Nothing is hidden: A Wittgensteinian interpretation of Sraffa

In light of Piero Sraffa's well-known influence on Ludwig Wittgenstein's philosophical thought, John Davis argues that there is an analogy between Sraffa's criticism of Marshall and Wittgenstein's Sraffa-inspired criticism of his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. However, Wittgenstein criticised not only the particular theory he had advanced in the Tractatus but also the whole construction of the problem that the Tractatus was intended to solve. This paper argues that, analogously, Sraffa's work implies a criticism not simply of the neoclassical theory of value but of the whole construction of the problem that the neoclassical theory of value was intended to solve. (C) 1996 Academic Press Limited