From the "Loaf of Bread" to "Commodity Fetishism": A 'New Interpretation'of the Marx-Sraffa Connection

Sraffa’s unpublished papers have attracted again the attention of different scholars on the relationship between Marx’s and Sraffa’s economic theories. In his notes, as far as the theory of value is concerned, Sraffa states that the «delicate point» is the analysis of the relation between the wage rate and the rate of profit when wages partecipate in the distribution of surplus. Sraffa establishes a bridge among the ‘macro’ conception of a given surplus to be divided between the different social classes and the ‘micro’ analysis of the prices of the different commodities by equalizing the value of the net product to the labour employed in its production. From this perspective Sraffa’s analysis can be linked to the ‘New Interpretation’ approach to the transformation of values into prices of production.