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2021 | OriginalPaper | Buchkapitel

3. On Sraffa’s Challenge to Causality in Economics

verfasst von : Maria Cristina Marcuzzo, Annalisa Rosselli

Erschienen in: A Reflection on Sraffa’s Revolution in Economic Theory

Verlag: Springer International Publishing

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Abstract

The opening of Sraffa’s Archives has given the opportunity to unveil what is behind the published works, giving clues to interpret them. Among the contributions which are found in his unpublished papers, there are those related to Sraffa’s challenge to causality in economics. We argue that Sraffa’s entire research project is a struggle to escape from mechanical, i.e. causal theory, and to develop a geometrical representation of the economic structure. While a geometrical theory refers to an instant in time and is concerned with logical relations, a mechanical theory refers to processes that happen in real time, in which causality is involved. The reasons of why he embarked in such a project are complex and possibly related to his early beliefs that the requirements for causal explanations—like those which are met in physics—are too stringent to be applicable in economics, whose causes are often of metaphysical (and therefore ideological) nature. Unlike neoclassical economics, Sraffa held that change in economic realities hardly ever manifested itself in the form of infinitesimal variations in magnitudes that leave the overall structure unchanged. In that approach, change is required to find the marginal product (or utility) upon which supply-and-demand curves are derived and price and quantity are determined both in a given market on a given instant and at different times. The well-known passage in the Preface to Production of Commodities: “The investigation is concerned exclusively with such properties of an economic system as do not depend on changes in the scale of production or in the proportions of ‘factors’” (Sraffa, Production of Commodities by Means of Commodities: Prelude to a Critique of Economic Theory, Cambridge, UK, Cambridge University Press, 1960, v) can be better understood in the light of the above arguments. The issue is the difference between two instants (in which time is absent) and a change that takes place through time. By keeping change out of the scope, he was keeping the notion of causation out of his project of building a geometrical description of the economic system.

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Vorheriges Kapitel On Sraffa’s Structuralism

Nächstes Kapitel The Meaning of Sraffa Prices

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References to the Sraffa Papers, which are kept at Trinity College Library, Cambridge, and mostly available online, will be given hereafter following the catalogue classification. In a few cases, we completed Sraffa’s abbreviations in order to make the text more readable.

See Marcuzzo (2014), from which the paragraph draws.

See Sraffa’s comment in Summer 1927 “[…] the main stream of modern economic thought proceeds to analyse the ways in which change takes place, without being hindered by the fact that little is known of the ultimate causes of change” (D3/12/3/14). In fact, here Sraffa is making a distinction between the notions of ‘ultimate cause’ and ‘mechanical cause’. He is identifying the difference between the Classical and the Modern by associating the Classical with the notion of ‘ultimate cause’ and the Modern with the ‘mechanical cause’. We are indebted to the Editor of this volume for suggesting clarification of this distinction.

In a contemporaneous manuscript dated 1–3 January 1958 and inscribed as “Margins and margins”, which he might have considered including in his book, Sraffa made the same point, returning to his earlier distinction between difference and change (D3/12/46/50). Finally, Sraffa reiterated the same point as late as 17 August 1965, when he was still trying to carry out his project for a comprehensive critique of marginal theory (D3/12/42/5). On these points, see Marcuzzo and Rosselli (2011).

Finally, the distinction between difference and change is employed by Sraffa to distinguish two different aspects of the effects on the relative value of two commodities of different proportions or durabilities of capital employed in their production. Sraffa writes: “[the first aspect] is that of occasioning a difference in the relative values of two commodities which are produced by equal quantities of labour. Second, that of the effect which a rise of wages has in producing a change in their relative value” (Sraffa 1951: xlvii). This testifies to the importance Sraffa attached to the distinction between change and difference in economics.

Referring to Russell’s interpretation of differential calculus in physics, Sraffa seems to be thinking of differential calculus as a model because it considers “time in which effects follow causes, but so closely that there is no room either for dispersion or for entering of foreign influences: it does this by differentiation (making time so short as actually to leave no room for change in circumstances: the cause and effect are perfectly contiguous—nothing happens in between” (quoted in Martins 2013: 44).

We interpret the existing situation as also including alternative techniques as long as they are comparable because, even if not used, they “exist” at the same time. We are grateful to the Editor of this volume for raising this point.

The following paragraphs draw on Rosselli and Trabucchi (2019).

For the vivid contrast of the image of a tram vs. that of a bus, we have preferred to quote this version, which Sraffa crossed out, to the one he kept in the manuscript which runs as follows:

This is nothing less than a declaration of faith in universal determinism, for nothing less can support the belief in the actual existence of a prescribed path which must inevitably be followed, whether by the consumer or by the producer, such as is described by the demand- and supply-curves: for no observation, however minute, of the existing situation (in our case, of the existing methods of production) can bring out the path along which they must move in any given circumstances. (D3/12/46.43b recto)

The first to employ the “snapshot” metaphor was Roncaglia in his 1975 Italian book, translated into English as Roncaglia (1978). For a more recent restatement of his interpretation of Sraffa’s approach, see Roncaglia (2009). On the evidence of Sraffa’s reference to the snapshot, see Kurz and Salvadori (2018).

Sraffa had endorsed Francis Bacon’s principle of “efficient causes” as against “final causes”. He wrote in the December 1927–December 1928 period: “‘Efficient causes’ are facts of the past that act on the present: ‘final causes’ are facts of the future that act on the present. The existence of the latter is at best dubious and they are better called ‘illusions’. The classical P[olitical] E[conomy] dealt only with the first sort of causes, i.e. of ‘material things’ that have existed in the past. Modern economics deals with the second class, i.e. hopes for the future, such as utility, abstinence, disutility, etc.; these things, it must be noticed, refer only to the foreseeing of future acts.” (D3/12/10/ 61.1recto).

According to Nerio Naldi in a private communication, the papers in D1/9—in the catalogue dated pre-1928—in fact belong to the 1928–1931 period, as revealed by the annotation “next lecture” on one sheet.

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Titel: On Sraffa’s Challenge to Causality in Economics
verfasst von: Maria Cristina Marcuzzo
Annalisa Rosselli
Verlag: Springer International Publishing
Buch: A Reflection on Sraffa’s Revolution in Economic Theory
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-47205-4

Electronic ISBN: 978-3-030-47206-1

Copyright-Jahr: 2021
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-47206-1_3