ABSTRACT
If rhetoric means a flowering, even bombastic prose, Sraffa's text represents the opposite: well worded, but extremely dense, it renounces all redundant expressions that writers use to add some flavour to an abstract argument. As has often been remarked, the density of this text is so high that generations of followers have worked on it without exhausting the possibilities of interpretation, yet the number of pages is less than 100 so that the length of Production of Commodities by Means of Commodities corresponds to that of a pamphlet rather than to that of a treatise. But if rhetoric means a style of arguing, consciously chosen with the aim of convincing the reader, the term is appropriate here. It is fascinating to see how Sraffa educates his readers to follow a certain manner of thinking. He seduces his readers, his opponents might say. ‘A wicked book, ought to be burnt’, said Robertson after having seen the proofs prior to publication, according to Sraffa himself (Kurz and Salvadori 2001: 262).
