Sraffa was hardly an unreconstructed Stalinist ("Andie" and I have gone over this, but I believe it was offlist). NONE of the large biographical literature on Sraffa even hints at this; NONE of the extensive tell-all Cambridge memoirs even hint at this (even from "secret cell" members); NONE of the now opened massive personal papers from Sraffa and the rest of his Cambridge colleagues (including the ones who were Stalinist) hint at this. None of the many people who saw his library write of a cache of Albanian literature. On the contrary, everything...everything points to what Sraffa obviously was: an extremely shy reclusive person who had left wing, non-communist, views that were not very specific about politics.
To lead people to think otherwise about Sraffa's personal political views could obscure the issues raised in his economic thought with false hints. Most would argue his work on value was inspired by Ricardo while a small group point to Marx's reproduction schemes. In any case we are far from Stalin never mind "orthodox" marxism (awful phrase).
It also might obscure some important lessons of history. Sraffa's youth was the era before the sectarian splintering of the left which intellectually we somewhat still suffer from. He interacted with Gramsci and the Italian CP as well as with his cousin Rosselli (of Bertolucci & Moravia's The Conformist) who were the forerunners of the Italian (non-marxist) Socialists. In those days that was normal and necessary -- strands of the left frequently supported and contributed to each other's thinking without necessarily having recourse to pigeon holes.
Paul
Andie N. writes:
>One of the benefits of having gone to King's College
>Cambridge is that someday I will be the subject of one
>of their famous annual witty bare-knuckles brutally
>honest no bullshit obits.
>
>My favorite line from one of these is from Piero
>Sraffa's obit; the author was reporting a conversation
>with Sraffa, politically an unreconstructed Stalinist,
>before Sir Anthony Blunt was identified as The Fourth
>Man (along with Burgess, Philby, and McLean). I
>paraphrase from memory. "Were you the Fourth man,
>Piero?" He made an inimitably Italian gesture, a sort
>of a shrug. "I forget which number I was."