revival of interest in classical economics, but, from an analytical point of view, it is probably the most solid one. Twenty-five years after its publication, it insistently reveals itself as what the author claimed: a necessary prelude to further work; and in two directions: as a critique of current economic theory, and as a reconstruction of economics along the lines of 'the old classical economist'. PCMC thus emerges as one crucial piece in what is still regarded by many as the great puzzle of an approach to economic reality that, by going back to the foundations of classical economics, can reasonably claim to be an alternative to the approach that has become prevalent among economists since the end of the nineteenth century.
