>Was Sraffa a Sraffian/neo-Ricardian; did he ever go beyond critiquing
>neo-classical garbage?
>
No we wasn't one, and no he didn't. Personally, I have some reason to think
he was a Stalinist. When I was at Cambs I was friends with a grad student of
his who said that in his rooms he had Stalin's collected works totally read
to shreds, marked up on every page and line, annotated slips of paper stuck
in every other page.
When he died, my college, Kings, which has these wonderful irreverent obits
for every member or graduate of the college (it's good to know that someday
I may have one, though of course i won't be hear to read it), had a long one
on Sraffa. This was shortly after the Blunt affair, and the writer recalled
a discussion with S at the time when thepresswas talking about The Fourth
Man but before Blunt had been publically blown. Sraffa was asked, "Were you
the Fourth Man?" He made an"indescribable Italianate wave of his hands,: and
replied, "I forget which number I was."
S was a friend of Gramsci's and Wittgenstein's, W acknowledges him in
thepreface to the Investigations. I heard him lecture, he was astounding,
talked the opposite of his laconic writing; he was effusive and charming,
very Italian, only the density and brilliancy of his speech was like his
writing.
jks
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