ABSTRACT
The stature of Piero Sraffa as one of the leading figures in the history of twentieth-century economics rests upon a number of foundations, though his various contributions are quite closely connected. One of these achievements is the rehabilitation of classical economics as an intellectual discipline of more than merely antiquarian interest. A part of this project was the reconstruction of the texts and meaning of Ricardo's political economy (Sraffa 1951–73). That great work is an enduring inspiration to all those who would seek similarly to recreate meticulously accurate texts from the history of ideas, and place them within an editorial apparatus that enables the reader to come to grips with their meaning and significance. This, it may be said, is one of the most thankless of scholarly tasks — and the original intellectual work involved is perhaps the easiest to plagiarize without detection! Although the beginnings of my own work on the history of what is commonly called ‘pre-Classical’ economics predates any very significant influence from Sraffa, it would be fair to say that there has been no greater single influence upon my own subsequent published work on that subject than Sraffa. From the point of view of Sraffa as historian of economics — in particular, as unflagging searcher of, and for, archives — it may be some small tribute to his memory for me here to outline some findings of my own, arising from searches of the so-called ‘Petty Papers’ archive, now in the British Library. In particular, I would like to draw out the significance of some new discoveries relevant to the surplus approach — and, hence, relevant to the beginning of the surplus approach, to the extent that Petty is the distinct origin of that tradition. 1
