Em 1977, Ian Steedman, criou uma grande controvérsia nos meios marxistas com a públicação do livro Marx after Sraffa(New Left Books). Para o incauto acostumado com o tradicional ‘bla, bla, bla, bla” do marxismo fundamentalista pseudo filosófico – ainda em voga em Perdizes - o livro foi e continua sendo um grande choque: a sua leitura exige um razoável treino em matemática , além é claro do conhecimento do Marx e do livro do Sraffa. Em 2003, 25 anos após sua publicação, Steedman foi convidado a apresentar uma refexão sobre o seu livro. O resultado é um paper relativamente curto – apenas 15 páginas-, com a matemática usual, do qual publicamos o “abstract” e os dois parágrafos iniciais:
Abstract
I have been asked to ‘reflect’ on Marx after Sraffa (1977) after some twenty-five years. My reflection falls into three parts. In the first, certain major themes of the book are recalled and emphasized. In the second part some brief thoughts are offered on certain subsequent approaches to Marx’s value and exploitation theory, in particular the so-called ‘new solution’. The third and most substantial part turns to a major gap in Marx after Sraffa (and in many other approaches), namely the matter of international trade and how it affects Marx’s theory.
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In the 1970s there was a great flurry of writings on ‘Marxist economics’ but much of it (not all) was, unfortunately, of a careless and uncritical kind, showing more signs of ideological fervour than of any determination to ensure that what was said was at least internally coherent and logical. In complete contrast, the 1960s/early 1970s ‘capital theory’ literature, often inspired by Sraffa’s meticulous Production of Commodities by Means of Commodities (1960), had by-and-large been a model of precision, à la Sraffa. That literature, of course, dealt some hard blows to at least parts of marginalist economic theory but it was only the naïve and illogical who thought – or should that be ‘felt’? – that to undermine parts of mainstream theory was, ipso facto, to provide support for ‘Marxist economics’. The purpose of Marx after Sraffa was to show that in fact Sraffa’s own arguments could be used to display, beyond any reasonable dispute, the fallacious nature of many traditional Marxist arguments and claims within the more narrowly ‘economic’ domain. (It did not venture into any wider discussion of Marxism.)
It would be pointless (and tedious) to rehearse all the arguments here but, some twenty-five years on, the following themes are perhaps still worth bearing clearly in mind:
1) If one is attempting to explain prices and the profit rate then ‘labour theories’ are simply REDUNDANT. No matter how cleverly labour quantities can be worked into such an explanation, they never need to be so worked in. ‘Sraffa’ will do the trick. This is all true a fortiori when there is a choice of methods, i.e. always!
O texto completo pode ser acessado em: http://www.hlss.mmu.ac.uk/economics/research/discussion_papers/2003-02.pdf
