Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book provides the next generation fighting against the destructive effects of financialized, neoliberal, global capitalism a third choice: A modern, rigorous, logically sound, and profoundly radical version of Sraffian economics. It compares the Marxian and Sraffian theories of prices. The book argues that not only are labor values unnecessary, i.e. redundant, they also mislead analysts about the process of price formation in capitalism. It presents the Marxian and Sraffian theories of profits. Explaining the origin of profits is an important issue in radical political economy. The book compares Marxian theories of crises with post-Keynesian, neo-Kaleckian, Minskyan, and structualist theories which share a methodological framework with Sraffian microeconomic theory. It explains why the labor theory of value is ill-suited to integrating inputs from the natural environment into our analysis, and shows how Sraffian theory is well suited to this important task.