‘Openness’ as a Methodological Principle of Sraffa’s Economic Thinking

This paper discusses the impact of Sraffa's thinking on economics. It argues increasing specialization in research is producing an ‘all trees, no forest' fragmentation of economics that creates opportunities for a return to concerns that motivated classical political economy. It associates this with a methodological conception of what a more pluralistic economics involves, and applies this to relationships between production and distribution. A methodological conception of ‘openness' is traced to a 1931 turning point in Sraffa's thinking when he used an open-closed distinction to explain the relationship between production and distribution, and engaged in a philosophy of science reasoning reminiscent of systems theory. The paper argues there are important parallels between Sraffa and Gramsci's thinking regarding the open-closed distinction