[lbo-talk] Open Letter from a Keynesian to a Marxist by Joan Robinson

Michael Pollak mpollak at panix.com
Tue Jul 19 07:52:24 PDT 2011


On Mon, 18 Jul 2011, Doug Henwood wrote:


> I've tried several times to read Sraffa and was bored to death.

One of Michael Perelman's best passages IMHO is his "Appendix on Prices," pp. 62-65 of his first book _Farming For Profit In A Hungry World_ where he sums up the point of Sraffa in 3 pages and presents it as something that would interest you: that prices don't measure scarcity. (And instead measure "what Marx termed 'the respective powers of the combatants.'")

I can't personally vouch for it being Sraffa, but if Michael invented it himself, then even more credit to him. It's very clear stand-alone piece of logical argument that, unlike Sraffa, is very easy to take in.

Michael



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