ABSTRACT
We know almost nothing of Sraffa’s earliest contacts with economic science or with economic themes but we may guess that they date back to the period between 1911 and 1913, when, according to what he related to Alessandro Roncaglia, Domenico Re-his professor of Latin and Greek at the Ginnasio Giuseppe Parini in Milan-led him towards socialist ideals (Roncaglia 1980:171). Of course, also within his own family Sraffa could have had such an early approach: his father, Angelo Sraffa, a professor of commercial law, was certainly sensitive to the importance of the sphere of economic activity and of economic science;2 he was a good friend of important economists, Rector of the Bocconi University, and particularly active in the foundation of the Istituto di economia e scienze sociali of that university.3 Most probably, however, it was in Turin, between 1912 and 1916, with his schoolmates of the Liceo Massimo D’Azeglio, that Piero Sraffa approached economic themes and Marxist issues in particular somewhat more deeply.4 On this point we may refer to two testimonies. First, Paolo Vita-Finzi recalled the long discussions with Sraffa and other schoolmates and friends in Turin implying that many of them were oriented towards Marxist positions (never shared by Paolo Vita-Finzi) and came to support Soviet Russia (Vita-Finzi 1989:27, 318, 324-5). Second, Geoffrey Harcourt (who reported to the author of this chapter that the source of the information was Krishna Bharadwaj and that he is fairly certain that the events she related to him took place when Sraffa was not yet at the university but still at school) wrote:
Many of [Sraffa’s] student friends were Marxists but his teachers would not allow Marx or Marxist issues to be discussed explicitly in class. However, as a student, Sraffa read Ricardo’s Principles and discovered that much of what Ricardo had to say bore a close resemblance to what he had been reading in Marx’s work. As Ricardo was eminently respectable and
so acceptable to their teachers, Sraffa and his fellow students took to discussing Marxist issues under the guise of a study of Ricardo.
