Piero Sraffa’s Use of the History of Economic Thought in the Cambridge Lectures

Attention to the history of economic thought and its connection with historical and political conditions played a crucial role in the evolution of Sraffa’s theoretical positions. Sraffa insisted on the importance of this methodological approach to the study of economic theory in his first lectures on advanced theory of value, delivered at Cambridge in the late 1920s. He saw the evolution of economic theory as the result of attempts by economists to deal with ‘practical problems’ and affected as such by the ‘disturbing elements’ of ‘opposite interests’ supporting different solutions. This view still deserves attention.